By Ucilia Wang The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed
a new plan to boost biofuel production while requiring biofuel
makers to cut greenhouse gas emissions during production. The
proposal to measure greenhouse gas emissions will surely be
controversial. It would require refineries to consider the
emissions produced by farming or converting forestland into
farmland, transporting the feedstock, blending of the biofuels
and the market consumption of the fuels. Biofuels would have to
be produced with lower emissions than the gasoline and diesel
they replace in order meet a national biofuel standard, the
proposal said. California approved a similar rule last month
when it approved a precedent-setting low-carbon fuel standard.
Ethanol companies lobbied hard against the mandate to count
emissions from changes to land use. Vocal opponents to this
mandate included big-shot biofuel investor Vinod Khosla and
former presidential candidate and general Wesley Clark, who also
is co-chairman of the biofuel group,