OMAHA (DTN) – Growth Energy called on the California Air Resources Board to allow the public to comment on documents pertaining to its low-carbon fuel standard rulemaking that were not disclosed and should influence the final rule, according to a news release from Growth Energy.

 

Through a public records request, Growth Energy uncovered numerous previously undisclosed documents and comments from ARB consultants that cast doubt on ARB conclusions and others that appeared to influence ARB's assumptions, the release said.

 

Following the discovery, Growth Energy issued a letter to ARB, calling on the state to reopen the public comment period and allow comment on all documents received by ARB in connection with the LCFS as mandated by the Administrative Procedure Act.

 

These include documents commenting on detailed environmental analyses of the LCFS developed by other corn ethanol stakeholders, including the Renewable Fuels Association and the New Fuels Alliance. The letter to ARB also included eight questions to which Growth Energy is seeking answers.

 

"The public records request confirmed what we suspected: that significant portions of the ARB staff's environmental and economic analyses appeared to be based on assumptions, rather than technical analyses available to the public," Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis said in a statement. "Even more disturbing are the omitted comments from ARB consultants that contradict the conclusions reached by ARB staff regarding the carbon intensity of ethanol."

 

In the letter, Growth Energy said that Thomas Hertel, professor at Purdue University and the senior member of ARB's advisory team for GTAP, called ARB's use of the GTAP results in the regulation "rather arbitrary," and "much less defensible" than an alternative he supported.

 

Also omitted from the public rulemaking file was a PowerPoint presentation from Hertel to ARB stating that the GTAP model "is better suited to generating insights and ranges of results than to generating specific numbers," yet ARB used GTAP to generate a specific ILUC number for ethanol.

 

"We are only one-third of the way through our public records request and have discovered scores of comments and documents not disclosed to the public that prejudiced the final LCFS rule," Buis said in a statement. "Selective disclosure is not an option in something this important. To not allow public review and comment on these would be a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act and a perversion of the democratic process."