Regulation of Fuels and Fuel Additives: Renewable Fuel Standard ...

inspection, audit, recordkeeping and reporting safeguards to verify compliance with the
requirements on fuel use at foreign facilities. We seek comment on the most effective
means of doing this. Because of the difficulty of implementing these safeguards,
however, we also solicit comment on a provision that would limit the application of this
definition of cellulosic ethanol only to ethanol plants in the U.S.
Regarding the use of waste heat as a source of thermal energy, we note that there
may be situations in which an off-site furnace, boiler or heater creates excess or waste
heat that is not used in the process for which the thermal energy is employed. For
example, a glass furnace generates a significant amount of waste heat that often goes
unused. We are proposing to include waste heat in the definition of “other waste
materials”, and also that waste heat captured and used as a source of thermal energy in an
ethanol plant would satisfy the requirement of other waste materials being “otherwise
used” to make ethanol. Although the source of the waste heat is ultimately a fossil fuel in
most cases, we recognize that without the capture of the heat and subsequent use in the
ethanol plant, that energy would be unused, and the ethanol plant would consume the
equivalent amount of fossil fuel. Thus, for the same amount of fossil fuel consumption at
the off-site plant, heat energy capture would result in displacement of fossil fuel use at
the ethanol plant. Because of potential confusion identifying thermal energy that is waste
heat from fossil fuel combustion sources on site (i.e., at the ethanol plant itself), we are
limiting this proposal to waste heat captured at off-site plants. The Agency solicits
comment on our proposal to consider waste heat in the definition of “other waste
materials”.
We propose to interpret the term “fossil fuel normally used in the production of
ethanol” to mean fossil fuel used at the facility in the ethanol production process itself,
rather than other phases such as trucks transporting product, and fossil fuel used to grow
and harvest the feedstock. Therefore the diesel fuel that trucks consume in hauling wood
waste from sawmills to the ethanol facility would not be counted in determining whether
the 90% displacement criteria has been met. We are interpreting it in this way because
we believe the accounting of fuel use associated with transportation and other life cycle
activities would be extremely difficult and in many cases impossible. 15 The Agency
solicits comments on this aspect of our approach in accounting for fossil fuel
displacement.
Based on the operation of ethanol plants, we are viewing this definition to apply
to waste materials used to produce thermal energy rather than electrical energy.
Electrical usage at ethanol plants is used for lights and equipment not related to the
production of ethanol. Also, the calculation of fossil fuel used to generate such electrical
usage would be difficult because it is not always possible to track the source of electricity
that is purchased off-site. We are therefore proposing that the displacement of 90 percent
of fossil fuels at the ethanol plant means those fuels consumed on-site and that are used to
15 In Section IX of today’s preamble we discuss our analysis of the lifecycle fuel impacts of the RFS rule,
with respect to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. While we do account for fuel used in hauling materials
to ethanol plant in our analysis, we are using average nationwide values, rather than data collected for
individual plants.
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