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Agriculture Secretary severe criticism of biofuels policy and NRDC cautions about different quality of biofuels

During his speech at National Press club in Washington, which took place on October 21, 2010 the Agriculture Secretary made some remarks on President Administration biofuels policy. He mentioned temporary prolongation of Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC), the development of Biomass Crop Assistance Program, which gained the President administration's support and expressed his opinion on the latest resolution concerning E15 blends, issued by Environmental Protection Agency.

At the same time his opponent - Daniel A. Lashof, Ph.D., director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate Center specified that Agriculture Secretary had been talking a lot about the necessity of shift from corn ethanol to more sophisticated biofuel and changed his opinion and supported president administration idea of wasteful corn ethanol donations and flawed biomass program support growth together with EPA’s incorrect decision to increase the percentage of ethanol in fuel, when the time to take concrete operations came.

At the same time Lashof added that the Gulf Coast oil leakage has proved one more time that the country needs urgent shift to lows-carbon fuels in order to get rid of country's dependence from foreign oil imports, by thus decreasing the danger of future oil leakages and "green house effect" growth. Though, he attracted the audience attention by mentioning that advanced biofuels may become the partial solutions for the issues he specified above if people become aware that each biofuel type is of different quality

Continuing his remarks on the aforementioned topic, the director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Climate Center said that the country tax payers will pay about 6 billion USD dollars for used technology being the step into the past of environmental protection if oil companies get one-year prolongation for VEETC, giving to oil companies the taxes donation for ethanol application.

Taking about VEETC extension Lashof has ironically spoken about the fact of investment coming to the industry which are already required to use ethanol based on country Renewable Fuels Standard and argued the fact that such immense and time consuming investment is made during the period of crisis, by thus depriving the investment of the new and cleaner biofuels technologies development. The speaker emphasized that the country does more harm to itself by financing dirty corn ethanol development instead of sending money to environmentally safe, low-carbon technologies.

Talking about the Biomass Crop Assistance Program, Lashof has criticized it, as well as having said that most of the resources would be spent for wood collecting for their further processing at biorefinery facilities instead of helping to the farmers in planting of more viable enduring energy cereals on farming areas.

Lashof specified that wood collecting for its' further processing would do the same harm as corn ethanol as it may lead to forests degradation. He expressed his dissatisfaction with USDA actions and the absence of necessary environmental calculations, necessary precautions for avoiding of such situation.

Lashof has explained his disagreement with EPA resolution to increase the acceptable amount of corn ethanol to be mixed with fuel from 10 percent to 15 percent, which is allowed to be used in cars, manufactured after 2007, would make earnest environmental and public health problems due to the fact that ethanol mixtures damage pollution control systems in older machines, by increasing the possibility of breaks due to usage of the fuel, which is designed for new generation cars and has higher ethanol blend percentage. All this causes greater toxic air pollution.

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