BOSTON -- Massachusetts fuel suppliers would have to report the source of fuel in bills currently under consideration in the state legislature in moves intended to help consumers choose those with lower greenhouse-gas emission profiles.
State Senator Marc Pacheco (D) and Representative Frank Smizik (D) have proposed bills (Senate Bill 456 and House Bill 754, respectively) that require “producers, importers and wholesale distributors that sell, supply or offer for sale transportation fuels in Massachusetts to report all Massachusetts transportation fuel sales, and the source of any fuel sold, to the Department of Environmental Protection," said the legislation, according to the State House News Service.
The DEP would then be required to compute and track the individual and collective lifecycle greenhouse-gas emissions of all fuels, and the carbon intensity of each fuel, and report this information on an annual basis.
The goal, say Pacheco and Smizik, co-chairman of the House & Senate Committees on Global Warming & Climate Change, is to give consumers a way to pick fuel based on its greenhouse-gas emissions, so they could avoid those from especially carbon-heavy sources, such as Canadian tar sands.
"You could actually end up with a system in the future where there could be more consumer choice in terms of what consumers would want to purchase," Pacheco told the news agency. "You would know where it's being imported from, but you'd also know the makeup of the fuel."
In written testimony to the Joint Committee on Environment, Natural Resources & Agriculture, which concluded a hearing on the bills last month, a representative of the Massachusetts Petroleum Council said the legislation is completely unworkable.
"That is a mandate that is impossible to fulfill," said Stephen Dodge, a lobbyist for the group, which represents oil and gas companies in the state. "The country's petroleum system is designed to be fungible and is completely incompatible with tracking. Carbon intensity data would need to be recalculated every time a pipeline batch moves, a storage tank is filled or any time two batches of fuel are mixed."
About less than 1% of fuel sold in Massachusetts currently comes from tar sands oil, according to Smizik; however, one recent study predicted that fuel from tar sands may grow to supply 18% of the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic markets within five years. The congressmen are targeting tar sands because of how carbon-intensive it is compared to other oil sources, and its emissions during the refining and production process are dirtier.
Smizik and Pacheco warn that the state’s efforts at reducing greenhouse-gas emissions—it is a member of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a regional cap-and-trade program—would be blunted with more tar-sands-oil-based fuel; 40% of Massachusetts’ emissions come from transportation.
“All of the reductions that we have achieved thus far would be reversed. We'd just eliminate the reductions,” Pacheco told the News Service.
Dodge countered that because vehicle engines emit most of the greenhouse gases, the source of the oil is not as important. He added that the United States imports oil "from a number of other countries with the same greenhouse gas profiles as Canadian oil sands," and uses some domestic sources with similar emission levels.
He added that it would be very complex to track the origins of finished fuel because of the refining and blending process.
“One batch of gasoline could come from several refineries and originate in numerous countries," said Dodge. He added it was like asking grocery stores to report which cow produced each gallon of milk. Although some consumers might value the information, Dodge said providing it as required under the bills would be a "virtually impossible task."
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