US biodiesel board CEO lashes out at 'junk science'

02 February 2009 19:35  [Source: ICIS news]

SAN FRANCISCO (ICIS news)--National Biodiesel Board CEO Joe Jobe attacked the National Grocers Association on Monday for what he called unfair criticism of the renewable fuel, telling the industry it needed to protect itself from "junk science".

Delivering the opening address at the National Biodiesel Conference & Expo, Jobe singled out a long-standing charge of the National Grocers Association, which said that renewable fuels derived from food crops are driving up the prices of groceries.

"Grain prices, adjusted for inflation, are at their lowest points since the Great Depression. Yet grocery prices haven't come down," Jobe told the audience.

Jobe said criticism of this sort was an attempt to "stack the deck" in favour of continued petroleum use. He singled out for criticism a February 2008 Science magazine article that said biofuels use increases greenhouse gases, saying the author was a senior fellow at the Georgetown University Law Center and not a scientist. 

"We have to constructively engage in the issue and call junk science what it is and demand that only sound science drive this issues," Jobe said.

With the Obama administration and state governments signalling that they would like to cut vehicle emissions, the role of biofuels in US energy policy could be poised for growth  - if it could survive the current market downturn, Jobe said.

"Carbon policy is now energy policy. The EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] is going to institute life-cycle carbon regulations, and California and 14 other states are going to follow suit," he said.

"Biodiesel is the most sustainable heavy-duty transportation fuel in the world. Of all renewable fuel, it is the only one that is working," he said.

Bookmark Simon Robinson's Big Biofuels Blog for some independent thinking on biofuels
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By: Ben Lefebvre
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