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U.S. raises renewable road transport fuels obligation

11th April 2007

The U.S. Environment Protection Agency announced yesterday that it would raise the volume of alternative fuel to be available to 4.02% of total gasoline supplied this year, a 1% increase on 2006. The ruling effectively creates a market for 4.7 billion gallons of alternative fuels this year, a volume due to rise to 7.5 billion gallons a year by 2012.

Today’s Detroit News, reporting the story ahead of the EPA’s own website, noted that both the National Resources Defense Council and the National Environmental Trust greeted the fuel obligation as ineffective in global warming gas emissions terms, and the latter body’s president Philip E. Clapp said, "Vehicles powered by ethanol get 20-30% fewer miles per gallon than they do with gasoline, so in order to reduce spending at the pump any renewable fuels mandate must be coupled with significant improvements to auto fleet efficiency."

Announcing the new alternative fuel standards, the administrator of the EPA said that the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling against the Agency’s refusal to regulate CO2 emissions from vehicles was “under review”, as is the EPA’s decision on whether to grant California a waiver from federal rules to introduce its own state legislation to require car manufacturers to improve average fuel economy by more than 25% - in the case of cars, to 43 mpg over the next decade. Ten states have thus far adopted California’s proposed rules, which are intended to come into force in 2009; bodies representing the automotive industry have filed three lawsuits seeking to block them, first in California, and this month, in Vermont.

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