SALEM, Ore. -- Oregon is delaying enforcement of its carbon-cutting Clean Fuels Program until after voters decide on its fate with three proposed ballot initiatives.
The Clean Fuels Program, signed into law in 2009, is designed to increasingly reduce the carbon intensity of transportation fuels in the state by 10% over 10 years. It would do this partly by requiring businesses that import gasoline and diesel into Oregon to cut their fuels’ carbon intensity to meet annual standards. They could import lower-carbon biofuels and alternative fuels or buy credits in a carbon-trading program from providers of "clean fuel," including most types of ethanol, biodiesel and natural gas.
Enforcement of the fuel distributors’ requirements under the program was originally slated for 2016. But the Environmental Quality Commission of the state Department of Environmental Quality voted unanimously this week to push it to 2017, reported The Oregonian. This is to give Oregonians time to decide on three ballot initiatives that aim to dismantle the program.
Of the ballot initiatives, one repeals the Clean Fuels Program, while the remaining two hamstring it by reducing the carbon-reduction goal to 5%, removing the carbon-credit trading program and stopping the state from forcing fuel distributors to buy low-carbon blends. Supporters of the initiatives, which include The Western States’ Petroleum Association and Oregon Fuels Association, must collect 88,000 voter signatures by July 2016 to get them on the ballot for November 2016.
In voting to delay enforcement, board members acknowledged opposition to the program, but also supported the worthiness of its goals.
"Climate change is a real problem, and we do need policies to address that," board member Colleen Johnson said after the vote, according to the newspaper. "It's a big program, it's an important program, but it's also important we get it right."
Chairperson Jane O'Keefe said in a statement that the board is "aware there is a high degree of skepticism in the public" about the Clean Fuels Program. If the program is successful, however, "it will be a win for the environment and all Oregonians."
The board also voted to set higher standards for how it determines the carbon emissions of fuels, a decision that specifically impacts biofuels, weighing how they contribute indirectly to climate change—for example, clearing trees to create farmland for growing crops.
Frank Holmes, the northwest regional manager for the Western States’ Petroleum Association, told The Oregonian that the new standards will make compliance even tougher for fuel distributors.
"The program has been infeasible from the beginning, and with these changes, it makes it more infeasible,” he said.
The standards, however, are more favorable to biofuels advocates than an earlier proposal that would have given corn-based ethanol a higher carbon intensity. This in turn would have basically required distributors to buy cleaner, less carbon-intense sugar-cane ethanol blends from Brazil to meet the program’s standards. The newly adopted standards still increase corn-based ethanol’s carbon intensity, but not as much.
Renewable Fuels Association president Geoff Cooper saw the new standards as a “compromise of sorts.”
“It moves us out of the camp where we were opposing the program into a more supportive posture," he told the paper.
The department is also evaluating a policy for 2017 that would minimize the Clean Fuels Program’s effect on gasoline prices, which it had earlier estimated at 4 to 19 cents per gallon by 2025.
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