Secure Our Fuels

Here at Secure Our Fuels, we’ve been working hard to engage and educate concerned consumers, families and small businesses about the overwhelmingly negative economic and national security threats posed Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) schemes.

In today’s LaCrosse (Wisc.) Tribune, CEA’s vice president, Michael Whatley, writes this in under the headline: “Proposed standard would hurt customers, manufacturers”:

Sold to the public as a plan to defy the laws of science by forcing a reduction in the carbon content of fuel (which the Environment Protection Agency says is constant), Mial’s reporting rightly calls out the LCFS for what it actually is: an attack on Wisconsin consumers and manufacturers by denying Wisconsin’s chief source of secure and affordable energy from crossing the U.S.-Canadian border. He also captures one of the fundamental realities that LCFS supporters would rather your readers not know; namely, that Wisconsin’s loss under such a policy might just turn out to be Asia’s gain, since it’s likely that far-away interests will “take every gallon” of energy that a Wisconsin LCFS would necessitate we leave behind.

Whatley adds this:

 Unfortunately, even as legislators from both parties in Madison have started to wake up to the harsh realities associated with an LCFS, a group known as the Midwestern Governors Association, of which Wisconsin’s governor is a member, continues down the road of LCFS study and implementation at breakneck pace. Later this year, the association expects to produce a final LCFS plan that states like Wisconsin will be asked to endorse in full. But that proposal won’t get far if more folks in the state take the time to read news items like this one.

Fortunately for the Badger State, the Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce (WMC) and the Wisconsin Petroleum Marketers Association (WPMA) have been actively working fend off job-killing LCFS scheme by educating key stakeholders about the host of negative impacts this proposal would have on the state. In fact, both WMC and the WPMA recently released straightforward documents about how an LCFS would hurt Wisconsin, its economy and its ability to compete.

With over 4,000 members statewide, WMC estimates that an LCFS would have the following effects:

The so-called Low Carbon Fuel Standard would cost Wisconsin motorists more than $3.2 billion in higher gas prices according to the WPRI study. This global warming gas tax could cost consumers as much as 61 cents per gallon according to a study by the Marshall Institute. All told, these expensive policies are projected to cost each Wisconsin family more than $1,000 each year by the time they are fully implemented.

In a separate LCFS overview document, the WPMA identifies some of the potential impacts on Wisconsin and other Midwestern states that depend on Canadian derived-fuel supplies to keep their economies moving:

If Wisconsin and other Midwestern states adopt a LCFS, existing and proposed pipeline infrastructure could be used to bypass the region. In addition, Canadian crude will likely be produced for export to developing nations such as China and India. These nations have lower environmental standards than the U.S., which means there would be a net increase in greenhouse gas emissions, and other air pollution, if that crude is ultimately refined elsewhere. It also would be less energy efficient and a potentially greater risk to the environment for Canada to transport its crude abroad by oil tanker versus keeping it in North America.

The Midwestern United States is the most efficient transportation destination and refiner of Canadian oil sands crude, which reduces its environmental impact. Oil sands crude oil is a growing resource that is attracting significant investment. If Wisconsin restricts Canadian crude oil, it will be used somewhere else in the world.

Interestingly, some of these same concerns were identified in a recent letter from Thomas Corcoran, executive director of the Center for North American Energy Security (CNAES) — which urges the nation’s governors to oppose an LCFS that would discriminate against affordable and secure fuels, such as those from Canada’s oil sands or other non-conventional sources. In this letter, Corcoran writes this:

 Such a proposal would be misguided for many reasons. First it would not result in any reductions of GHG emissions, but it is likely to increase them. The effect would be to discourage imports to the Northeast of fuels derived from oil sands and other conventional resources in North America, such as the oil sands in Canada or oil shale in the Western U.S. Fuels barred from the Northeast would simply be sold elsewhere in the world, where controls may be more lax and emissions from fuel transportation increased.

 While the debate over an LCFS scheme continues in Wisconsin, it’s clear that the more consumers learn and understand about this job-killing proposal, the more the opposition continues to grow. Unfortunately, the threat of an LCFS still exists in many other states, regions and in Washington. As CEA continues to educate the public about the dangerous realities of adopting LCFS schemes, hopefully more state and national policymakers will take notice and follow WMC’s, WPMA’s and CNAES’s lead by rejecting these misguided proposals.