 Good morning. We're gonna get started here in just a second. So I'd encourage everybody to get their coffee in hand and seats under them and Get it get a good view. I think we have enough. We have enough seats. So Everybody can get comfortably situated. Well, good morning again. My name is Reed Detchen I'm the senior advisor for climate solutions here at the United Nations Foundation And we're delighted to have you here for this clean fuels climate and health forum And I want to start out by explaining why you're here Why are you here in at this place in particular? the United Nations Foundation was founded about 20 years ago by a generous gift from Ted Turner and And its purpose was to assist the UN and UN causes and Since that time it's focused on three principal areas women's empowerment children's health and energy and climate and Energy and climate in particular under the leadership of our first president founding president Tim Worth Who is going to be on our first panel? And Tim and I worked together on the energy and climate program for more than a decade and Shortly after 9-11 Tim got together with what you might call his kitchen cabinet of closest friends including Boyden Gray and John Podesta and said I Think energy has something to do with what just happened and we need to have Nonpartisan bipartisan solutions to energy To take the country forward and out of that was born an organization called the energy future coalition Which was aimed at US policy was bipartisan Boyden and Tim John Podesta and Tom Dashel were part of that group and One of the first areas that we took up was biofuels and agriculture It was one of six areas and with Boyden's considerable instruction of us all We really delved into what became the topic that we're talking about today It started out really from a security frame Tim and I came at it from a climate frame Boyden came at it for a security frame I would say but also a public health frame and and Then we also Saw other other benefits and other impacts. So that's how we came to be here today We've been engaged in this really since 2002 as the UN foundation and the energy future coalition So I'm going to say a little bit about logistics just to get that out of the way I'm sure you've all had safety briefings. Luckily. It's very simple here The bathrooms and the stairways are in the same place So just go out those glass doors you came in and turn to the left And there's a little hallway there with your bathrooms and the stairways in case you needed to make an emergency exit We have a more direct exit here, but I can't recommend it So let's talk a little bit about The agenda today and frame up our conversation. We're here to talk about clean fuels climate and health And ethanol plays a surprising role in the middle of all three The conventional wisdom about ethanol Gran alcohol made from corn blended with gasoline for transportation fuel is that it is a classic case of unintended consequences a wishfully misguided dream of Renewable fuels pushed by big agriculture That became a subsidized government boondoggle and drained billions of dollars from the Treasury doing as much harm as good That's the conventional wisdom That's well accepted in this town But what if this easy narrative is wrong? What if ethanol instead? improves engine efficiency Reduces greenhouse gas emissions and most importantly for our discussion today displaces the most toxic components and gasoline aromatic hydrocarbons That comprise 25% of every gallon and the produce emissions as harmful to child development as lead Tim welcome come on up and join Boyden over here I've already sung Tim worse praises so I'm not gonna repeat that But reviewed the bidding reviewed the bidding Tim on the energy future coalition Now to address climate change It's pretty clear that we're about to embark on a rapid transition to electric vehicles But internal combustions will still dominate the US transportation fleet until at least mid-century We need to address the composition of transportation fuels today Now what we're gonna discuss today is a complex multidisciplinary topic and I was scared away from it to start with I'm not an expert in any one of these topics. You need to know about atmospheric chemistry You need to know about toxicology. You need to know about epidemiology you need to know about combustion engine technology and process and And who knows all those things I certainly didn't But what I realized was That you need to be not an expert in one of those fields to get the whole picture You need to be a generalist to understand how to bring all these facts together Into a coherent narrative and that's how you understand the argument So you and the audience are and on watching on on the live stream You're as well suited to understand this argument as any expert here in this room This is something that when you understand the facts and put them together Common sense will lead you to the right conclusion So just to review the bidding Ethanol is now blended into gasoline at a 10% level which ironically is the worst level for air quality But higher level blends Ideally 30% could be used today and in fact are being used today as well here in Watertown, South Dakota Without any change to existing vehicles Really any vehicles at all, but particularly ones from 2001 forward and both existing and and Especially new vehicles that will come out in the future Could easily be adjusted to run more efficiently on these higher blends and maintain their fuel economy Despite the fact that ethanol has a lower energy content than gasoline And the ethanol fraction produces 40% less greenhouse gases than gasoline 40% Because ethanol has high octane its use at that level would minimize the need to use these toxic Aromatics which happen to be more expensive to produce for that purpose So what are aromatics? They're part of the soup we call gasoline Long-chain hydrocarbons that are slower to combust and thereby deliver octane benefits They're sometimes called BETX for their constituents benzene ethyl benzene toluene and xylene and If that doesn't scare you that that's in your gasoline. I don't know what well Decades ago refiner's needed a replacement for tetraethyl lead which had been Demonstrated to be harmful to public health and they turn to aromatics But aromatics are poisonous as well as they well knew at the time Emissions from that toxic fraction were thought initially to have a very limited life in the atmosphere Posing a threat only where they were most concentrated for example right along roadsides with heavy traffic But research since then has shown that the most dangerous component of these emissions which we'll hear about more today And they're called PAH's Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons PAH's in fact are born along and sustained for long distances and long periods of time By secondary organic aerosols. So there's another term you're going to hear secondary organic aerosols Those are the aerosols that are formed after emissions come out of the tailpipe and Combined with the ambient air So you have emissions come out of the tailpipe They interact with the air and they produce these secondary organic aerosols that stay in the atmosphere and transport readily and What we have found with the research as you will hear has shown that the SOA is these secondary organic aerosols combined with these worst particles the PAH's To keep them and distribute them among the atmosphere in the population This recent research Contradicted the theory on which EPA based its models So as it tried to determine the potential health effects and the regulation that they based it on their concept about how these aerosols worked and How they could be distributed in the atmosphere They have now acknowledged was wrong So they have no tools really to assess what they should be doing Now typically we measure concentrations of Various elements in the atmosphere in parts per million or parts per billion Exposure to PAH's in the single digits parts per trillion trillion Has been found by two decades of peer-reviewed research to cause serious harm to unborn and newborn children including ADHD and IQ decrements that are similar to the effects of lead exposure in addition a 2013 Harvard study estimated 3,800 premature deaths per year from combustion of aromatics And their transition to SOAs to these secondary organic aerosols noted and I quote Evidence is growing that aromatics and gasoline exhaust are among the most efficient secondary organic matter precursors and 60 and that 69 percent of aromatic emissions come from gasoline powered vehicles a More recent Harvard study found that reducing the level of particulate matter in the air by just one microgram per cubic meter from the current EPA standard of 15 so 15 knock it down one microgram would save 12,000 lives per year Now the level of aromatics and gasoline is directly correlated with the emissions of particulate matter Now you might think cars are getting better. We're going to solve this problem in Point of fact, it's the opposite New or direct injection engine do have cleaner emissions overall, but not for particulate matter especially of the smallest particles relatively speaking pollution filters and traps Capture the big globs of soot and take them out of the air so you don't see the exhaust anymore But they miss these invisible Ultrafine particles that produce secondary aerosol and that penetrate not just the lungs But into the bloodstream where they can reach the brain Yet as you will hear EPA has largely failed to regulate any of these Aromatics despite a provision in the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 you'll hear this term again 202 L it's part of the law and It mandated not going to quote because this is important. This is the mandate to Congress from 1990 quote reasonable requirements to control hazards air pollutants from motor vehicles and motor vehicle fuels that quote reflect the greatest degree of emission reduction achievable Through the application of technology which will be available Take in into consideration quote the availability and cost of the technology and noise energy and safety factors and lead time They were given 15 months to act 30 years later EPA has reduced benzene levels, but has left the other aromatics alone now think of it 25% of every gallon of gasoline 140 billion gallons of gasoline are consumed in the US per year that means that 35 billion gallons of Aromatics are combusted in engines every year and added to the air we breathe Now for a very long time I resisted this narrative. It led me to places. I did not want to go challenging the conventional wisdom Questioning EPA's methodologies its judgment and perhaps its moral courage and Observing the influence of the oil industry in Washington But as hard as I have looked I have not found responsible science-based arguments that undercut the central point Substituting a larger fraction of ethanol for aromatics would have important benefits for public health and Significant near-term climate benefits for transportation, which will otherwise take decades to transform That's the narrative. We will unspool today So I wanted to frame that up for you to give you a sense of the argument You're gonna hear a lot more about this in detail from the experts But don't feel cowed by not being an expert if you listen to the facts you'll understand the story and We'll be able to take this forward So with that I'm gonna stop this Opening sermon and I'm gonna turn it over to our first panel and Doug Duranty is gonna be our moderator for that panel Thank you all for being here. Well. Thank you read for that Great setup for so much good information. We're gonna have well, sir. How are you? Well, I'll sit on the end and then we we the two of you won't space it out a little bit here What a pleasure and what a way to begin this this very important discussion We're gonna have throughout the day today with With these two gentlemen I can't think of two people who were more involved in the formative Formative stages of our clean fuel movement in this country and the environmental movement in this country senator worth Of course his chairman of the foundation here and thank you for helping host this and and give us this wonderful venue to do it But senator worth was involved in climate change before climate change was cool He was in the house of representatives beginning in 1974 later went on to the Senate Among the many accomplishments of the senator he organized the famous Hansen hearings that was really the first alarm bell that rang around the world To alert everybody to the dangers of climate change. So this is these these gentlemen are not new to this It was very involved in a clean air act coming from the Denver, Colorado suburbs and representing that area He was acutely aware of the air problems We had out there back then and clean fuels and ethanol was a huge part of bringing that under control So this is someone who has a deep history and appreciation for for not only where we've been but what we're trying to do Boyden Gray and both of these gentlemen by the way are back in the olden days when there used to be bipartisan Agreements that were made by both sides, but Boyden We met I met in 1988 when he drove his alcohol fuel car on the steps of the Capitol And we got senator dashel and some others and Boyden his ambassador gray by the way I should say but Boyden was Really one of the absolute pioneers of our alcohol fuel movement. He led the way as Vice president George Bush's council he chaired the regulatory reform task force that Focused on a lot of programs that have been been the basis for a lot of our ethanol programs Later on of course was counseled to to the president But both under president Reagan and president Bush Boyden was an absolute driving force He has been calling for more ethanol and banging on EPA for the last 30 years and so to pick up on on what read Has said what we'd like to do is try to explore, you know Where we can go from here. We're a little bit stuck You know, we had this phenomenal growth in the ethanol industry right now We need to boy. I have a paper boy I don't want to embarrass you but among the reams of things that Boyden has written for our coalition in my group The Clean Fuels Development Coalition, we put out these issue briefs and I have some copies of this But they're all online. This is back in 2010 and Boyden's opening line and you're younger a little bit younger then But the opening line right there is ethanol is missing its greatest opportunity And it's greatest attribute, which is that it is saving lives. So this is not a new Concept there on this is not a new idea that we are the cleanest fuel and can replace the bad components and fuels so We want to build on that and what Reed said we have we want to get into some of the technical some of the automotive issues Some of the health issues, but these two gentlemen have a sense of all of that So I'm gonna turn it over to you and free will and hopefully we'll get some discussion going great Well, thank you very much for coming and it's really interesting to get Deeply involved in this issue as you will find the more you know the more you want to know and the more you want to cry because it is truly such in Such an enormously important pathway and it's one that is blocked at just about every area by a whole series of Interests and conventional wisdom that have really held up. You know, what is one of the major climate? public health Political and economic breakthroughs that we could make we're looking for as many steps as we can find that are Going to be effective as we look at the alluminum climate crisis and this is certainly one of them We're looking at everything we can to improve the health of Americans and this is certainly one of them And we're looking at everything we possibly can to encourage, you know, economic Economic sustainability Particularly in rural America and this is one of them. So everything is on the side of this discussion So it's important for us to understand. Well, why isn't this working? You know, what's gone wrong? Have we not not done it right or have there been other forces out there that are determined to make sure That ethanol does not advance You know, obviously I'm leading up to the point that there are other forces out there Let me step back and just say a word or two about my constituency in Colorado right along the front range Where we've had very very significant clean-air problems for 50 years you know the way in which the Wind currents come over the Rocky Mountains and air get stuck dirty air get stuck right along the front range right across through the Denver Corridor we thought we had much of that saw through various parts of earlier Work on the clean-air act but are now discovering the looming health problem of what's happening with Air to the very fine particles that Reid is talking about and the Denver and the Denver metropolitan area is Dramatically out of compliance with the clean-air act. You think of this pristine western skies, not the case at all It's a very very dangerous Very dangerous growth of this particularly as the fossil fuel industry Has grown so dramatically through fracking if you look at various parts of the front range It looks like a pin cushion if you look at infrared and because it's all of the fracking that's going on the Contributions from the fracking is not dissimilar In makeup from what happens coming out of the tailpipe of automobiles and the two together Fracking and what's coming out tailpipe emissions is creating now a brand new soup that is very very threatening To the health of the people living across the front range So you think of why don't we take this on why don't we under why don't we do something about this the data is pretty clear It's pretty well understood the car or public health authorities, you know aren't done there. We've got a new administration as well It's fresh and eager and ready to do something well Something's wrong with this mix and there are two pressures I think that are coming in and hammering away at this, you know one is a kind of conventional wisdom Among the environmental groups much I'm a deeply engaged with all of these environmental groups and have been banging on them for 20-plus years about ethanol and the fact that their conventional wisdom is flat wrong Only last week read I had dinner with a senior Executive of a foundation that supports A whole series of environmental issues and I was making this case. I said we're gonna have this panel It's interesting and trying to get some life into the ethanol issue and we get some new energy into it And he said all you don't want to do that, you know, we don't want to tear down any more of Indonesian rainforest for palm oil said what I Mean this was a this was a presumably very well-informed individual. I said you're just flat wrong He said no, I mean other people around the table kind of listening to this conversation And I was practically alone in defending ethanol and where it came from and what its virtues were With a Google people that should know a lot better But there has been developed a significant conventional wisdom running through much of the green community That has been really catastrophic for this and makes it very hard You know for many people who ought to be advocates for ethanol to put their heads above the parapet parapet and and become supporters The second major roadblock that I can I think is there Is our our great friends in the fossil fuel industry? You know, I look around I've learned enough now in politics over this long period of time to no matter what problem comes along Or what we're looking for sort of look for the for the fingerprint of the fossil fuel committee You can almost always find it. I mean this incredibly ubiquitous powerful in Industry that's out there arguing against universities divesting from fossil fuels Arguing in just about every possible way for their own well-being and they are certainly part of this discussion Seeding and telling making sure that the wrong stories are told and why does that well? They don't own the ethanol and if you look at that 25% that reads talking about if you start to think about, you know, can we clean up those emissions? You know, they have got that we have got to make progress with them. Will that be possible? Well, that seems to me is an enormously difficult issue so that's that's my story why did I get into this because of the pressures of my constituency and thinking about Thinking about clean air and their health and then it led to the fascinating discussion of all the chemistry of this And that led Boyden and me and and John Podesta to 20 years ago put together the energy future coalition Which was I think one of the most interesting kind of analytic discussion groups that I was ever involved with all went on for 20 years and It was really very very creative Boyden was one of the key people in that because he had been delving into this from a legal point of view and a political point of view for a long time, so we had fascinating discussions and I You know, I hope maybe they're the seeds for beginning again to understand the climate is energy energy is climate How the two fit together is always to be found always part of what we have to learn And we always got to look where are the fingerprints and what do we do about it? So thank you all very much for coming and let me turn it over to the real expert who's been at this even longer than I have Boyden Gray Well, thank you This is an issue that I've been working on as Tim said, you know, 30 years with Dave Holberg and Tim and Tom Dashel and You know, we've made a lot of progress, but there's no reason why it shouldn't be completed How did I get interested in this? Well, I was sort of in charge of President Reagan's de-regulation program beginning in the early 1980s and We wanted to to get rid of unnecessary red tape And it was obvious getting into the Clean Air Act and EPA that we couldn't repeal the Green Act No one wanted to do that. So my solution was I let's expedite the cleanup and Get the clean air off our backs by complying with it and it turned out that the first step Had to be getting rid of lead in gasoline because of its Toxicity and it's really really severe impact on children's mental development to say nothing of other health effects, but the IQ issue was the one that really drove it and Then the question became well, what was lead all about and that's when I started to get into the question of why Why do we have lead in the beginning and lead was the first National Ambit air quality standard which was imposed by the Clean Air Act and We did in the early 80s get rid of it completely out of gasoline, but the question always was all right. What's gonna Provide the substitute for what lead does so So that's sort of the background of my interest, but it's important to understand What was led there for? What was led used for and what is the best substitute and the answer is the best substitute is ethanol And that's why ethanol is where it is. It just ought to be in a much have much bigger presence Now So why was led there to begin with so that leads to the question of what was led doing To do so much to poison people so much What was it doing and What this leads to is the question of octane and octane is the most important The most important factor in The relationship between the oil industry and the automobile industry going all the way back to the 1900 all the way back a century or more and and If you understand octane you can understand this but no one ever uses the word octane No one ever what is octane? Well octane is the most important component of gasoline that's Mercedes will tell you that It's the most important component of gasoline from the point of view of The biggest users of gasoline or the only users which are car companies So lead was introduced Discovered by Kettering at General Motors in the early part of the 19th of the 20th century There was a Limitation on compression You couldn't go above four to one. You couldn't have trucks. You couldn't have racecars. You couldn't have anything Fast-forward racecars are run on alcohol. So why because it's better than diesel or gasoline the So the issue was How do we fix this and Kettering's puttering around in his garage and he's trying to figure out for GM How to how to make it possible to make cars actually have acceleration Be fun to drive actually build trucks and one of his assistants Is working with him he's a British scientist and and Kettering says to him How common is that? Gasoline doesn't knock as badly as kerosene Now you say what does not have to do with it? Well, that's was the problem with low-oxane fuels as they Pre-ignited in the chamber and a car could blow up if you didn't fix this And so that's why compression was kept at four to one and you couldn't drive anything had any power or any fun How do we fix this and and Kettering says to his assistant Why is this and he says that's because gasoline vaporize is better than kerosene He said we'll find something to make gas and vaporizing even better and his assistant said no I'm not the person to figure this out. I Am a physical engineer Of a physical mechanical engineer I'm not a chemist and you need a chemist to find this out and Kettering says no If I were to ask a chemist, he would say it couldn't be done Because if it could be done it would have already been done And the fact that it hasn't been done the chemist will tell you is why it can't be done Which is why we're stuck today. Well, you can't If it could have been done it should well it wasn't being done because of you know Stuck in the ways and He discovered lead by chance That doesn't actually make gas and vaporize better. It makes it burn more slowly So you don't have this pre-ignition in the chamber from the compression Ford didn't like it GM sort of went along with it GM raises compression ratio to H to 1 and that's why GM got out in front of Ford back in the early part of the 20th century and The question of octane has been at the center of Of the dialogue and sometimes friction between these two great industries for the last 100 years, so it's not new But people don't understand the role that octane has played and When we phase octane out the question was how were we going to find the substitute and it was faith that led What's the substitute? Well, if we hadn't done anything the substitute would have been the aromatics that Reed has talked about components of gasoline that Performed the same slow burning function that led was performing Only it turns out that aromatics are probably as bad as lead for public health maybe possibly even worse and The one way to get rid of that and avoid that problem was to was to authorize But to get the cleaner act to authorize the use of ethanol, which is an incredibly clean Totally Safe and very powerful form of octane. It's the best Vehicle for octane. It's ever been discovered you might be able to do better than that But it just happens to be a product that comes from one of our biggest agricultural Productions so but but but the oil companies didn't like this and so there was a Really tough road to hoe There was an amendment to the cleaner after 1990 which required the addition of an alcohol to Reduce It was really motivated as much by Denver as any other place because of the high altitude that Denver has which creates problems for pollution control and that was put in and I can remember you tell an anecdote that I anecdotes always tell more It was called a clean octane amendment And and a lot of people here in the room were deeply involved in this and it was a floor amendment And of course, Senator Dole was in favor of it in the leadership of the Republican side and but You know the White House was probably going to be against it and I was in the White House So I went down to the domestic policy advisor as this thing was being debated on the floor to distract him from any other Queries that were flooding into his office on an hourly basis And I distracted him for two or three hours long enough for the amendment to pass and this was how we got The entryway for that's not it was that kind of trick you know that you have to use fast forward anecdotally Grassy took the end of the invitation to President Trump brought in Joni Ernst and Ernst and a bunch of others to try to solve the current problems the current difficulties which have to do with limits now on ethanol Where the where the Clean Air Act operates to to to ban ethanol use above a certain Blending level and there's no reason for doing that except you know it preserves Market share for certain refineries What complicates the matter is is that not all oil companies and refineries just like ethanol some like Coke industries or Valeros the largest refiner have many ethanol plants and they're quite happy with the product and think it's a great oxane Component so it's so the so the oil industry is sort of divided But but somehow you know the weakest link in the chain always prevails and fights like this so And and you know President Trump fancies himself as the As the great problem solved the great deal maker and he thought he could solve this problem himself By a big summit in the White House, and I scratch my head and say oh, no this is not going to work because you know nobody in the White House really understands the complexity of this is as read as said and He couldn't pull it off. And so it's still you know the farm community still upset And with all the stuff with China and soybeans and everything else It's a it's a tough issue for the White House because they need the farm community. That's that it really is Trump country But I'm but but he told one of his staff and the staff told us so this is all sort of fourth-hand to you or third or fourth-hand to you He said after he had failed to Work the grand solution. He said, you know, I'm out of this. This is more difficult than the Palestinian problem And so that's where it stands in the White House. It's more difficult the palace anyway, so people just don't want to deal with it I think they would find if they If they took the restrictions off of ethanol and just let the marketplace work it out Which which the marketplace would and ethanol would do very well And if it didn't that's ethanol is problem. It's not the government's problem anymore. So Let a thousand flowers bloom and that's what we're trying to do and that's all we're trying to do is to liberate the marketplace so it can Use the cleanest components available both for our health and for climate change which ultimately is also a health problem and So that's I think what what what I would like to Leave with you and I'll let Doug ask question is is Octane People have got to understand what octane is. It's the centrally most important Component separates friction and whatnot with the two great industries and The best way to get rid of that friction and to do what should be done for up for our health and for our climate is to Take the restrictions off of what is probably the cleanest fuel in in the world it's perverse that the cleanest fuel in the world would be subject to bands and to Crotailment and to You know penalties if you use too much of it when it is the cleanest cleanest component you could find but but that's the perversely of the regulatory process and We need to solve it and I think it can be solved if people just put their Shoulders to the wheel and say look Let's let the cleanest component of liquid fuels Have it stay in court And do what it can do. We're not asking that is the industry is not asking for a mandatory minimum Octane we're not saying you got to have a quota you got to subsidize it actually ethanol has never really been subsidized The the tax incentive to use ethanol went to the oil companies not to the ethanol producers And it does not cause money The the ethanol boost that came when led was phase out The 10% use that now prevails across the country has lifted corn prices and alleviated the American taxpayer of having to subsidize corn And I think the savings run close to ten billion dollars a year So ethanol is already saved huge sums of money, but nobody knows this nobody's told this This is this is simply not in part of the conversation. It's verboten. It's like It's off limits. It's politically incorrect but you really got to understand that Corn does have its uses and ethanol is a byproduct. It's not Protein it doesn't rob people of food. In fact, it helps produce a very high protein animal feed Which is which is probably as good or better than anything else is available to feed pigs corn, I mean the chickens or cattle, so there are lots of Good things come out of this if we can do it right and I just should emphasize again The oil companies are not myolithic And if it's good enough for coke Industries it's good enough for me. Thank you, boy We've got time for some questions, but I certainly I got a couple I want to throw out in the center worth first You know one of the one of the problems we've had that palm oil story You just told was you know so telling because we run into that that kind of thing all the time but what one of things we're struggling with as we try to find this next phase and You know when this business started Of course Denver and I worked very closely out there in Colorado because the the CO problems you alluded to Boyden and we knew that Oxygen reduced CO that was pretty clear. You know nobody could dispute that but I Think there's a bit of an identity problem One of the groups that has been very helpful to us over the years is the governor's biofuel coalition And I tell this story because when we work to put that together It was fascinating to me who the governor sent to our formative meetings some sent their energy person Some sent their ag person some sent their environmental person some sent their water person some sent their economic development Person because it it meant something different to all of them and we haven't lost that that's where the Swiss Army knife of Alternative fuels and that it it covers all that and even though we it was the late 70s when we had the oil embargoes And we had these these insane rallies all over the country from American agriculture with the tractorcade here So when we hear today that we don't need this anymore because we got plenty of oil That means we've lost all those other arguments all those other things So as a policy from a policy person, you know, how do we get that back? How do we correct that person on the palm oil? How do we make people see that? It is in fact the multiple benefits all of the which I just named all of those stakeholders all of those constituencies benefit And we just you know how we need you know Counseling advice, how do we get back to that? And of course right now health is I think that the top card on the deck that we should be playing But how can we how can we do that and your article by the way that you did with senator Grassley? The environmentalist should take another look at E30 is exactly the kind of thing we need. We're just not Boyden's written a lot We're always going to him to write things and you've done a lot How do we get more? How do we do more of that? Well, obviously if we knew we'd be doing it, but If we would figure it out it would be being done You know, I've always believed that if you have an issue you're taking on and you want to try to drive it You need a horse, you know You need somebody who's going to be not just the water or the egg or the Environmental person you need somebody who's going to pull it all together and be the horse Who's going to be the lead and that's going to demand I think you know a western Midwestern governor You know that'd be my guess or maybe a member of the Senate who really takes this on and drives it And and he or she owns it and they own it and they drive it and they drive it and they drive it And that's the way Largely, that's the way that things happen and get attention. You know that I know that we all know that We don't have a horse right now as far as I can see there is nobody out there You think there are a lot people who should be doing it seems to me to be great politics for somebody to pick up And they haven't done it. So that's you know that it seems to me this is the is the prime Is the prime need? We've all written a lot of things and seen a lot of things I've always thought that having a very simple primer or primer, you know first-grade primer having a very simple primer on On ethanol, you know is it would be an excellent idea? I think we've been through a number of drafts of that sort of thing But that you know to have it out as this is the conventional wisdom as to why you know this is important and these are the barriers you have to look out for and Developing something like that not a complicated thing to do we've had pieces of it But I don't think that that's ever been produced so that that can be given to all those people from the various offices that show up So that they're all operating on the same base of information But getting a horse. I think it's the single most would be my view single most important item now How do you do that? You know I look for you look for you know who who in these? You know there's some very talented younger People coming up the political system and who out there can for is there somebody out there for whom this could be a winning opportunity I mean if you get if you get the coke you get the coke brothers someplace out there along with Maybe an enlightened part of the of the environmental community. You know that's a That's a pretty great incentive for somebody who's political it seems to me We had that leadership very much when you were in the White House Boyd and both for the vice president for the president, but Let me ask you more of a procedural question one of the things we had going for us back then and you were Leading that whole effort. We had a fairly Favorable or open EPA, you know, we had Bill Riley and Bill Rosenberg and you know you worked with them and got them to open their eyes Our biggest obstacle is you know better than anybody in this room is EPA and their failure to Look at things in a Contemporary way and to look at some of our science. We've all done comments. You've done comments for us on a Challenging EPA for not using the best science How I know this is it too broad of a question in some respects, but how can we break through that? I mean They were open to the role that oxygen and fuels could play we had an oxygen standard in RfG There was an accepted science that this was reducing pollution now We can't I mean for EPA to tell us that they can't regulate octane Which is what we've heard directly from them because they somehow think it's out of their Jurisdiction, you know, how do we break through with that because that's the single biggest that's where the barriers are you again You know better than anybody It's very hard to really explain it For EPA to say we can't regulate octane is to say we can't do anything about the environment because what was led all about it Was all about octane and they were regulating octane when they phase that lead. I mean That's what I was trying to explain octane is the key Concept here is you got to understand for EPA to say they can't regulate it is absolute Unmitigated nonsense now. I will say this about EPA they they have some of the finest minds in that agency and but those minds often get misdirected into places they shouldn't go and The reality is is that nothing Innovative in pollution control has ever emerged from the bureaucracy at EPA. In fact, they've tried to stop it all we worked on Perhaps our finest collaboration. I think was acid rain. Don't you think I mean that was that was great fun. That was really That was opposed by EPA most successful environmental program probably ever imposed that we've gone from 18 million tons down to about Two million a million and a half It's one of the greatest public health Cues ever and it was opposed lock stock and barrel by the EPA bureaucracy most the other innovations in the 1990 Clean Air Act were opposed by EPA's bureaucrats You you tell me why this is I think I know the explanation, but I it's it's Well, I'm an administrative lawyer Most of you don't know what that means, but But there are few of us and it's it's the intersection between Constitution and the statutes and how they get converted into regulations that apply actually to To us as individuals So it's a sort of small little group Based mostly here in Washington and in the law schools You won't find administrative lawyers in any of the big cities, New York or Chicago or LA or even Houston Denver probably not too many so There there is a theory, which is well understood in academia. It's well understood as as a Discipline it's called Public choice theory and what it does is explain that inevitably the bureaucrats who have to implement things in the various agencies whether it's EPA or HHS or wherever FDA food and drug administration get captured by the Interests that they're supposed to be regulating and so agency capture is a central facet of all this and One of the ways that agencies get captured is that industries they regulate tend to make a lot more money than they do and so when when someone from EPA Who works in this area? His and wants to after he's got 10 years spent 20 25 years Where does he spend the second half of his life and where you can earn more money to educate his children and his grandchildren? one of the best job opportunities are In what industry you can guess and that's where they tend to go And so they're not going to bite the hand that they expect to feed them when they when they've finished their careers so the revolving door is at the heart of all this and I guess if I would step back from this I would say that the answer is For Congress To be a little more Responsible for its own behavior Because if Congress really looked at this carefully You wouldn't have the result that we have now was the bureaucracy blocking this You would have senators like grassland Ernst and a whole bunch of other rounds. You could go through a litany of Midwestern senators If they were actively engaged in this debate It would be over but Congress has gone into Eclipse for the last two decades. I think that And I'm here. I'm sitting next to a very esteemed senator So but I think one of the reasons he left the Senate was it was no longer the body that it used to be when you first started I'm not going to speak for you, but The problem is is that Congress is not exercising its proper role as overseer and as Legislator and the Cleaner Act of Memphis in 1990 were a success Because Congress got into the details the way it always used to do and That was probably the last time they ever really did it on a major scale today They just delegate everything to the bureaucracies and as a result and then the leadership started by Gingrich but but but Perpetuated by Pelosi. I mean by Democrats. So it's both parties Gingrich wanted to centralize all the Legislation into the leaders office So did so does Pelosi She famously said when she introduced the Affordable Care Act to the public we got to now enact to this Affordable Care Act to find out what's in it Because you know nobody knew it was all done in secret and that's the way the Congress has been operating for the last in sort of growing Levels for the last two or three decades culminating in this latest debacle where you know They really shouldn't have been spending time on impeachment They should be spending time on trying to solve the trade problems with China and trying to help solve this problem But they have been a wall on most key regulatory issues for the better part of two Of two decades and so I think that's where the problem is. I don't know how to get Congress more energized but but the Obvious leader in my view with the right views about this is senator Grassley And he should be succeeded probably by Joni Ernst they both understand what the issues are But for some reason rather the way the Atmosphere is structured the way the atmosphere works They just don't get That they're just not playing the roles that they would have been playing or did play 20 years ago even even Ted Cruz who comes from obviously, Texas, which is an oil state even Ted Cruz In the Iowa primary four years ago You know took the position that ethanol should be liberated should be should be unshackled not not subsidized not pushed but not restrained and And It was an amazing result and Trump won Iowa in part as a result of this Texas senator's work in Iowa but The Congress doesn't have that same voice. This doesn't have a voice that does what it should be doing Well, I can tell you we're gonna hear later on today. You know you're talking about about EPA We've done some extensive research study over the last 20 or 30 years going back and and produced a report that's We called gasoline gate and It documents to a painful degree The extent that EPA every time they had a chance To err on the side of ethanol to do a little bit more They did not so again. I the last time I can remember that was when you were Directly both of you were directly involved in that and there was a willingness to you know How can we how can we do more not less? So we're in this So we're gonna be hearing about that a Little bit later, but it is we what's in one end is the Gina McCarthy I think our last caper at all of this, you know Saying saying trying to lay out the case to her and what ought to be done You know Gina's an old buddy of mine, you know incredibly cheerful and nice person So I think Dachel Dachel and Podesta and you and I were the four of us going to the four of us No, you and I were we went through all of this and and Laid it all out and Gina made it very clear this wasn't gonna happen So one of us said well, you know, we're preparing a lawsuit. We're gonna we're gonna see you That's where we're headed. And she said plentifully, but you're my friends I I'll never forget it. Well, here we are. Yeah, that was that we heard about that meeting Yeah, that meeting was led by by Tim and Tom Dachel. I was there sort of as a, you know, because it was a Democratic instructor in Obama So I was just a fly on the wall basically, but I have never seen two US senators treated as rudely and as disrespectfully as she chopped your heads off and Then suddenly they said but you're my friend. Ah, it's just it's just, you know She was obviously feeling enormous internal pressure on this and it had gotten build up that we were coming and what we were doing and You know, it was a huge amount of heat on her. She had a large number of things on the agenda. I'm sure You're my friends We heard about that meeting from several of you who were there, but We got some questions, but just a couple of quick points just to for the audience that you know a perfect example of what we're talking about Lack of leadership and lack of help we're getting from EPA The recent decision to extend the vapor pressure waiver to plans above 10% was Limited to Blends the 15% well blends of 20% or lower vapor pressure than 15 It's a linear progression downwards as you go out in volume There was no reason to stop it at 15 In fact that evaporative emissions go down and the benefits are greater and obviously if more ethanol is Deluding toxics and creating more octane into it, but they would not entertain that at all So that's that's a perfect example in the second piece, which is a very live Issue right now that is really one of the driving forces behind our whole event today is the fuel economy rule the safe rule They specifically asked in that rule how we could Raise octane because even they can't deny that raising octane is re-deluded to allows you to you know The higher blends are the greater value much more than 10% so they asked how can you increase octane consistent with the clean air act? specifically titled to the clean air act, which is the 202 L Provision read also alerted as to and that's the mandatory requirement that they Control toxics, so he said well if you want to raise octane you can control toxics and use it with ethanol Both of those have just been batted back over the fence at us. So This is the challenge we have we have a product. It's good. It's clean It has all the benefits that I alluded to earlier and we sort of can't get through the door there And your story is particularly disturbing too for two distinguished Democratic senators to go and see a Democrat Appointed EPA head that's that's sort of alarming. So I think it just underscores. We have our work to do but We've got time for questions Dave. Did you have something and I know we're running out of time here? And so I'll try to keep this short and Boyd and you'll have to try to keep it short But you're the best guy to answer this you mentioned the clean octane provision that passed amazingly on the floor of the Senate 69 to 30 The Congress reaffirmed that in the 2005 EPACT Act when the oil industry and EPA tried to eliminate it When the first RFS was was enacted You have spoken many times before about the concept I believe you call it legislative endangerment We're in that the it's a unique provision Not only mandatory, but that the Congress Stipulated that these aromatics were a health danger to the American people and that We don't need an endangerment finding from EPA because Congress has already done it Could could you elaborate just a little bit on isn't two or two well one opportunity? For our industry to force this into the into the court system and try to get some some light shown on the on the real facts here Well, I agree EPA has really violated Or ignored The law and there are other provisions that feed into this And so that's probably Where this is all gonna end up is in the course. That's not Unusual in our system of government for that to happen but that's probably gonna gonna be where it ends up and I think that The timing is important as to when that's done And that gets into a complicated set of issues which are Resolvable, but I don't want to go into them now, but You're right that that is that provision is pretty stark And I think it's a winner not a slam dunk But a pretty clear winner and that is probably where this is gonna end up Okay, well any closing thoughts senator Boyden, we're right on schedule here We have a panel coming up behind that reads gonna Share that'll get into some more specifics on aromatics and Both the health effects, but any closing thought we can't thank you enough for both of you for being here and Thank you all for being here All right gentlemen, thank you very much. Thank you We could we can we can bring our next panel up Carolyn Steve All right team The good news about this next panel is you're not gonna have to listen to me. You've already heard enough out of me the other good news about this panel is we have a two people familiar with both the politics and the science of this argument and We're gonna hear from them sequentially Carol Warner Goes back on this issue as far as any of us. We've all been at this a long time long time ahead of the Environment Energy Study Institute recently retired but still Engaged as ever in the topic and she approaches it from a from a perspective of environmental protection and public health and Steve and or grand is One of those dangerous experts. I was talking about before who really does understand some things about particularly combustion chemistry Fuel properties and how these play together. So we're gonna hear a little bit from them Laying out the the the facts as they as they understand them and then we're gonna have time for additional Interaction with you all so Carol. Why don't you just go ahead and lead us off? Okay, thanks. Thanks very much read and as you said initially in terms of Feeling like many times that certainly not an expert but coming at things from a generalist perspective and looking at how things fit together and What that means because I actually think that with regard to this whole issue that we're looking at that it is an opportunity To address the multiple problems have multiple solutions Multiple advantages all at the same time. So let me start first of all by saying Read I'm not sure what all I could possibly add to the very very good job that you did at framing out the whole issue That we're talking about today. You kind of covered covered it all and did a very very good job with that So let me start thinking about it a little bit from a policy perspective in terms of coming from Having been at EESI for so many years in terms of looking at looking at a whole variety of issues And the point I think that I want to make in terms of thinking about why we as an organization Started to look at this and why we cared and So first of all the environmental and energy study Institute is a non-profit Independent non-profit that was initially started in the mid 1980s by bipartisan congressional caucus That set up the organization to really bring more resources to policy makers in terms of providing Solid credible timely information about key issues that policy makers should Begin to know about Number one and number two to also really reach across Sectors reach across the disciplines to really learn and to build bridges and number three To do our work in terms of also therefore looking for solutions and trying to bring those forward to policy makers, so it's kind of a three-step process so in terms of dealing with those issues and I should also mention the beginning in 1988 and and our because our mission was really to work for it towards environmentally sustainable development, but also beginning in 1988 We started to look at everything through a greenhouse lens in terms of everything that we did Also needed to be compatible with thinking about the enormous challenge that climate Change was is and and is posing for our society for our planet so when the whole issue around thinking about Aromatics and everything was sort of first brought to us. I was I Also like you read thought. Oh my god. This is so complex. There is no way to you know How do we best think about this? How do we tell the story for policy makers for the policy community to make it? Understandable what really makes sense and how can we do that and Traditionally the ways that we have always worked are through congressional briefings through putting together fact sheets through doing Articles in and at that point a weekly newsletter And and so we had those kinds of tools But it meant having to really get in and really look at this whole issue about aromatics and There were some of people here that were Encouraging us to take a look and I'm looking at someone here in the front row who was one of those persons and What was really clear was that We we started to look first in terms of thinking about the whole history and as you've heard before the history with regard to lead That lead was in gasoline because there had to be octane to prevent knock and that therefore Over the years we also found that we were finding all sorts of horrible horrible situations With regard to lead poisoning the toxicity in terms of public health impacts what this meant for kids what it meant for adults all over the country Finally finally finally after many years of of research a lot of work, you know from the public health community Documenting the kinds of problems that led Toxicity that lead poisoning was causing It finally reached the whole point where lead was going to be phased out But it wasn't until the clean air act amendments that Lead was actually banned and then of course the oil industry was well, we've got to have another octane Because we have to have something and you've heard this already But it was but it was really important in terms of that there's got to be an octane And of course the oil industry wanted to make sure that it was a petroleum product even though ethanol would have Handled the whole thing perfectly well the oil industry wanted to make sure that there wasn't that there was a petroleum product that was there and and the the thing is that That meant that we started to see Aromatics going into gasoline And as you had heard also earlier that in terms of the clean clean air act amendments There was essentially an endangerment finding in this section 202 L Which indicated that there were health concerns with regard to aromatics and that EPA clearly was given the authority to phase out to move to ban those aromatics as As soon as technically feasible But nothing happened and so moving forward we started to see more and more peer-reviewed literature in terms of whether it was science and technology environmental journals various journals public health journals where we were starting to see all sorts of issues come up with regard to the role of aromatics and one of the things that You heard a little bit earlier with regard to thinking about the the B-tex complex in terms of What's in this very toxic stew of aromatics in terms of this benzene toluene Xylene other other chemicals all of which are extremely toxic carcinogenic mutagenic and therefore just a really nasty brew and and and as we found out that that When you have aromatics that as a result of an incomplete combustion process you then had And you've heard this mentioned before too But it's really really important in terms of thinking about what this means as far as as the ultra fine particulates as far as pH is the poly aromatic hydrocarbons and how the The pH is basically Were it kind of propelled by these ultra fine particulates Into our bodies in a very different way than what the soot the Exhaust that you could see that you could somehow manage through filters other ways But this stuff is really really insidious and Penetrates into soft tissues into bloodstreams creating all sorts of problems in terms of cancers cardiopulmonary disease all sorts of lung disease asthma Issues with regard to cognitive development reproductive issues Neurotoxicity and the list goes on and on and we can provide you with a whole list of journal articles That really look at all of this so it became really important to think about We need to start addressing this because we're seeing more and more of this kind of thing So one thing that he is I did which I would also encourage people and certainly people that are listening to look at to go To EESI's website and there is a fact sheet that we did that is very much even though It is now a few years old But very very much on point and that is calls It's it's a brief history of octane and gasoline from lead to ethanol and As a result of looking at all of these health impacts That is why we actually started talking about Aromatics as the new lead because we're seeing very very similar kinds of things, but ever more Adverse health impacts and of course for the millions and millions of people who are situated close to congested areas to busy roadways Things are even worse even though as we know these kinds of pollutants in terms of the secondary organic aerosols can travel Very very wide distances stay in the atmosphere a long time at the same time Things are even worse if you are in a congested area and this has been documented through studies through the Columbia School of Public Health through many many other kinds of meta-analysis, etc So I think What one thing and and in terms of looking at this issue? We also did a couple briefings that I just wanted to mention quickly In terms of bringing together various perspectives One was on future fuels can biofuels make gasoline cleaner cheaper We also did one Entitled Protecting public health through cleaner fuels and lower emissions and again bringing in experts to look at this including people who were experts and looking at endocrine disruptors and The whole role of these kinds of toxics Upon upon public health and the really detrimental impact that that it was having so the the thing is that We were also at the same time hearing that because of new fuel economy standards, which all of us who care about efficiency who care about Climate change were very eager to see improved fuel economy standards as a way to really reduce fossil fuel consumption at the same time in order to do that with the new technology with direct injection engines it meant The automakers were saying we also needed improved fuel. We need better performance. We need higher octane that higher octane Which was really important is You know which would actually provide for improved fuel economy at the same time We were really looking therefore at a choice at an opportunity Do we get that increased octane that is so critical to improve fuel economy to reduce green? Health submissions and to improve air quality Improved public health. Do we get it through going the aromatics the new lead route or do we get it through a renewable? resource through ethanol which does not give us any of those negative benefits and in fact creates all sorts of positive Benefits in many many different areas So I will go ahead and stop there and turn to somebody who is a real expert in terms of really looking at all of the Details and in terms of looking at all the specifics on these chemicals Well Carol, thank you, and you're the perfect example of someone who has looked at this wide range of disciplines and facts and tried to pull them together into a coherent narrative And I think that that's the essential skill we need here Well, and one other point that I would just raise is that You know while it can sound complex. It's at the same time. I think the story At the bottom at the bottom line or at the end of the day that the story is pretty simple in terms of We need cleaner fuels. We need We need higher octane We do have that choice We now know that that choice is available the kind of difference it can make the kind of penalty that we are Paying on the health side and that affects real people's lives it affects huge amounts of dollars in terms of thinking about health care and At the same time while we may know this I Would also submit that based upon conversations I've had with a lot of people over the years On the hill in policymaker offices people do not know this issue They are clueless in terms of the impacts what this means So I think there is so much that's got to be done in terms of letting people know that their health Is at stake and why would you want to put? Your lives your kids lives in jeopardy Well, thank you Carol and we are going to pivot to Steve here in a second But I'm going to ask you one question now Because we're really in a sense going to be changing our focus when we move to Steve and that is now that you've done your briefings and You've heard the discussion we had with Tim and Boyden. The question is what is the pathway? for engaging Congress in this issue and do you see either some potential champions or Suggested pathways you earlier use the now Probably it's an oxymoron to say bipartisan congressional caucus It's very hard to get people to work across lines and yet this is an issue where it's possible. Do you see any any way forward? at a strategic perspective I Am an eternal optimist and so that allows me to get up in the morning and I Think and I hear what everybody has said in terms of how difficult it is how many hurdles have been put out there But I think that we have to really look for champions I am very glad that the governor's biofuels coalition is that the leadership of that coalition is is really Staking a leadership claim on this and is also really trying to now Push their congressional delegations With regard to taking some action to help them become better informed and to Take some ownership. I think that's critical I also think that once is never enough that it does require lots of hard work But I do think that it is also really critical to both educate policymakers but also Go in a very concerted way to the public health community to the public to make sure that everybody Understands the kinds of health Implications ramifications that we are really grappling with here and for people who think oh, we're just gonna go electric So go away, you know, we have a lot of years where there are gonna be a lot of Vehicles using gasoline so why should we sacrifice our health during all of these years when we know better Well, thank you, that's actually a very good segue over to Steve and Steve As the board shows is the tenant a technical director of the urban air initiative But it's also been closely associated for many years with ICM, which is probably the largest manufacturer of ethanol made manufacturing equipment and so he's intimately familiar with the Ethan all production process as well Steve We're gonna let you do a little technical detail Well, thank you read your introduction I thought was really good of going through the issues here Eight years ago we started the urban air initiative But I think back to about ten years ago when I was actually doing a large octane study with Ford and John Deere We actually had an oil industry involved and and they provided some of the test fuels And I thought it was kind of odd that there was no benzene in their test fuels And and I asked him about he said well, it's against company policy to put Known carcinogens in test fuels. Yeah, we could do that to consumer fuels So I that was kind of my first introduction of test fuels, which I'll talk about in a little bit here in a couple of slides but our focus has been to Research the benefits of ethanol what the refineries do what the auto industry needs and Especially we we are looking at the science here in the EPA models So as we talk about Ethanol or aromatics, it's really is a discussion about octane that that should be discussed Because the aromatics at the oil refinery is what the oil industry goes to when they need to even bump to get to the minimum octane So I'm going to try to put a face to a name here a little bit in my presentation in the initial slides is We use the term btex a lot But I'm going to just try to explain this and hopefully don't go too far, but if we look at aromatics I'm sorry in gasoline. We look at something. That's very high carbon intensity to produce and it also has the highest carbon per energy And then we're going to be talking about all the health concerns there if we look at ethanol We have a low in tar intensity to produce from a carbon point, but we also have less carbon per P2U It's renewable and I think the interesting thing is from an octane blending value Ethanol has twice the octane blending value of any component in gasoline. So it's a very Effective way of raising octane in our fuel supply. I thought here I should probably try to even introduce what aromatics are a little bit If you look at any automotive study, they will at least break gasoline down into three major groups of hydrocarbons And so in the bottom picture I thought well being kind of interesting to take the most common component of each one of them and let you see that the Aromatics in the middle are the worst For producing soot. They have the most resistance to combustion So I kind of coined the name the good the bad the ugly 65% of gas is saturates. They're prone to much better emissions But they don't average as much in the octane category here. So the oil industry is going to Primarily rely on that 25% aromatics to raise octane So I thought I was just going to try to introduce to you to that 25% in the summer months You know what aromatics are but they're really anything built on a benzene ring structure This double bond and carbon is really the cause of a lot of the incomplete combustion the formation of the toxics and So I'm hoping you'll have a little bit better understanding any study I reference here Got a link if you wanted to copy Steve could I just do because I think you make a very important point that all aromatics by definition have a benzene ring and EPA Reacted to the congressional directive by regulating benzene directly But they didn't do anything about the other compounds with benzene in them, right? And actually my next slide will be a good lead into that I'm Introducing you to the the family of aromatics we can say toiling but it's still methyl benzene every one of these aromatics has benzene in its name We often say btex because those are the most common ones, but over half of aromatics are 40 plus other aromatics and some of these can be even worse And so you kind of got a figure here to the to the right-hand side of this slide Because it's all based on distillation. We go all the way up to even the simplest PAHs in our gasoline We can say naphthalene, but if it's pure we would just say moth balls so But to characterize a little bit more on aromatics like I said the refineries produce this it's higher in carbon It is the primary source for a lot of the toxics. We're going to be talking about It's slightly lower in the winter time Aromatics also has the highest rate of emission So when we look at the volume in the fuel to what we're measuring on a percentage out the tailpipe I don't know our aromatics has the highest rate of emission compared to any other component And then lastly, it's also which doesn't get a lot of attention is aromatics is also the biggest concern for material Compatibility especially in small engines So especially the variation of aromatics So there's a lot of baggage associated with aromatics before we even get into the emission side of things. I Believe there's a good success story when we talk about what happened as we transitioned even to E10 In the green line in this chart shows the ethanol content Going up from just a few percent to nearly 10 percent over a 10-year period But in the solid red line you're seeing actual consumer gasoline aromatic content going down We can see that the refinery has lowered aromatics and then you get the dilution of adding the ethanol So even the E0 to E10 has a great success success story today by saying We're preventing anywhere from seven to eight billion gallons of aromatics being in the market today in the US The US actually averages lower aromatics than Europe, but we have a ways we believe we can go Lastly the market survey data over the last couple years has shown that we're starting to go back up in aromatics And a lot of that has to do to the sulfur reduction that's going on And the oil industry is actually struggling just to maintain octane in today's market So the the oil industry cannot compete against ethanol from a economic point of view especially I think when we go back to why did we start the urban air initiative? I was actually seeing a lot of the health concerns in automotive studies We have General Motors here talking about toxicity and respiratory disease these particulate That actually can get right into the bloodstream causing the damage to the blood vessels And so we were actually reading this in automotive studies We have a lot of health studies studying health effects But how do we tie the reduction of those benefits of health studies right back to the source? But here's just an interesting couple older papers actually we were looking at seeing these concerns Earlier this morning you heard Reed and Carol talk about SOAs and PAHs and all that so I kind of wanted to tie this together Why it's all associated to aromatics in the in our fuel in the little figures on The right side of the slide you kind of see the single benzene ring going to the PAHs is going to the UFPs So any one of these Five listed here you can find More health studies focusing on each one of these so and but they're all tied together So in the aromatics The EPA studies showed benzene going up with increasing aromatics even though the benzene in the fuel didn't change from a volume point But the aromatics then also contribute to the PAHs so what I'm trying to say here is you can't have PAHs until you have the aromatic structure And then as we look at the ultrafine particulates as these PAHs go on to create the ultrafines We can't have the ultrafine particulates until we have PAH formation So they're really tied together or feeding each other and that's also important that as we get to the UFPs That's what's coming out the tailpipe Now we're going to start talking about the secondary organic aerosols. What happens in the next 24 to 48 hours and EPA recently had a report that showed 50% of MSAT mobile source air toxics in urban areas actually comes from SOAs So there's there's a huge category and then some health studies will actually look at PM 2.5 But in urban areas a majority over half the PM 2.5 is the SOAs So you can see how these all kind of tie together Back to aromatics in the fuel I'm going to show a couple slides here just on some of our research Showing emission benefits of not only ethanol, but some varying aromatics So even a couple years ago we took three vehicles to an auto manufacturers test lab near Detroit and we tested multiple fuels But here I'm just showing the reduction in a percentage Going from E0 to simply adding ethanol to make E30 So we have a percentage reduction for three vehicles The top chart is mass because that's how we regulate PM or will in the US But the Europe and other countries are adopting a number So there's always a mass or a number to discuss But the the reduction here is always consistent while there is variations because it's a difficult measurement to take We were seeing that simply adding ethanol made significant reductions The blue bar is a city driving and the gray bars are a heavy highway driving and that again Is just the reduction of simply adding 30% ethanol with these two fuels Steve? Yes I think it bears Explaining a comment you made earlier, which is that we measure particulates by mass or number That could not everybody could be familiar with that Mass of course means weight so you just weigh the particulate matter But if the problem area starts to become these tiny ultra fine particulates They don't weigh much But the number of particles in the brew is going up and that's exactly what's happening with the newer engines Right the number is going up Also, as you have a higher number you're gonna have what the same mass you're gonna have more surface area And that's where you're finding because of the pH is what creates the UFPs You're finding the pH's will coat the UFPs and so In Europe they felt it was better to regulate the number Because these smaller ones these sub 23 nanometers were talking p.m. 0.01 not p.m. 2 5 That is what's more toxic to get into the into the bloodstream And so that's why in almost all these automotive studies They will give you both the mass by weight and the number per mile is typically how they do that But again, this is the percentage reduction for simply adding 30% ethanol Another study we recently did is we asked the North Carolina State University To test five vehicles using three consumer fuels But also a e25 by simply adding ethanol to that e10 regular and in that we were Statistically lower not only on the p.m. What you see here in the co But we're also better on efficiency. So we had the greatest co2 reduction because of higher octane When we were comparing the e25 to the e10 regular Also to mention that for the five vehicles here are non-flex and as we monitor the computers these vehicles did very well adapting to You know the the higher blends and so this was a very interesting study for us using pims I'm sorry We were on-road testing using portable emissions system Testing which is becoming very popular because there's a growing concern that the the certification data or lab data Isn't mentioning Measuring real world. So here we have a nice reduction as we compare the first fuel to the second fuel for p.m. Co and there's other information in that study as well on Co2 emissions. So we really didn't have any emission or mileage reduction with the 25 More recently also, but a series of three studies with the University of California Riverside We asked them to test two FFVs and As you see in each category two FFVs number one and number two We created a high and low aromatic now. This is the SOA Data the p.m. Going into the SOA. I'm just showing the the SOA is here or the the p.m The SOA is also very similar to this, but When we compared the high and low aromatics the SOA's went up the toxics went up And then when we simply added ethanol again from the E10 to the E30 We saw a very nice reduction with comparing E10 to E30 in both vehicles So aromatics was increasing the p.m. In SOA's and the ethanol was decreasing I have two studies here because I think it's almost Really important to have these two together is part of our work was or UCR was sending these p.m. Samples to the University of Wisconsin for toxicity testing and So we found that the toxicity was pretty much related to the p.m. Mass if we could reduce the mass Per mile we were reducing the toxicity of exposure, but this study also didn't find a lot of mutinogenic Emissions with our p.m. Samples coming from the tailpipe the second study here is by EPA Directly where they were looking at the mutinogenic emissions from what happens with aromatics after the tailpipe the first 24 48 hours and I think this is really important because this is EPA saying that Although we regulate the tailpipe VOCs. We're doing nothing to regulate pretty much the products of photo oxidation the SOA's And that the mutinogenic Creation of this stuff was directly related to the photo oxidation And that last week most of these aromatics in urban areas are man-made, so we're not talking Something from vegetation or something like that. So it's changing a little bit here What is the biggest challenge to creating a better fuel? What is the biggest challenge in promoting higher blends of ethanol to reduce those emissions? It is our view that it's the test fuels Whoever creates the test fuels is controlling the outcome of the study. There is no standard today in how test fuels are blended So there's a lot of conflicting science out there That people are relying on to make policies, but you really need to go back to how were the test fuels blended So there's there's a lack of consistency in our science in this area But as I said earlier when we simply add ethanol, we make it better And that comes back down to this two ways that's going on today with with test fuels This match blending allows the test fuel providers to do pretty much anything they want You can change a lot of things in fuel to hold the few parameters constant But in the term of splash blending again simply adding ethanol ethanol has a very favorable story So as we brought our information to the autos Ford and General Motors actually published this paper in 2014 into regards of how EPA was allowing their test fuels to be blended and These two key statements are right in the abstract that the exclusive use of this match blending is fundamentally flawed And secondly a lot of these emission increases EPA and others say are occurring because of ethanol Are due to the added aromatics, but all but unfortunately being incorrectly attributed towards ethanol So work we're doing in this area is a little over two years ago We started with an outside consulting group of very reputable oil refinery consultant and Some gentlemen from retired from University of West Virginia And we did a meta analysis where we went back to all these studies And we not only looked at how they modeled the emissions But we looked at how they blended the test fuels and we saw a pretty interesting trend there that a lot of these match blended studies are not matching real world and They can be very negative for Ethanol in certain areas, but that's not the truth. That's not a fact I mean we can compare again greater aromatic reductions in the real world So with that we did this meta analysis that's found online We published a secondary another paper Society of Automotive Engineering paper last year We also have another paper coming out using real-world fuels in EPA's model That has been accepted and be published here in a few weeks And lastly we're working with a wide group of stakeholders to include oil refineries the autos Carb is on there test fuel providers We're actually trying to develop a fuel blending guide Something that we can inform these researchers who are doing the modeling that are not fuel experts But they're modeling the results of this study and not having the information there of what they should be modeling In our past we found studies that accidentally modeled the wrong fuel Or we found studies that weren't very truthful in their blending because we understand how these properties should change So with that reducing aromatics is simple We can be putting limitations on that ethanol is readily available It will reduce the toxic emissions and and increase octane protect public health, and I believe if it was done Correctly we could be looking at a greater than 50% reduction Maybe 70% especially in urban areas in the summertime when this photo oxidation is more important So with that I thank you for your time Thank You Steve I'm on what all these technical experts in the audience to raise their hand and ask a question I'm gonna call her out by name because I'm so pleased that she's here She's the executive director of the Children's and Environmental Health Network, and that to me is exactly The core constituency that needs to be advocating for change here But and say please ask your question or offer a comment. Thank you And I'm not sure if this is related to this panel in particular and maybe both from the last two But I think I totally agree with all of the justification that's been put out in these wonderful reports I think Part if not all of maybe the challenge of bringing along others in public health and then specifically some of our lawmakers may be The protecting public health piece it seems so absolute in that we've had unfortunate examples obviously in our history where unintentional You know consequences clearly have been the outcome and my concern is not necessarily on the output It's on me in the input is on the output So the what I haven't heard yet are some of the concerns that are being raised about Unsustainable practices that this no doubt will incur so as a primer is being thought and put together I think it would be huge value added to at least acknowledge what many others in public health are raising as vital concerns That if this is something that is being deemed as sustainable then through its whole life course We need to see that and if not, I mean, what are the what are the implications being offered to counter that? So ie much more land use much more water use The Midwest has already slated to use something like five percent more Herbicides in the next coming years. That is not what those of us and children's environmental health want to see as far as more use of pesticides which have its own level of concerns with women and Children and all of that so anyway I just wanted to offer that as not that it hasn't been thought of before But I just haven't heard it yet today, and I think that that is a huge missing piece right now Especially if we're targeting in the future public health leaders so I'm gonna Offer an observation that asks Carol to answer the question We are gonna have more discussion of that this afternoon, and I know you can't stay for the afternoon So it's fair enough to ask us while we're here it is a complex question it gets into agricultural production practices and It's yet another field of expertise, but Carol go ahead please Well just briefly and thank you for that question and frankly I would be happy to meet with you Sometime later or whatever to talk further about this because they those are very important questions that often do come up and certainly from the environmental community and a couple things that I think are really important first of all we they're There is going to be a lot more information later today with regard to that because one of the things and And to be very honest, I you know we are very very concerned about overall sustainability life cycle basis absolutely and But the but the thing is it's terribly important to really look at What are the key issues there right now? There is so much misinformation that is out there or really old information that That is keeps being repeated and repeated and repeated and we need to figure out how to finally deal with that and To get people much more current in terms of what the situation really is because the numbers with regard to thinking about Life-cycle emissions and inputs and everything with regard to agricultural production Are get better and better every year now that does not mean that the job is done Absolutely not and I think that that we need to continue to work on that and and continuing Improvement, but it's really important not to throw the baby out with a bathwater because it's also really important to look at compared to what and And it's and as we look at What is involved in terms of gasoline that life cycle in terms of aromatics? I think there is no comparison But I'm happy to follow up Steve you want to come? Yeah, I'd like to just add one more thing because we are also People I know are highly involved with the Manufacturing of ethanol plants. I think the ethanol industry has someone lost its good name when the campaign Came out on food versus fuel But how many times do we hear that people say well one third of corn goes to the ethanol industry? How much corn do we displace? Because what we're doing with our protein today I believe over half the feeding value of that bushel of corn is still going to livestock So we're displacing one seventh ICM just started up the world's most efficient ethanol plant three months ago in Kansas Using wastewood for all our energy use that should be coming online soon fiber separation technology Reducing our energy cost because now we're not putting everything through the ethanol plant You can take the fiber out on the front end. So I think there's a lot of advantages a lot of you know going forward Farmers using less fertilizer with GPS technology You know precision egg where they can sit in their tractor and they don't even drive them anymore Could the GPS does that I mean it's pretty amazing. So I think there's there's a lot of challenges of trying to You know update the value of ethanol to a lot of people. I Think that there are at least Half a dozen people in the audience who are going to surround you at the break and say so all you ag experts And say is going to be able to stay at least a little bit of a lunch hour So you'll you'll have a chance to share your cards at least But I'll throw one sort of a plug in here out of my own perspective as Most people in the room know the way California encourages Renewable fuels is through a low-carbon fuel standard and it does a very careful analysis Reaching into the actual manufacturing plant by plant of how much Fossil fuel use there is et cetera et cetera and they credit those fuels from that facility on the basis of their actual practices We have an opportunity which we haven't yet realized To reach back yet another step further and that's to reward the farmers for their practices In how they're producing the corn that is used in the ethanol production if California or another Entity with a low-carbon fuel standard Gave additional credit for good farming practices that accomplish all the things that you want to accomplish and say That economic incentive would single-handedly transform the agriculture industry faster than anything else. I'm aware of Right and one one additional thing I'm so glad you raised the California low-carbon fuel standard to because one of the an additional thing that I think is important about that is that a Number of years ago. There was a lot of opposition in California to the use of ethanol and With the low-carbon fuel standard it has become very very important in terms of helping in California It's playing a very very significant role now in terms of meeting their you know their carbon reduction goals and So I Think you know, it's really important to look at all these opportunities and again the economics I think are really critical because there has got to be Kind of the right incentives and to line up the costs Appropriately so people can really make the investments and make all of the changes that we'd all like to see Other questions for the panel Yeah, Steve you mentioned Particle mass versus size and I want to just make sure everyone knows some of the materials We have out front an article came out yesterday that we circulated from Mostly focused on China, but it's a fascinating article You know when you talk about timely just came out yesterday where the World Health Organization actually states that These ultra fines are not regulated I've always sort of loosely referred to them as either under-regulated or not regulated, but they're not regulated and And part of the whole mix of fuel testing and everything How do we get them and I know that that they thought that they controlled? Particulates through sulfur and through stationary sources, but these are smaller for our audience than in 2.5 And people think the 2.5 is as low as it goes. These are way way way lower So this whole concept of ultra fine Nanoparticles which of course becomes a number or not a mass game, but how do we get them to focus on that because Again, the evidence is piling up, you know, and it comes out every day When again, I'm just pointing out this article came out yesterday where there everybody seems to know it We're not doing anything about it. So I'll throw it out to the three of you really But what can we do about that because that's where the problem is Yeah, as I read that article It's it's a challenge because some people would look at that and they're just going to throw gasoline under the bus and say It's got to be electric, you know The point here is we can make some significant reductions in a very short time By really going after the source of the PM like I said, there's If you go and try to look at just the aromatics we can make not only a significant benefit here in the United States But even a greater reduction in countries like China that has They're they're desperately trying to even catch up to the rest of the world how they even regulate fuels So I think the best thing we can do is is to say, you know, it's not gasoline It's a certain portion of gasoline and we can do something about it now instead of I think some people saying it's well We'll just wait for electric And Steve I think it's true. You would probably know this better than I do but We focus on the US where the Clean Air Act restricted aromatic content to 25% certain months in areas but in Europe and presumably elsewhere in the world Aromatic levels are much higher Europe runs higher Though I would say that the overall variation of makeup in like the little bit of China data I have this is even worse So we're talking 40 40 to 50 percent as opposed to 25% and But again, we have some of the lowest octane standards in the world So again, if you tried to move up in the octane and relied on the oil industry You're gonna have and we had that in even in Denver recently It's a little bit off topic, but in concerns of the moose model We actually had the oil industry come in and say well if we have to go to back to E0 We're gonna increase the aromatics. I mean they admitted that right in the meeting that that's the only knob They have today at an oil refinery to replace the octane of ethanol is to go to more aromatics Die a premium death, right? Steve this is a kind of a setup question, but one of the facts of air quality regulation is it's only 50 years old and Gasoline was around before we started to regulate What do you think would be experience of the oil industry if they had to bring? Gasoline forward as a new fuel Wow, when you look at all the the work we had to do just to get E15 I'm always amazed that you know it took so long But how would they be how would they be looked at in terms of their health effects? Oh, I don't think they would pass at all other questions around the room We can carry on with this This one's for Steve, you know we always talk about the volume of benzene and benzene laced aromatics and gasoline Can you talk about? what comes out of the tailpipe and and that portion of the benzene that you know Doesn't seem to be accounted for Well, I refer a lot times to a very large study by EPA that actually showed aromatic or benzene itself Doubling out the tailpipe would no change of benzene in the fuel. They were just changing the volume of aromatics So you can decompose some of these complex Aromatics down to a benzene or a benzo aldehyde or you know some other oxygenated stuff So, you know that was where I got a lot of the very useful information because it requires speciation But you know again aromatics can either decompose to benzene or go towards the PAHs But they have a very high emission rate as well And what I mean by that is let's say you have An e10 with 10 percent toluene you'll find three to four percent three to four times more toluene itself Out the tailpipe than ethanol The challenge we have in a lot of these studies is they're actually raising the aromatic level with increasing ethanol Completely backwards to real worlds, but that's how you're getting the conflicting studies out there That you know, I've even seen studies say we raise ethanol raises benzene and then you look at the fuel properties and I go No, it's not You know, it's the manipulation of science Steve you talk about in Denver, especially they Have the summer blend in the winter blend And and I've always understood that the winter blend was supposed to be better for the smog Does it really change the particulate matter that's coming out of the back? summer to winter Actually from a particulate mass, uh, it's worse in the winter just because of the cooler temperatures Your fuel properties as far as the propensity to make PM Will probably be a little less in the winter because they can go to They can I mean every year in kansas city is the highest in aromatics compared to st Louis because of rvp So I would say you you got kind of a mixed answer there. Sorry I can show you a lot of data on that My concern though in denver is it is they're using the moose model Based on flawed science that really downplays the dangers of aromatics by downplaying the benefits of ethanol Thank you. Um, some of the flawed science that you're speaking of is very concerning Can you give just some examples of who's funding some of this and where are some of the these coming from? Are they coming from well established academic institutions or not to call them all out, but I'm just curious. This is a concern We see a similar trend in what they call match blending by increasing the aromatics, but reducing the saturates to add ethanol A lot of these studies are doing it because that's the way it's been done in the past It really started about 10 15 years ago and and I can point you just to what we call the crc E67 study. So if you just search that you'll find it That's actually a study that says ethanol created increased benzene emissions But there's different ways to model the fuel problem The fuel properties that we can show it's not the ethanol Is they were making a dirtier gas to add ethanol and unfortunately it's a study like that or there's even studies out there that Just tested a few fuels And you look at the fuel properties and it's like that's not even real world So the ethanol industry lacks And I believe in the fuel side in general. We lack the ability To say this study is relevant. This study is not once they're peer reviewed It gets really thrown into the into the mix and it's very hard to To be selective in your studies When you know, we have this conflicting data This is not a question. Sorry, but it's it's a compliment Steve's answer also All of these studies are coming from an entity called the Coordinating Research Council, which Receives more than 50 of its funding from the American Petroleum Institute So yeah So carol, I'm going to give you a hard question to end on and steve you can chime in on this if you want This is really the hardest question to me in this whole area. We talk about how Multidisciplinary this is and it has many benefits. It also has many harms And uh, there are harms, uh, I'll give you an example in the recent harvard study When they calculated a one microgram reduction in p.m. They said it would save 12,000 lives On that alone, but a similar reduction in ozone would save 1,000 lives So as we think about this problem and the choices that evidently have to be made How do we value the different benefits and compare them? How do we? Hopefully not trade off, but at least evaluate Well, this has a climate benefit and this has a health benefit and this has an economic benefit I'm sure you've thought about that Where where do we have to stick our thumb heaviest on the scale? I should defer to steve undoubtedly, but But one thing I guess I would say is how important it is to really look at these issues holistically and to really look at say all of the Look at all of the issues that surround it and look at all of the potential benefits and where are their Detriments or or downsizes And or downsides and to really so that you really can look at the whole thing in an appropriate context Rather than looking at pulling out one thing and looking at it In a silo I think too many times we don't look at things in an integrated holistic way and we suffer In from a policy perspective many times because we don't I think as as we've collected a lot of not just the the automotive studies, but the health studies I think it's always been a challenge on my view. How do you connect with those that are doing the health studies? It feels like sometimes we do health studies to do more health studies You know, we need to do more information. They're they're researching, you know, trying to figure out exactly where the The cause and effect is coming from but they're not given the rest of the story How do you get these health researchers the the information of what would happen if we make a 50% reduction or 25% reduction? So there's I think that's the hardest thing is to bring this to a full cycle of from the fuel tank to the air quality 48 hours afterwards, which is why it would be wonderful to figure out how to put together a group of health researchers and really Ask a whole series of those kinds of questions Let them also ask a lot of questions so that we could help figure out some of this together And I just want to pivot that question right back to you read in terms of what you think Funny, you would do that. I was ready to say it anyway, Carol I'm actually going to bring in another science that we haven't talked as much about which is epidemiology The the research we have on pH damage to young children Was done by a team at Columbia led by Frederica Pereira over a 15-year period very careful controlled study where As I recall 200 women who were initially pregnant and then gave birth And they separated them based on the pH exposure That they that they had had and came to conclusions about that That's extraordinarily difficult work to do. It's expensive and it involved 200 women If the conclusion is that Microscopic exposure to pahs in the atmosphere Has led like effects It's almost impossible to imagine extrapolating that to the entire us population But we don't have any idea How much the current incidence for example of ADHD Which has been at least reportedly rising over recent decades How much that's related? We don't really have an idea Whether there is widespread impact on IQ and child development because of these very low levels of exposure It's almost an impossible question. So autism has been linked. Yeah, but potentially autism. Yeah, but To me that's When I say where am I going to put my thumb on the scale? It's protecting those kids and public health So with that let's uh, we have I think a couple minutes for a break so that you can Make a quick trip out or get your cup of coffee and then we'll start promptly in about five minutes on our next panel Thanks very much to these great speakers All right, Anne on to you Well, good morning everyone We have heard a lot of very informative information today about the history of ethanol About how ethanol has cleaning up our environment cleaning up our air that we're breathing, which has all been really educational great topics Um, and I'm really excited because our next speaker is going to talk about the improvements in corn ethanol And what we're doing to reduce carbon emissions It's certainly a really important topic a very timely topic right now And there's a lot of attention being paid on climate change And ethanol has a big role in that in reducing carbon emissions. And so I'm really excited for for jeff slides This issue for the national farmers union has a long time been a very important issue for us We are big proponents of a move to e30 We actually have two of our state presidents here Doug Sompke from South Dakota and gary wordish from minnesota. So This issue really couldn't be more important to our organization. And so we really appreciate hearing from jeff And so with that i'll get to it Jeff cooper is our next speaker. He is the president and ceo of the renewable fuels association Jeff is really a trailblazer and a leader in our renewable fuels industry And i'm very proud that he is here to speak for for the ethanol industry to talk about such an important topic So thank you jeff with that. I will turn it over to you Well, thank you very much ann and and thanks to all of you for the opportunity When ann asked if I would come talk about The latest and greatest developments in corn ethanol's carbon footprint. I I eagerly said of course I will this is a This is an issue that I have always been very passionate about and have been working on for 15 years and unfortunately, there just continues to be A tremendous amount of misunderstanding misinformation old data bad science Around this entire issue. And so it remains a fight for us To try and get the you know sound science and and and fresh data And just good information in front of policymakers and and and regulators And and other stakeholders. I think the questions in at the end of the last session. I really speak to a lot of the Kind of conventional wisdom around corn ethanol's life cycle and its and its impact So I was hoping that she'd be able to stick around to hear this presentation But I will catch up with with her later But again, I just kind of want to talk about The the corn ethanol carbon life cycle And I want to start at a very high view. This is actually a 30,000 kilometer high view And just a fascinating study that came out a few years ago from the national academies where they developed a new technology a new method for measuring photosynthetic activity using satellites And what they found through this study and through this data Which was a bit of a surprise to them Is that the midwest part of the united states During the growing season here in the u.s boasts more photosynthetic activity than any other region in the globe And you can see that reflected in the bright pink that shows up there in the in the heartland of the u.s So there's more carbon dioxide being sucked out of the atmosphere By that region of the country than anywhere else in the world During the north american or the northern hemisphere growing season You know one other finding from this study that I thought was very interesting was specifically about the ability of corn plants To assimilate carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and quickly suck co2 out of the atmosphere and sequester it In the grain and in the stocks and in the roots and in the soil And and really these these scientists were You know pleading with the scientific community to do a better job Of accounting for that ability of the corn plant to assimilate co2 As they analyzed sort of the life cycle impacts of of corn based products, but also the impacts of of climate change on You know agricultural production in that region of the world So a very fascinating study very high level view to start out with and I would encourage you to take a look at this NASA scientists were involved in this and and they actually have some really cool videos Two that go along with some of the satellite analysis that they did So when you take all that co2 out of the air and then you know, you've got 90 million acres of corn actively Pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere Where does it end up? And again, this is a very simplified kind of cartoonish schematic of where that co2 goes And it's overly simplified, of course But what what you see when we use corn for ethanol specifically, which is about you know, five billion bushels are about a third of the crop produced annually Is that's that carbon that gets locked up in the corn kernel goes to the ethanol production facility And in in rough terms about one third of it leaves As co2 emissions during fermentation About one third of that carbon becomes Locked up or contained in the distillers grains co-products that that steve van der grun was talking about That that you know that is fed to livestock and poultry and returns to the atmosphere And then one third ends up in the fuel in the ethanol itself And comes back out the tailpipe as co2 When that fuel is combusted in an internal combustion engine And then you know this cycle continues and the next crop of corn that's growing Sucks up that same amount of of co2. So what we see With bioenergy and really the benefit of bioenergy Is that we're recycling atmospheric carbon And when you contrast that to what we do with fossil fuels You know, it's a very distinct difference with fossil fuels. We're taking carbon that's been sequestered Underground for hundreds of millions of years been locked up, you know carbonaceous material Deep underground and we're making that into fuel. We're extracting the energy out of it and then we're venting it into the atmosphere It's a new emission. It's additive With bioenergy. We don't see that. We are simply recycling Co2 that's already in the atmosphere and believe it or not, you know, this is a fairly simple concept But there's a lot of misunderstanding About about this cycle You know, you've got professors at University of michigan, for instance that that pretend that that last piece of this cycle Isn't real or doesn't occur So, you know, we spent a lot of time just Re-educating people about this carbon cycle that you learn about And photosynthesis things you learn about in seventh or eighth grade, uh, you know science class Now, of course The question comes up. Well, what about all the energy used In this process to take that corn and you know plant the seed in the ground To harvest it to fertilize it To protect it from from insect and and Other pressures What about, you know harvesting that grain and shipping it to the ethanol plant? You know, what about the energy use at the the ethanol facility and then shipping that ethanol to to the end user Um, all of those emissions all of those life cycle emissions and and energy use Is really the subject of of life cycle analysis Sort of cradle to grave analysis and and we do have very good tools and very Well-tested methods of of measuring these impacts And so i'm going to talk about some of that and and this schematic just, you know Again, kind of a one-on-one level Shows some of those inputs At various stages of the ethanol production process You know and in life cycle analysis We typically use a a functional unit called grams of co2 equivalent per megajoule of energy And and and really what we do is we sum up all of the energy used from beginning to the end of this process And all of the emissions related to that energy use And that's used to generate what we call a carbon intensity score or or a ci score You'll see one input there into this process That's got an orange arrow and a question mark and and that's been the subject of a lot of debate A lot of discussion a lot of analysis over the last 10 or 15 years And that's around this this notion of land use change And and whether expanding our use of agricultural products for biofuels is somehow Causing expansion of cropland Into native grassland or into forest and and if we're chopping down forest To make room for biofuel crops Shouldn't those emissions be charged to the ethanol life cycle? They probably should if that was happening But i'm going to show you some of the latest developments there And again this this gets to some of the questions that were asked at the end of the last panel But i want to start with you know again I think one of the reasons that there is such a lack of Of understanding About corn ethanol's current life cycle is because this is the last thing that a lot of people remember About corn ethanol's greenhouse gas impacts Back around 2008 2009 Both the us epa And the california air resources board were evaluating corn ethanol's life cycle greenhouse gas emissions And they were doing so because they had You know brand new laws that they were writing regulations on And beginning to implement and and those laws required These agencies to evaluate The life cycle emissions of not just corn ethanol, but various other fuels as well And you know it was a fairly new science in terms of of You know broadening things beyond kind of that simple contained supply chain You know epa decided well we want to look at all the ripple effects of of what happens if we increase demand for renewable fuels And and then carb jumped in and said they wanted to do the same But you know the initial analyses from both these agencies were incredibly flawed Based on really outdated information and data Based on you know using Methodologies and tools that were not quite ready for prime time And so what you ended up with is as epa said Look our analysis shows that that on average corn ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 21 But that doesn't happen until 2022 and so they baked in some assumptions about You know process improvements that would be needed to get you over that 20 percent level And then at the same time you had the air resources board in california saying average corn ethanol Doesn't reduce greenhouse gas emissions when you compare it to gasoline. They're about the same And the bright green piece of these bars that you see for both analyses Is that land use change emission? Estimate and again, this is based on the notion that you know if we if we grow demand for for corn ethanol You know the the brazilians are going to have to chop down rainforest to plant more soybeans because there'll be less acres for soybeans in the in US and and all these ripple effects and and kind of knock on things are happening and they use these Economic models partial equilibrium models to to estimate all these things and and this is where they ended up Uh So obviously if this is the last time you checked in on corn ethanol's life cycle analysis You've got some bad information and bad data. This is you know, this this was bad when it came out and it's really bad now Uh, and of course, you know hindsight is always 2020 Some would argue that those regulators were doing the best they could based on what was available But here we are a decade later and this is what we know today. We know that The real world data shows that those early estimates of land use change Were grossly overstated. Uh, there has not been net expansion of cropland in the u.s There's been no identifiable relationship between biofuel production And deforestation in the amazon or or melasia or anywhere else And so when you look at those original estimates of land use change emissions The first paper that came out the first analysis that was kind of the The nuclear bomb that dropped in this whole discussion was was from tim search engine At princeton and he came out with this cobbled together slap-dash analysis and said The the land use change emissions alone Are over 100 grams per megajoule And you know, that doesn't even address all the process related kind of supply chain emissions And just for reference gasoline is around 95 98 Grams per megajoule. So he was saying just the land use change emissions alone Make ethanol worse than gasoline A year or two later, you know, epa and car came out with their estimates on land use change They were about 30 grams per megajoule each And more recently around 2015 carb revised its analysis and brought it down to 19, which we still think is far too high Purdue University's got a one of the economic models that was used by epa and carb both So they've been continually updating their their modeling and they've recently came out with a 12 12 gram per megajoule number But we think the most Reputable and sound analysis of what is actually occurring in terms of land conversion That could possibly be tied to biofuel expansion Has been done by the department of energy and argon national laboratories specifically in conjunction with some of the folks at Purdue And their latest analysis shows you know Land use emissions if they're occurring are probably on the order of four to seven grams per megajoule We also know 10 years later that the the Agencies, you know epa and carb both grossly overestimated Emissions that happen in the rest of the supply chain as well. How much energy is being used at the ethanol plant How much fertilizer is being put down by the farmer? What is the corn yield? What are the ethanol yields? You know 10 years later. We have a lot better data on that and it shows that they were way off in their in their assumptions Uh specifically on the question of land use I want to just highlight quickly that chart on the left there When congress passed the energy independence and security act of 2007 which expanded the rfs2 It included in the law specifically provisions that said If prop land in the u.s expands beyond this baseline level in 2007 Then that feedstock, you know any corn soybeans any any feedstock that would come off those expanded acres would not be would not qualify for Ren generation under the rfs if it was converted into biofuels So there were provisions in the law That prohibited the expansion Of crop land for the purposes of of producing biofuels And so what that chart shows is what that 2007 baseline level was is 402 million acres in the u.s Were engaged in in crop production or some other kind of agricultural production Each year epa is required to Estimate agricultural land use relative to that to that baseline And what you see there is each and every single year since 2007 that amount of agricultural land continues to trend Downward so we are well under the amount of crop land that was in production in 2007 When the rfs was expanded The other chart that i'm showing here is is you know sort of addresses one of the other Myths that was popular around The 2007 2008 time frame, which is you know what we do here in the u.s If we expand our our our base of crop land it's going to push Soybeans and wheat and and and other crops To the margin and other countries other producers around the world are going to have to make up That that marginal production that we lose here in the u.s. And so it's going to happen in brazil and You know what's going to happen is they're going to plow up their pastures And they're going to plant soybeans and the cows that we're eating the grass on those pastures Are going to be pushed into the rainforest So they're going to cut the rainforest down and and feed the cattle on new pastures in in in the rainforest And so you know through all these kind of convoluted reactions You know the agencies were coming up with these land use change analysis and emissions estimates What we've seen in the real world is deforestation rates in the amazon Have trended down significantly since 2004 Now we don't have 2019 data yet It's likely to show an increase right based on what's been going on in brazil But clearly that has nothing to do With our our production of biofuels here in the u.s You know, I also want to look at what's been happening on the farm The last 10 or 20 years and again, I wish The the woman who asked the question at the last panel was was here to see this We are not expanding our use of fertilizers These three plots show Farmers use of the three kind of key macro nutrients that are used in corn production nitrogen potassium and potash and this is on a a You know input per unit of output basis And what we've seen is is farmers have have grown more efficient In their use of of not only these fertilizers and macro nutrients But if I had charts that showed Pesticide and herbicide application it would show an even steeper downtrend So farmers have become far more efficient in their resource use And again that you know All of these products have greenhouse gas implications and so when we're using less Fertilizer we are emitting less greenhouse gas emissions on the farm This data unfortunately only runs through 2016 This is from USDA When the 2018 data becomes available, we expect to see A a continuation or an acceleration of this downward trend Here's another way of looking at land use in the u.s. Specifically for corn The blue bars and the left axis there show millions of acres of corn planted in the u.s And what you see there is all the way back to 1930 We haven't really expanded our our acreage that is planted to corn in fact We're lower today than we were in the 1930s By 10 million acres or so But if you look at the orange line and the other axis that's how many bushels we're getting off of each acre of corn And so you go back to 1929 1930. We're getting about 25 bushels per acre Today we're getting 175 180 bushels per acre as a national average States like iowa illinois, you know, they're upset if their state average isn't 200 bushels per acre And all this has been achieved at least in the last few decades with reduced inputs per unit of output So again, this is a I think a Fascinating story that we're not doing a good good enough job of telling quite obviously When we when we still have questions about the sustainability and impacts Of commercial corn production and and and what it means for the ethanol life cycle We're seeing improvements at the ethanol plant as well And i'm sure jim sire could speak to these quite well This is just the last five years and what this is looking at is BTUs per gallon how much energy is the ethanol plant using per gallon of of production for ethanol And you go back to 2014 and it was about 28 000 BTUs per gallon And I wish this chart went back to 2000 or or the late 90s because that number would have been double It would have been around 40 45 000 BTUs per gallon But but again just in the last five years You've seen a reduction from 28 000 down to about 25 000 And these are real numbers They come from an accounting firm out of the twin cities christensen and associates That has a benchmarking program that I think something like 80 ethanol plants Belong to so you know nearly half the industry is submitting its numbers every month Uh and comparing you know comparing their operations to their competitors The green bar shows kind of the top quartile the top 25 percent And you can see their energy use is is even far lower than than the average So when you take all of those improvements and add them together What you get is a significant reduction in the overall life cycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with with corn ethanol Carol mentioned on the last panel that california You know 10 years after they started the low carbon fuel standard Are realizing that hey, this is a pretty good fuel when it comes to reducing carbon emissions It's available at a low cost And and and yes, it's not immediately changing california to full carbon neutrality But it's doing a pretty darn good job of reducing emissions in that state What this chart here shows is California is this is data straight from the air resources board Every quarter they publish the average carbon intensity of the ethanol that was used in the state And if you go back to one of the slides I showed earlier They originally started out in 2009 saying ethanol is worse than gasoline or no better Uh, we were able to convince them that by 2011 when this program began implementation That ethanol is better than gasoline and and we showed them tons of data, you know, lots of modeling Um, and they said well, okay, it might be marginally better You know 88.5 grams per megajoule compared to 96 for for gasoline So fine, we'll agree that corn ethanol gives you about an eight percent reduction And that was borne out as individual producers submitted Their data and their natural gas receipts and and the mileage that the ethanol was traveling to the state And everything else But over time you've seen that reduction Fall dramatically. We've seen about a 33 reduction in the carbon intensity of ethanol consumed in california And today The air resources board would tell you yeah ethanol in the third quarter of 2019 Was reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 40 percent Compared to california gasoline and that still includes A you know 19 grams of that 59 gram number is a land use change penalty that we still think is is unjustified So even with that bogey, uh, we're still achieving a greater than 40 reduction in california Uh, also want to point out the orange line at the top, which is the comparator. That's gasoline What's happened to the carbon intensity of gasoline in that same time? It's gotten worse five or six percent worse As the sources of crude oil that that are being used to produce gasoline that's used in the state Have gotten more carbon intensive and harder to extract Uh, and in fact, you know, again, you go back to 2009 2010 I remember going to some of the hearings where where members of the air resources board said We just don't see much of a role for corn ethanol in this program Well, here we are a decade later And ethanol is responsible for about 40 percent Of the greenhouse gas reductions achieved under that program since it's beginning in 2011 That's more than any other low carbon fuel. It's four times more than electricity Uh, and if you're just focusing on the gasoline side of the equation, just the gasoline pool Uh, ethanol is responsible for about 85 percent of the reductions achieved in the in the gasoline pool So times have changed But we have a lot more work to do and we think we have a lot more room for improvement In the corn ethanol life cycle, um, you know, I want to go back to this little cartoon that shows about a third of that carbon That that corn, you know, those corn acres were sucking out of the atmosphere returns the atmosphere through fermentation At the ethanol plant. What if we were to capture that co2? What if we were to sequester that co2 or use it for enhanced oil recovery? Significant benefits could come from that Today we've got You know, maybe two out of every 10 ethanol plants is capturing some of that co2 Um and selling it into the beverage, you know, bottling industry or or food service or or other Places where where co2 is is used Uh, very little of the co2 coming from fermentation today is being sequestered underground, although that's changing Um, just within the last few months Red trail energy in North Dakota Uh has it they are doing carbon capture and sequestration And they have applied for a pathway in California Um, the air resources board is looking at it Uh, if carb approves it what they're going to see is a reduction in their ci score from about 75 grams per megajoule Down to about 35 grams per megajoule. So capturing and sequestering the co2 from fermentation Um, could result in about a 40 gram per megajoule Uh improvement in in the ethanol ci score But I want to start With the co2 uptake by the corn itself. Uh, it was mentioned on the last panel that Corn producers today have have made remarkable improvements In how they're managing agricultural soils And and so much of the the co2 that those plants are pulling out of the atmosphere Is in fact being sequestered in the ground Especially when you look at, uh, no, you know tillage systems like no till or or Other conservation tillage methods, uh, the root masses have gotten so much bigger The disruption of the of the soil has has been minimized Farmers are not getting credit for that sequestration that's occurring today They should be getting credit for it. We're working with regulatory agencies to to on ways to do that But there again is probably another 20 or 25 grams per megajoule that is being left on the table And and would see, you know, even further adoption of these practices if farmers were incentivized To to adopt them So I just want to finish with it with a a few slides based on this one's based on some modeling that that we did at rfa Um that shows and this is actually a year old But it shows kind of the the Average kind of typical corn ethanol today Uh, you know would be about a 57 gram per megajoule number If you're using the the argon greek model and that's about a 40 to 45 percent reduction versus gasoline Again, that's a that's a big reduction. That's something we should be proud of But we think within the next three to five years Do only two improvements on the farm and at the ethanol plant And technologies we know are being adopted today by ethanol producers Technologies that are being adopted on farm That reduction that will that the carbon footprint will continue to shrink and and we expect In the next three to five years the average gallon of ethanol is going to achieve a 50 to 60 reduction versus gasoline But longer term if we have the right policy incentives in place the right, uh, regulations in place Uh, and just the right signals being sent We think that you know corn ethanol can Can truly approach carbon neutrality Even when all the energy inputs and emissions are summed together If we're adopting carbon capture and sequestration technology If we're fully crediting the soil carbon sequestration that's happening We think you know that offsets or more than offsets The emissions related to natural gas consumption at the ethanol plant Emissions from fertilizer production and and application and and other phases of the life cycle So I showed this slide around a few times last year and and people said oh man that you know, yeah, that sounds great. It looks real nice But you know, we'll believe it when we see it So I was really pleased when a few weeks ago at another meeting I was at Uh, some modeling work that I was completely unaware of Was presented and basically found the same thing and this came from the great plains institute. They're a An NGO out of the twin cities Uh, and they basically said, you know, if you start on the left With sort of the greek default kind of average corn ethanol today, you've got a 55 gram per megajoule number Again 45 reduction versus gasoline But as you work across to the right And you assume the adoption of of some of these other technologies you can get to carbon neutral or carbon negative Corn ethanol and and the green bar you see on the end there where you're actually You know providing a 34 gram per megajoule carbon you know benefit Assumes that the ethanol plant is using renewable natural gas You heard steve vandegren talk about the facility in kansas You know, it's it's it's using wood waste To generate its its thermal energy needs. So so there you go But it also has carbon management and carbon capture and sequestration So, you know in theory if an ethanol plant is using that suite of technologies It could be achieving a negative carbon score And you put that ethanol in an ffv or a flex fuel hybrid It's going to do every bit as good or better Than an electric vehicle So this is just the final slide and and and I just wanted this is probably hard to interpret So you may want to study it a little careful, you know more carefully when the when the slides are sent around But what this shows is is just the the carbon intensity number across the bottom axis And what that should result in in terms of a a premium price For the ethanol at varying Carbon values in the california market And so focus on the yellow line at the top because that's really where Carbon prices are in california today. That's 200 dollars per metric ton So, you know, for example, if you have a a ci score Of 65 You go up to where that yellow line is and that should result in a 25 or 30 cent per gallon premium For your ethanol That's a nice premium to get if you're an ethanol producer you can take that and reinvest it In in, you know, more technologies cleaner technologies to take that ci score down further Now I will tell you and ethanol producers would certainly tell you They're not seeing that full benefit today in in the california marketplace And the reason for that is the market is flooded With this sort of low ci core ethanol there's more supply than there is demand for In the state of california and that's because they have a 10 cap On the amount of ethanol that can be blended with gasoline You you boost that to 15 percent or 30 percent You're going to see that value trickle back upstream To the ethanol producer The other thing I would just point out real quickly while we're talking about this Is, you know, where do you think e85 sales are growing? Most rapidly It isn't iowa. It isn't minnesota. It's in california And it's just going like gangbusters out there because of this equation because of the the value that comes From the carbon intensity reduction putting a putting a monetary value on carbon reduction has absolutely incentivized and encouraged Innovation in the retail space in california, but also innovation in the production of these fuels The other box I have here is just corn fiber ethanol and we have a an increasing number of member companies That are taking the cellulosic fiber that's in the corn kernel and rather than passing it through to the animal feed co-product They're converting it into ethanol it is cellulosic ethanol and it has a very low carbon intensity score somewhere in the 30s There was 19 million gallons of this product recorded in carb's last Data release so it is happening And again, you can see the sort of economic premium associated with that level of low ci ethanol So, you know LCFS was brought up in the last session and I just wanted to point out that it has been After fits and starts at the beginning with california It has been an important policy for our industry and one that we today Support even though there are further improvements that we think need to be made To how they do ci scoring and life cycle analysis So that's really it. I just dropped a lot of data and information and You know charts and slides on you, but happy to address any questions Any comments that you have or and I don't know how you want to what direction you want to take this I think we have I I know we're running up against lunch. So But I think we do have time maybe for a question or two Just a real quick comment. Um, this is a phenomenal presentation and I've seen parts of this before because RFA and the national farmers union is working with different groups to try to really educate them We recently went to an event with the carbon capture coalition and presented in front of a bunch of environmental groups and labor unions and entrepreneurs And even refining interests and people were really blown away because they had no idea All these things had changed. So I think it really underscores the importance of events like today And all the rest of the speaking engagements that we're doing to try to publicize that so just an editorial Thank you. That was phenomenal. Dave. I saw you had a question Thanks, Jeff is outstanding I see we're on the ci scores in the in the lca is the life cycle analyses Everything is compared against gasoline per se As you well know the aromatics component of gasoline EPA itself admits is at least 25 more carbon intensive other data shows much higher Have you ever talked to folks even at the carb folks About having the comparison if we get especially to the point where we're substituting for aromatics Where they're they're comparing to that more carbon intensive component That's a great question. Dave. I mean and and we have said from the beginning We need to be comparing ethanol to what it's replacing and that's not just gasoline, right? It's it's aromatic hydrocarbons and other octane sources There has been some interest in in looking more carefully at those sorts of comparisons Argonne national lab and one of their iterations of the greek model did in fact Do that sort of analysis where they're comparing ethanol as an octane Source to to other competing octane sources on a life cycle basis and did find exactly what you're talking about additional carbon savings You know compared to to other area, you know to other octanes versus just looking at gasoline so but but that's an area of life cycle analysis and and Just this field that needs more work and and and more resolution You know the other thing we've said is we need to be You know in california and other places if you're going to compare us to gasoline You can't compare us to the national average gasoline You need to compare us to the sources that are being used in that jurisdiction We we know You know that there are varying degrees of carbon intensity when we talk about crude oil sources as well so lots of work to do in terms of Establishing the right baseline and and and frame for comparison Two quick questions. Jeff one on the the co2 recovery from a plant, you know, you said there's certain planets are doing that And you mentioned oil recovery. I know in the past it was hydroponics and greenhouse, you know, grown tomatoes and but not but Just refresh me wasn't there a tax Incentive if the co2 was it general for capturing co2 or specifically if it was used for oil extraction But wouldn't there a some legislation? Yeah, the the 45 q-tax credit that that came through One a year and a half or two years ago Um, it provides a substantial benefit. It's 35 a ton uh for sequestration or eor Uh, which You know, you put that sort of incentive on the table and and it it really causes ethanol producers to To take a hard look at at whether, you know, they they they should move forward with that capital investment. It's not inexpensive Um to set up a ccs type of system With an ethanol plant and it you know today it really only works in certain geographies and in certain situations You know adm and in the middle of illinois is another place that's got a Perfect geological formation sitting underneath it to do this sort of sequestration But having that tax credit available and the final rules are still being written on how that's going to work But that's a that's a key piece of this one more quick one on the e85 in california. Well aware of How ethanol it's such a turn from decades past when they hated ethanol Is people may not be aware that e85 is classified as anything as low as 51 percent Is that based on the production from the plant? How are they gauging that because that's a big difference Whether you're actually at 85 or 51. Yeah. Well in california, they don't they don't adopt the astm Specification for e85. They have a much tighter range To define what e85 is and I believe it's 70 to 85 percent Ethanol in california, but but the data from carb has shown Because they go out and measure And do sampling and they've shown that e85 in california typically is e85 It's it's normally between 80 and 85 percent ethanol Sorry, everyone. We have time for one more question and then we're going to go ahead and break to lunch. Okay Well, it's probably more of a comment than a question But I really wanted to build on what you and Dave Hallberg were talking about Not just looking at aromatics, but octane, you know as an octane credit in our like our north carolina study One gallon of ethanol makes over six gallons of e25 at a five percent reduction per gallon So I think when you look at a at an efficiency credit It's a very nice story to tell what you're saying That's a good point. Steve and and and the study from argon Does look at the fact that hey if we're using ethanol as the octane source instead of aromatics or or or stuff coming out of the Refinery then they're running their reform reformers less severely They're using less energy in the refinery and that should you know, that's a credit that should go to ethanol Um, so there are all these very complex Effects and indirect things happening That we just need to keep looking at I want to I want to go to a different, uh question and and I want you to jump in on this too We talk a lot about e30 And obviously we're using a lot of crop land to produce e10 or e 10 plus over what period of time could you imagine a Transition in corn production to e30 and what would be the impact on u.s land use? We have done that sort of modeling And we have you know arrived at the conclusion that we could certainly support our agricultural system could certainly support a 25 or 30 blend Uh in the future I mean and one of the kind of important variables in that Is the increases in fuel economy are going to reduce overall gasoline consumption So you know 25 of the gasoline pool by the time you could actually achieve that Is is much less ethanol than it would be today if you were to do it But at the same time you've got to look at the the trend lines for for crop yields Um, you've got to look at these other improvements in efficiency that we know are coming Uh, you know, I used to work at the national corn growers association and every year they had a corn yield contest and the winners of that contest You know had yields of 350 400 bushels per acre our national average today is is less than half of that So, um, are you going to have that sort of productivity across the u.s? No, but it shows the potential of where crop yields can go. I mean, we've had a you know, honestly the situation has been The reverse of what a lot of people think we've had huge surpluses that have burdened our our agricultural economy burdened our commodity markets And and we think because of increases in productivity We're going to have that again unless we have somewhere some market For that grain and we think ethanol is is where it ought to go. Is this too much of a stretch? Do you think that the corn industry could commit to meeting The demand for increased ethanol without increasing the corn acreage I think in certain scenarios that That that is that is plausible that is absolutely possible Again, it depends on the time frame and and lots of other assumptions But and I know the corn growers have done that sort of modeling too Just to add quickly. I know we're going to hear a little bit more on e30 this afternoon With one of our panel discussions But just on behalf of farmers, I mean if we're given a goal We're we're ready to meet at our corn prices have been incredibly low And we're looking for additional markets for it. We've done extensive research e30 is widely used And so we're looking for that kind of acceptance and that nationwide use and and that's something we're going to be spending a lot of time on And I'm sorry. I know you're supposed to be going to lunch, but just and made me think of one more thing and that was When I was at the corn growers back in 2000 this would have been five or six We sat down with our board for a strategic planning session to talk about You know, how much ethanol could we make from corn in the near term? And came up with this this strategic plan that was 15 by 15 by 15 15 billion gallons of of corn ethanol production of 15 billion bushels By by the year 2015 And as we kind of shop that around people said you're you're nuts. There's no way you're going to get there Without vastly expanding cropland and having all these these negative impacts Well, guess what we got there We got there and surpassed it We you know, we're we'll produce 16 billion gallons of ethanol this year The corn crops have been you know, 15 billion bushels are higher So an's right when you when you put that vision out there And send the right signals that the marketplace is absolutely going to respond Let's thank ann and jeff for that great discussion. We're gonna we're gonna Modify the program to give you a little bit more of a break We're gonna take a half hour break here for lunch and then we're gonna reconvene in about a half an hour Let's say at 12 40 And it's my pleasure to hand it over to larry pierce Among my many old friends in the room larry is right there We've been at the governor's biofuels coalition since the inception. I'd say just about and uh Uh, he's been Number one a great source of intelligence in both senses the word About what's happening in the states but if by any chance Anybody in this room does not get The daily news update of the governor's biofuels coalition You have missed your bet because a it's free And b it's valuable and there aren't that many combinations like that So, uh larry larry larry goes back to when one of the members of the governor's biofuels coalition was george w bush governor of texas So with that kind of breadth larry, you can handle anything and i'm just going to throw this over to you All right. Thank you. Thank you read and listen. Thank you to dave holberg read of course For organizing this so Really very beneficial As read mentioned i'm the executive director of the governor's biofuels coalition and the current chair is Well, it's christy gnome who is the the governor of south dakota and Governor tim waltz is the the vice chair Last year late last year they both Signed a letter to the president asking him to enforce the aromatics or direct epa to enforce the aromatics provision In the in the clean air act a copy of that letter is Is right up the entrance there if you want to grab a copy and There there are times In this job that i feel more like an astrologer That i can only really get things done when the planets align and they finally aligned with Governor waltz in minnesota and governor gnome in south dakota They they both Agreed immediately to send the aromatics letter to the president. They saw how important it was And and how it could play an important role when it comes time for congress to decide whether the rfs is Reset handed over to epa or whether congress does an extension of some kind on it So that was very beneficial My good friend carol warner and i Spent the last two days visiting with Feels like everybody in washington, but we met with uh all of the uh congressional delegation for minnesota and south dakota staffers Sharing with them the the governor's letter as well sign-on letter that we would like to circulate in congress We also met with White house officials talked a little bit about this also met with representative of A national health organization whose reaction To what we were proposing to do was someone shocking He did not think it was worthy of their time since Basically evs are going to replace gasoline and I was so hoping and so was carol that we'd find a Health advocate who could join us on these discussions. So Um Anyway, I guess what we've learned from the meetings with the house and the in the senate staffers is that A lot of them don't know anything about this issue We're going to have to do a lot of educating With them it takes time. I think once they understand how important it is They could do something we were looking for a bright light in either the senate house or the senator of the house And I think we we did find that who could help circulate the sign-on letter Um Oh as I said, I think as the agenda indicated Um, oh, let me just mention the the e30 demonstration programs that we've been working on This is this is the the other part of the equation What we want to do is Allow the governors to Um We have one e 80 e 30 pilot program underway in Nebraska And we hope to have south dakota Minnesota, iowa also Apply for an e 30 Permit or e 30 authorization from epa for a one-year demonstration program And then what we want to do then is Two things one. We want to do a joint application to epa In which the governors will ask for The right to use e 30 permanently in their state fleet vehicles At the same time we want to do the Basically the same approach we did with each end Is to have the governors do a joint news release saying that There have been no problems with the fuel There been no Problems with the vehicles the emissions have been fine and it's saved the states a lot of money by using a high ethanol blend And in that way kind of further the grassroots support for e 30 so anyway As I said governor gnome was going to attend and she sent me this letter Asking me to read it and it's kind of her regrets of not being able to be here And it's a please share my regrets with the participants of the clean fuels leadership forum That I am unable to attend the forum because of a commitment to attend a national guard event in south dakota also, please thank senator werth for his kind and thoughtful letter and Acknowledge the forum sponsors including the national farmers union Farmers union enterprises Environmental and energy study institute and the clean fuels development coalition Since I can't attend the forum. Please share these comments with the group It was a little over two months ago when minnesota governor tim waltz and I As the chair and vice chair of the governor's biofuels coalition wrote president trump asking that he enforce a provision in the Clean Air Act That requires the reduction and eventual elimination of toxic carcinogen aromatics and gasoline As many of you know the requirement has been largely ignored by the u.s. Environmental protection agency for decades As we told the president epa's failure to enforce the provision today is unacceptable We asked the president to direct epa administrator wheeler to immediately take steps to enforce congress To enforce congress's aromatics engagement finding and replace the aromatic content of gasoline with non toxic additives such as high octane biofuels in 1990 congress banned led as the As a gasoline octane booster in the cleaner act amendments During the debate that preceded the vote on the air on the amendments senators Noted the enormous economic and human costs that led to gasoline opposed on society gasoline aromatics are today the new led President george bush signed the amendment. It's a law on november 1990 and directed the epa to reduce the dangerous chemical additives of gasoline Today 30 years later the critical element of the law has yet to be enforced in any meaningful way Aromatics are the most toxic energy inefficient and expensive gasoline component And on average make up 25 of each gallon of gasoline we use as a result aromatics cost inflate gasoline prices After 30 years the aromatics level in gasoline have remained relatively constant And we now know the impact of these Components is even more deadly than originally thought epa's options in the 1990s were limited and cost-effective substitutes did not exist Today many options exist including high octane biofuels It's time to follow the law and give americans the benefit of lower gasoline prices By replacing by replacing aromatics with biofuels America's biofuels industry is a remarkable achievement unlike the oil industry which after 100 years still retains its subsidies The u.s. Biofuels industry stands on its own Without tax incentives or endangering the health of americans biofuels can do even more to the same To save consumers of money reduce air pollution create quality jobs and grow the economy And then she just goes on to say that carol and i are going to be using with members of the Of the house and senate congressional delegations from south dakota and minnesota And she concludes by saying everyone here today Has helped lay the foundation for our letter to the president But our letter is just the beginning our message needs to be persistent And requires a concerted bipartisan effort by public health organizations And the agricultural community if we are to succeed Thank you for your past and future work on this vital issue. So that's uh, that's sent to all of you And um That's pretty much everything i have do you want to do want to do, um Plano, is that okay? All right Just do an introduction Plano, nistari couldn't join us today because of a very complicated international travel schedule He did though agree to record this brief video to share it with all of you Plano's biography is Is about the length of a short story in New yorker magazine But the salient parts of his bio is that he holds a phd in agricultural economics from Iowa state university of The same alma mater as the the president of china where he also got the same degree Plano is also a world leader in advancing the use of higher ethanol blends and brills and in brazil Around the world You're Well, let me just introduce bill um Bill corbach is the co-author of the forbidden fuel and also the ethanol the ethyl controversy dissertation of the university of mariland in 1993 And revolutions in communication about media technology Published in 2016 by bloomsbury Hello testing. Hey, it is so good to see everybody. Thank you Thank you for inviting me dave holberg and thanks for everybody who is here today What you're looking at is a 1932 Advertisement for an alcohol blend that was very common in england. It was called cleveland discol And the champion of cleveland discol was a guy named harry ricardo Who was the inventor and designer of the merlin rolls rice engine that Powered spitfires. So we have this Wonderful and interesting history that is so little known And i'd like to just introduce you to a couple of things I have, you know, 200 300 slides and I used to tell my students this is all going to be on the quiz So take copious notes But I did teach a course in the history of renewable energy and we spent a month on on ethanol And I had a lot of good, you know students working on that and I'm, you know, still working on that today So we are you ready to yeah, okay, so this is sort of my main claim to fame back in 1982 Scott sclar who many of you know and I work together on this book with halbernton Who works for the seattle times? The fourth beetle was dave so Halberg Kind of he was so scott was over in jabbet's office and dave was over. This is ancient history. Sorry dave was over in berkeley bedell's office and between the two of them and the press and And another guy You'll see his picture in a minute. There was a considerable amount of momentum And then out in the midwest people were remembering this history So I never actually the book was published in 82, but I thought it was fascinating. I never stopped researching it I've presented papers at the commonwealth agricultural bureau international cabbie, which is very well known in united nation circles IIed alcohol fuel symposium and all this stuff just to make sure that You know if there were errors or or problems with the approaches that I've taken that they would come up So this history is very solid and very much peer reviewed So I've got a clicker, but I don't think it works for this because that's okay So um the the the person who really inspired a lot of the historical work and a lot of us is colonel bill holmberg He's no longer with us, but I just wanted to mention that I was sort of at a at a crossroads at one point in 19 I guess 90 or 91 and and said, you know, I I don't know if I should go out to see this old GM archive on On ethyl, you know, leaded gasoline and he said go hell. I just bought your airplane ticket. You better get out there So that's he would call us up in the middle of the night and say, you know what your country needs you You know this fuel business this history business this work that we're trying to do is really important So your country needs you and I the scruff old marine would be like, you know, bill your country needs you You know, if that's even close, I don't know but he is a wonderful guy. We all miss him and this is the horse This is the horse that um senator Worth uh was talking about yeah, uh he and and we miss him a lot so Um, you know, if you're gonna be a historian you have to sort of categorize things So if you look at the history of biofuels, there's this period of illumination to about 1906 where The fuels have been, you know, the sort of vegetable And animal fuels far predominated petroleum and they were the early auto fuels They were the basis of early auto fuels and they were also They're long before kerosene So the idea that you know, we were running out of whales and therefore kerosene came along to uh to save the Whales is actually a complete myth. Um, there was a large number of choices of biofuels and you know, I have 20 slides on that when we get to early auto fuels in 1906 They were very well aware that ethanol provided higher compression much cleaner Emissions there were in Germany. There were alcohol fueled locomotives around 1910 That were being used in the mines because the emissions characteristics were so much better By the 1930s, we were looking at economic warfare and the The giveaway of leaded gasoline by the oil industry And synthetic rubber being blocked in the u.s. Which actually came from ethanol in the midwest So three quarters of the tires that the allies rolled into normandy on were made from midwestern grain The midwestern grain industry saved the war effort. That is not an exaggeration and this needs to be known Uh, and then, you know, the energy crisis. We're all familiar with this the brassica gas hall This is just kind of you know this period and now the ethanol industry is established But there are new sustainability issues that need to be addressed So that's kind of the overview now I'm just going to pick out a couple of mountaintops in this and then we'll move along to the quiz Which is you know waiting for you at the back of the All right, so next slide There we go So this is what I showed bill holmberg In 1902 in france, there was an alcohol fuel exhibit. It featured Autos, you know, farm machinery lamps stoves heaters And this is the muse of alcohol fuel And what she represents is the The marriage of industry and agriculture the hope that industrial technology could be civilized enough To work hand in hand with agriculture. This was explicitly, you know, exactly what they are trying to do in france It was a little less poetic in germany they were trying to Satisfy the conservative yunkers in the rural areas while keeping food cheap in the in the cities But you know, I I love the poetry of this and and what it represents now Consider this enthusiasm that this represents in contrast to this next slide This next slide here we go, right? Um, so Historians and many of us are trained to look for what's not there And if you look at this 1951 paper on the relative effectiveness Of leaded gasoline Which is the high part? I know it's in reverse Okay, but um bear with me here. Look at where hydrocarbon 12 should be See see what's missing Hydrocarbon 12 could be nothing but ethanol There's there's no way and they took it out It was so controversial in 1951 for the ethyl corporation This is, you know chilling really to me Because leaded gasoline was so deadly and it was even at that time, you know So doomed and they knew it, you know that they didn't want to admit that there was an actual alternative They didn't want to name the alternative so contrast these two things. That's what got bill holmberg so animated He said that's why you need to go out to flint michigan and go go through those new archives Which which I did and I spent, you know two weeks out there And you know, that's where a lot of our understanding of what happened between ethyl alcohol and ethyl leaded gasoline Has changed because these were unclassified archives released by thomas midgley who was catering's assistant or Yeah, it was it was his office papers So there's a lot of very interesting stuff out there and it's in my dissertation, which you can get. Thank you Yes, let's move on to germany So I never really quit doing the research and in berlin. I came across an entire library full of alcohol fuel Information and it's still there. It's the national distillery library. It was on the east side of berlin and the library head told me that When the russians took berlin in 1945 there were people who actually Stuffed their bags and their shirts with this these sorts of books and papers to get them home to save them And if they had been caught they would have been killed on the spot, you know by the By the vopos And they brought it back and they reassembled their library. It's a it's a magnificent story So one more let's keep going in 1919 alcohol will inevitably be part of our steadily increasing importance in economic life That was that everybody knew that so it was 1921 that we had, you know, uh, leaded gasoline invented I'm gonna start going a little faster through the slides here We all know that henry ford was pro ethanol the fuel the future is going to come from of that You know from that field Okay, but how many of these others do we know about alexander grand bell 1917 right there at national geographic? You know beautiful clean efficient fuel stop right here for just one second um, so I gave this one to boyden gray back in 1992 and it was in the white house for a while that came out of the um Was it was it 91 I think it was in the white house for a short time. Yeah But it's it's from Nebraska and these guys who ran the station sued the ethyl corporation for antitrust violations a couple more and we'll just somebody just These from the 1930s. Let me uh, yeah, these are from the 1930s and sugarcane culture It was much cheaper to make fuel from sugarcane than from then to import oil You know both in brazil and and in the philippines next um Let it gasoline was a huge scandal and the people who were making it in the refineries went violently insane at work and had to be hauled off in straight jackets This is part of the legacy of let it gasoline nobody knows about this next Um, this is if you don't remember anything else from this presentation. This is the thing This is the proof that let it gasoline was only supposed to be a bridge Into ethyl alcohol, which was of course the fuel of the future according to the legal history of tetra ethyl led by the Dupont corporation so the lawyers interviewed the engineers and wrote this You know when high compression engines came along and oil started to run out They would still be able to make the transition to ethanol more quickly So let it gasoline was almost nothing in their view. It was just kind of it was going to be a blip And we just never ran out of oil in the way. They thought we would so next line All right, you need to know also that there have been there's been a lot of discussion about this. This is 1952 A united nations conference on what was called power alcohol Um, so I thought we were here at the un uh foundation. We ought to mention this next slide Um, one of the things that came up and this is not the only one, but it's interesting that um A munchie who was one of the governors of Um The state that luck now is in uh, basically said, you know, we need to focus on cellulose It's 1952 india at a power alcohol conference Because he was worried about the um The scarcity of food of grains being used now We know that this is a something of a canard when it comes to the use of starch and the and the Pass through of ddgs, right in in the american system, but this has been a consistent And interesting, you know concern over the years next slide and This is hard to read but brazil one stock piled its Sugar, but now it converts it into industrial alcohol. This is a cartoon from the 1950s out of the chicago tribune And you know the bias aroused by the use of alcohol. This is one of harry rickardo's chemists For discol for this 1930s winter blend that was supposed to in england replace leaded gasoline Okay, and and finally Quote from scott's galar for a paper that i wrote on the international history of ethanol You know, it was the brazilian experience That helped keep american auto and oil companies at least somewhat honest. So there was a parallel engineering Set of engineering data that was very very helpful. And i think that's it Yeah, the important thing is when we talk about history, we have to think about social construction and not predetermined or path determined You know models we have to think about what people need and not what You know businesses want that has to be part of the equation van of our bush said it very clearly in 1949. It still applies today Thank you so much Oh, hello everyone, uh, I am playing in a study And i'm very glad to be speaking to you, uh by video Unfortunately, uh, i'm not present at this very important event in washington But i send my best regards uh to dave harvard to larry pierce to jeff cooper um To totz nether. I hope he's there to dr. Enti um to senator tom dashill to governor, uh ben nelson I gather tommy thompson if he's there um terry branstad To see boiling grade her friend my best regards and and recognition to president bush senior And my recognition to those who passed away already and left a great tradition a great remembrance Bill Holmberg fred potter la martin navajo here in brazil cc and many others I think we belong to a tribe I'm very proud to be part of this tribe Um through the past 45 years we were able to build up a strong and relevant ethanol industry Uh, which is growing worldwide Um, i'm going to be speaking a little bit about what is happening here in brazil Since 1982 we have been using mid-level blends already Uh blends have started in brazil in 1924 and uh In brazil the decision to raise uh ethanol content in gasoline started in 1975 But since 82 We have been using 22 percent ethanol blended in gasoline Since 2003 25 percent And since 2015 27 percent in all gasoline sold in a country, which is Continental size 8.5 million square kilometers 851 million hectares of land With ethanol distributed as a sole field In 43,000 retailing stations and blended As 27 percent blend in all gasoline sold in the country Last year 2019 46 percent of gasoline Were substituted by ethanol. This is a very remarkable achievement What a country has achieved this level of substitution with great advantages in terms of health Reduction of hospital expenses Reduction of air pollution in general. This is why san paulo a city with 21 million people 8.5 million cars Doesn't have the same air pollution as mexico city or deli or beijing where people use mascus San paulo is the fourth largest city in the world But it ranks number 879 in terms of air pollution in the world in particular matter 2.5 microns These all do from the large scale application of ethanol We have the automobile industry here in brazil 34 world class Automakers the same that you have in the u.s. In europe in japan and korea in china Established here in brazil adopting high-level blends and using flex cars Flex cars account for 80 percent today Of the existing fleet and are responsible for 92 percent of sales Very soon the fleet is going to be 92 flex And the economic impact is tremendous Over far 45 years brazil has been able to substitute 506 billion dollars This is very relevant for brazil a country that has International reserves of 380 billion dollars So we are very proud We have evolved in brazil from simple blend mandates To a new regulation called henova bill Henova bill Without creating any subsidy without creating a carbon tax Simply by establishing a regulation that promotes voluntary certification For energy efficient scores Is going to raise the 46 participation In autocycle fuel demand for ethanol to 55 percent in 10 years It's true Henova bill The technologies which are very modern In motorization like the hybrid flex car, which is today the cleanest car on earth Emitting only 29 grams per kilometer grams of CO2 per kilometer 29 Are going to be rewarded Obliging few distributors to decarbonize and reduce their carbon intensity So the only thing the government will have to do is establish decarbonization targets This is the new frontier This is how we think the world should evolve through market driven Pricing of carbon And we are moving here in brazil towards zero carbon ethanol very soon ethanol produced in brazil will be zero carbon This means that the battery electric vehicle that is emitting today between 98 and 141 grams per kilometer Is going to be something That is not going to be part of the objective So I think we need to have continued integration Continue exchange of information I'm very excited. We are at the edge Of the discussion of mobility sustainable mobility And I'm very glad to send this message to you in Washington And I wish you have a very productive discussion discussion And count always with me To promote sustainable production of liquid fuels with high density Which are high dense in energy with low carbon footprint This is what is going to promote income development And sustainable conditions for us to continue Thriving and integrating the energy and the agro industries. Thank you very much. Thank you, Dave God bless you all. Thank you, Barrett Sorry that I could not be joining you this morning. Goodbye One of the great this this leading statements of Today was various acknowledgements of my role as organizer of this event I am literally the host nothing else. We know the real organizer is sitting here in the front row And we're going to call him up here to actually run a panel and show his face. Dave Hallberg Thank you very much Reid and thank all of you for coming and the folks out there that are listening on live stream I'm looking for uh senator Sampke and senator sire. Please to join me On the panel without further ado I might also say while we're waiting Wherever you want to sit, Jim For them to get collected that uh The the bios and photos and all the presentations will be available Uh on the uh on the what what website is a bear? EESI Um, which reminds me by the way that uh I have two big thanks and shout outs here one is to senator re uh worth and read For this incredible venue at the un foundation and in particular charlotte and her team have been just incredible Uh, and the second is to uh EESI Dan and and and carol and amory, uh, you guys have been really really great and this live stream is helpful And we're going to continue to work with you on that in the future In the interest of time i'm not going to read through the the bios of these, uh Incredibly uh renaissance gentlemen to my left But i'll start with Doug Sampke They're both South Dakotans, which i'm very proud of since I was a south dakota farm boy myself um dug uh Farms is a very large farming operation with three sons But for the relevance of today's event. He's the president of south dakota farmers union As well as the the president of south dakota farmers enterprises How he finds the time to do all of these things? I don't know, but he's uh, he's truly an ever ready bunny You will hear today him talk about america's farms protecting america cities He recently was published in the demoin register in a guest essay that laid out a clear, uh blueprint As to how we think we can move this industry To protect america cities from e10 to e30. He'll talk about that today to my immediate left. It's jim sire He's the ceo of glacial lakes energy Which is a uh approximately 400 million gallon enterprise of three separate facilities They're extremely efficient Very productive profitable even in today's environment and he and his team Brought those plants back from the verge of bankruptcy about 10 years ago Where jim In my mind is has earned his claim to fame and i'll never forget watching How he and his people did it Was what we call the water town e30 challenge A couple of years ago. They mobilized the resources hired the the technical expertise required And uh convinced the people of their town To get behind the use of e30 In standard vehicles what some people call legacy vehicles It was an enormous success. They mobilized the car dealers the the police Just about everybody including the the girls and boys clubs And all the data that came out as he will explain Had proven that the use of e30 in standard cars Is is magical and very effective From there i'll go with you duck Well, thanks, dave You know, I uh every time I get up in front of people You want to give me that click the the first thing I want to point out is uh Must now be on this piece, right? There's no picture for it, but it's my grandkids You got you got to make this personal You really do I mean, there's one reason that the ethanol business is as successful as it is because I think people like jim And people like ori swazy and some of the other pioneers like david have made it personal and For me, it's about my grandkids because the last thing I want them to do Is to say Down the road when things are way worse than they are today Grappa, what did you do? That's not going to happen None are to my watch And as president south Dakota farmers union, I've relayed that message not only to our state board But to our members and national farmers union as well and Right now we've got uh an steckle who's on board with us Glad to have her representing farmers union and the e30 and e30 challenge with jim and his board have taken on um The whole the whole thing with the ethanol why why right why ethanol? The fact matters. It's the best thing going Can't find anything better um Back in the day when senator dasha was was fighting so hard for us with rfs and rfs too It was pretty easy to do things across the aisle in this in this town As we've heard from different speakers before That's not the case today Thank god they did what they did and the fact of the matter is We don't need to really do anymore Not in this town We can challenge What epa is doing how they're holding us back On the 202 l with lawyers like we've already hired And we're going to prove it. We're going to take them to the challenge because the law is there as you heard boyden say And senator worth. I'm telling you what? They've done the hard work for us. We just got to see it through And that's why i'm here, you know, I I can go through all these slides all I want and tell you know about the different levels of the plants in the different states And the buildings of bushels that we go through and What did I do? There we go. There it is Um, but you know, here's some of the wide range of policy goals that we've got same thing as anybody, right health care The economy the wealth and and income equality climate change taxes jobs foreign affairs Crime I mean go down the list military. I was sitting on the plane one time This is way back when senator dash was still in the office And this is during the iraq war And I had a young man. It was in the military coming back From minneapolis to walter reed He was an amputee And he asked where I was going. Of course, I didn't ask where I have to ask where he was going. I could tell And he told me he was going to walter reed and and I said, you know what? I said that's one reason I'm going out here is because I'm prone to the use of ethanol I don't want anyone to have to fight and defend our ourselves from other countries and for that oil that that you had to fight for too many times We've done that as a country many of the wars that we fight are over energy oil and He was glad for me to be doing that. He told me he said thank you He said I really wish I would have been defending a Iowa cornfield where I'm from then defending The oil rigs in iraq So we gotta gotta keep that in mind. It's something we don't talk about much anymore You know and corn is the most efficient resilient beneficial crop this nation that farmers can grow I mean the carbon sequestration we've heard all about that already Jeff did a great job talking about that And the yields are getting greater and greater. I've got a slide that points that out a little bit more clear Later on here And why should we give the money away? I mean, I think about Some of the things that have happened in water town. I remember driving through water town before the plant was built And you'd have to wait for a train car to go by loaded with completely raw corn It's not the case today There's several trains that go out of there now They're not just carrying distillers, but they're carrying The the wet distillers are carrying the dry distillers are carrying the ethanol and all that money is staying right there in town Jim and his board are doing a great job not only with the business but also promoting it and the use of it in the community Food versus fuel we heard a little bit about that earlier today I get to this point. I guess I'd like to say You know, uh, you seen Jeff's slides about how we're producing more with less and that's exactly true Uh on our farm we use what we call mzb. It's a multi zone Based to Soil sampling And we break we break it down not so much in a grid like a lot of farms do this is on the soil type And it's a very unique system that our co-op uses and and we do a lot of testing for the co-op My son does that and uh, we don't put any more fertilizer On any of the zones that we know it can produce So we're taking from the poor ground. We're we're not putting anything on basically But on the better ground we're putting more on we're really not using a lot less But we're using it more efficiently and same thing with water same thing with with the herbicides You go down the list and uh, it makes our farm so much more productive And I really believe that eventually someday, uh, we could see that as a regulation We farmers are getting used to that. I mean, we're we're being regulated in a number of different fronts and for good reason We should be accountable We don't want to make our water worse. We don't want to make our air worse And again, that's why ethanol is such a big part of and why I promote it so heavily The economic stimulations we look down the list. Look what we've done there with 16 billion gallons from 43 million metric tons of Byproducts, you know, look at the jobs set almost 72,000 jobs 294,000 indirect Jobs 46 billion dollars contributed GNP 25 billion dollars in household income 10 billion dollars in tax revenue No subsidies Can you all the industry say that? ask yourself Here's where we came from. I mean this here slide really points out the facts of of work Farmers really seen the last big boom It was during the rfs1 and rfs2 And back in those days, we were told you're on a new plateau Our commodity groups are telling us you're on a new plateau. You will never see corn under four bucks again Guess what? It's not up to four bucks today And guess what? I've got a lot of farmer friends that are in trouble today Because they believe that lie They believed that that was going to happen that they were never going to have to look back. So they overspent They didn't have the capital to do it. They borrowed to the hilt and now today. We're losing them We've got 20 higher use loss of of Farms to bankruptcy today than we did just eight years ago That's astounding But we were again, we were we were total lie And we were counting on the ethanol industry and we were counting on what was going to happen through the government And it didn't happen I'm here to tell you today that I don't believe that we should count on the government I think we should be just like boyden said I think we should be out of free market But if we're going to be on a free market, let us stand on the same ground that they're standing on Don't hold us back And where is it where are we headed and what are the goals? Well, it's pretty much said all that already But the fact of the matter is the same public health reasons and the same get the lead out I mean, we've we've got the aromatics that are causing us problems today that we knew were going to cause us problems and We're worse off today than we really were with the lead when you really think about it But to find a pathway to safer and higher octane standards epa can reduce the amount of mobile source air Toxics from gasoline and the emission to the greatest extent achievable just as was said earlier Here's some of the eliminating barriers and this is all by epa basically, you know I mean read down that list. I mean it's it's astounding There's no reason that epa the environmental protection agency I mean, they got a lot to be accountable for We need more to help us hold them accountable And what's in it for all of us? Well, we can fulfill the rfs targets, you know, we can restore competitive marketplace We can make possible In in in immediate and substantial reductions to the us transportation Sectioning a carbon footprint. I mean that was all said earlier, but the safe rule to me is our Ticket to where we're going to make things right I really believe that I mean there's a lot of other government challenges or lawsuits going on right now The rvp and such and understand that but I really believe that the safe rule is where we are really going to make some hay This is what we and if we don't shame on us That is on us and more people more organizations need to jump on board with us and to get to that point Now here's something I really want you to Think about ethanol provides the lowest cost highest octane enhancer in the world If ethanol was used to be made to premium it would Cut the cost and spread from regular to premium to pennies Right now there's a 60 cents gouge that the oil industry is charging to you For a lesser product So what I'm saying is if ethanol was actually sold as a premium We wouldn't be talking about this today and we'd be solving the health issues at the same time This here just a simple slide that I'll just tell you Shows that we are keeping the price of gasoline down We help the oil industry we don't harm them as so many are trying to say that we do And where are we going and how are we going to get there? Well, this is a simple slide showing how Corn production was pretty stagnant, you know early on in In the history of uh of corn production in this country And then all of a sudden look there in the 40s how we started to use hybrids and I remember my my grandpa telling me He was a funk seed dealer very any farmers in here and I I should ask this question first. I usually do I say how many farmers are in here? I know there's a couple. Okay. I'll try to speak up Because most of the time they can't hear because they're always around tractors and augers and things So I I always want to make sure they can hear me or move them to the front They're they're kind of like uh, uh, norwegian luthards. They like to set in the back row Which you you've seen here already, but look how that like my grandpa said, you know hybrids changed his production He went from 35 bushels an acre And went to 75 bushels acre and he thought he had the world by the tail because now he was filling his grain bins He didn't even think about any of the fuel Adities or anything like that back in those days, but then look how it just continued to climb and it will continue to climb And I can tell you why it's because that's what farmers do We produce We're good at it. So let us do what we're good at. Okay um Every time that we think that we're on a new plateau like I said We show people that we produce But the fact of the matter is it really comes down to this and I don't have a slide for this one But it comes down to the fact that it's calories How many hamburgers can every person eat in a day? Just so many right Well, guess what in this world today? We're producing more calories every single day We can't eat ourselves out of that hole. We're overproducing and that's on us. That's farmers But I was down reading some others jimmy earlier One of the challenges that we have besides what we have in ethanol Is the farming system the marketing system doesn't work for the farmer today Not the way it was designed to It works for everybody else It works for everybody that provides a service to the farmer and i'm talking from bankers to insurance companies And in the chicago board of trade But it doesn't work for the farmer who has the most invested for the longest amount of time and he gets a smallest margin From that marketing system We've got to find a way and we've got some answers to farmers union on how to do this And to to make sure that our farmers have a tool that they can market things through That's one of the other answers that we can get farmers and rural america back on track And uh, but ethanol in my opinion was a last great thing It can be the next best thing and it can also help save the country and it can also help make our health care better Thank you Okay, thank you duck As dav introduced me earlier. I'm jim sire ceo at glacial lakes energy before I move on I think he's been far too generous in his Uh, accolades that he's placed upon me. I think there's some pretty important folks that I want to acknowledge Certainly dug in his group have been As of the last year or two have been there right and with us Promoting these products And pushing it forward a single-handedly pushed Forward some e30 uh initiatives in the state legislature last year Um, marcie cole is our director of corporate affairs and communications. She really uh, when we began this campaign Four years ago. She really took it To the next level Obviously, uh, we're all busy. We all have responsibilities But she is the promotion of our product and the the membership falls under her Responsibilities so A great fit for her. She's been with the company since day one And so she's had a major part of this Terry schmidt standing in the back. He's one of our board members Obviously, we can't go forward with something like this without the support of the board So, uh, the board has been very uh, and terry in particular has been very Supportive and vocal about the the higher blends and what it takes to get to that next level Not always easy Not always easy even within our own industry. There's apprehension And uh, maybe we could talk about that a little later, but uh So, you know, we've we've been called a rebel We've been called kind of a different animal Out there uh making you know doing what we're doing but we're perfectly comfortable with those titles and And uh, I think what we've done there Uh while Probably not significant for us Individually as a company because 99.9 percent of what we make There's there's just no people in south dakota. There's 30 000 people in water town And uh, you know 800 900 000 in the whole state so 99.9 percent of what we make goes out to the west coast to just uh The fort worth dallas texas and even exported we we do a nice job of creating export grade that goes to Oh, some something like 23 countries. So um So anyway, we're going to talk a little bit about uh, what we've done with our little sphere of influence there in water town south dakota or i'll call it northeast south dakota because Uh, it really does reach out into the some of the smaller communities that surround water town So what is the e 30 challenge? Well the e 30 challenge is a camp and you heard a few folks refer to it Uh, maybe it's just what's going on in water town. Well, this is what was going on It's a campaign to trial the use of premium e 30 and all vehicles both flex fuel and non flex Uh, you'll be with what we call legacy And we are challenging the conventional wisdom that 2001 and newer Non ffe autos which are flex fuel vehicle autos can operate at most on a blend of e 15. So The 2001 have been approved to use e 15 We think the epa came up short and should have gone all the way to e 30 And uh And you know for various obvious reasons much much of which we're talked about today The main purpose of our challenge was to drive change to support rural america. There's no secret about that. That's uh A lot of what dug's talking about Um, but we think we have something to offer when he says the farms can help the cities or protect the cities We think we have something to offer in this product so, um you know when I Back in my early years of my career. I left uh, and and I regret that senator worth isn't here But I actually left south dakota went to colorado for 18 years. I lived in that dirty toxic air for 18 years And it's interesting when you flew in traveled a lot when you flew in you could see it Once you're in it. You don't even realize you're in it and and so Um, you know, we think we have something offered it's frustrating to be in a Setting like that the front range where you should be able to look up and In there mornings when you can do that when the winds are the right direction And maybe on a sunday morning when people aren't driving You could look up and see the mountains and it's just a beautiful sight But it's frustrating when when you know you're flying and you look at that And the first thing you see is this ugly brown cloud hugging the ground and you know that there Solutions out there So that that is that is what we mean by the statement where we think we have a product that Large cities metropolitan wherever there's a concentration of people foreign countries Countries in india such as india and china and places where there's large concentrations of people and a lot of activity We think this is the the solution So the goals of the e30 challenge was to increase the level of awareness To gather some engine performance data To dispel the myths about premium e30 To change consumer preference and behavior We still uh, you know, there's just a lot of things out there a lot of Opinions out there even to this day And then finally to create a prototype for for government in the industry Again, if we were looking at this is solely what did we get out of it in water town south dakota? I would say very little We sell a tanker to a week of ethanol locally and that's pretty much it Everything else goes on a rail car It's shipped out of the area so As we look at the goals. I think that last statement there was really the one that we were trying to Drive home. We hope that the industry that policymakers that government will take this Exercise that we went through And use it as a as a stepping stone to something else We also hope that within the midwest My vision would be that there are more water town south dakota's out there that there are more communities and and the The panel up here that said, you know, they'd like to try this in South dakota north Minnesota, iowa, nebraska. I think that's a great Example of what we're trying to do too. We're trying to entice other communities To do what we've done so that eventually we grow those islands and we cover not just cities and counties but states and then You know just like e-10 did it started from the outside and worked its way to the coasts So really just for folks. I know this is very basic some of this is A thing as you've heard before but e-30 is 30 percent ethanol 70 percent gasoline It's lower in toxins. We've heard talked about that In almost every case. It's more affordable. I think there probably are some exceptions where there's An ability to sell that higher octane that high performance octane But it's it's an octane rating of roughly 94 95 So that is that is the product And We have you know since regular premium is 91 octane We've we've You know If I look out there, I mean it would be nice at at some point And I think it's the right way to go At least initially to see 15 percent as your regular gasoline and 30 percent as your premium I think you're there's it's very likely that folks would move on to the 30 just for the reasons And then the gentleman from Brazil They're at 27 percent. So 27 and a half percent. So We're very very closely aligned It's interesting a couple of days ago. I was in Nashville. I talked to a gentleman from brazil and He he and we've heard this throughout the industry. We've not done any official work on it But there's literally no difference between the vehicles and I think steve maybe has done some of this work too But between the vehicles that are going to brazil And in those that are in the in the us here other than I think they can handle some of the higher blends even more than In e30 and the whole anhydrous hydrous thing too To pull this off We knew that we couldn't just go out even though that we've got a long history in water town south dakota And we've got shareholders there. We've got and glacial lakes energy is a co-op made up of 4 000 shareholders Not all are there, but the legacy shareholders are in in the area I would say we probably have about 60 50 to 60 percent of those folks are right around within a 50 mile radius So to to to pull this off we needed a couple of things First of all, we had the history behind us where some of this Initiative has started years ago when the plant was first built And I think the epa epa even sent a representative out to water town And asked started asking shareholders when they were filling up their non-flex vehicles with e30 to stop doing that or they were going to be arrested And so um, you know, I wasn't there then I'm but I've heard it from so many people and dugs shaking his head that that that did happen Uh, and then finally I guess they gave up and left left us alone And so we went through this tough period as as Dave said earlier and and we really really focused on saving the the company That was in 2008 9 and It was post expansion. So we had a lot of other things to focus on Once we uh, once we uh, righted the ship so to speak um We were approached by uh Steve's brother Dave van der grind and said, I think water town south dakota is the perfect place to do this challenge And this is this is what I'd like you to do and So we took that that back to the board and the board was was all in and management was all in And um, and marsy for sure. She was in 150. She wanted to go with this thing and make it work. So But when we sat down, we knew that we had some critical pieces that we need gaps to fill You know, we knew that we had the the membership support Although that was mainly within our own, uh Shareholder group. There's still lots of other industries and residents in water town That are that were skeptical um We knew that we had the network of stations We have roughly 50 percent of the stations in water town or Flex or uh flex pumps or blender pumps um But beyond that really the the critical partnerships that we needed we knew that Okay, if we start ask actually asking people on a grand scale Coming out in the media and asking them to start to try e30 What's going to happen? Who's going to be the first one to be contacted? And we really felt like well anybody that is responsible for selling that auto or selling a auto or fixing it Is that's the first place they're going to go? so we set out to uh Gather these people together and to find out what what they thought Uh, I can tell you we have two significant dealerships in water town. One is very supportive Of of what we're doing. One is maybe not as much um And in in his words he says i'm not going to get in your way, but just don't expect me to Jump in and and and endorse this this because he had concerns with The you know the the the brand that he was carrying that uh That he was going to get crossways with with with them The service shops maybe a little bit easier The technicians even within the dealerships And we held some meetings early on to to tell them what we were what we were up to Lake area tech is a uh A technical institute in water town very successful fact Three years ago named as the number one technical institute in the country and president obama actually came out and gave the commencement address So we felt it was important to get uh With get with those folks and to start working with them more than we had been The fuel retailers we knew that if folks pulled up and and they were at the counter we didn't want them to start to uh While you better not try that so we felt you know, we absolutely needed to get Excuse me get these fuel retailers on board And then probably what was the most uh enlightening was our own employees You know, they're working for us their paycheck comes every two weeks if we can't get them on board Why would we expect somebody else to to jump on board? So we actually surveyed our own employees and found out some pretty interesting things in that process So that kind of set us back to okay. Now. How do we how do we what do we have to do to pull this off and And do it right So from there and there was many others. I mean there was there was uh all some promotional events We did with charities and some the media was a big part but uh and other civic organizations But slowly we we we started to push this thing forward and it was really uh Interesting as to what we were finding out Early on we felt it's critical that we have kind of a go-to guy a point man if you will or woman Um, and I I really didn't even know Andy Wicks until This this campaign I'd heard the name Excuse me drop the time or two and uh, you know, so uh Ori Swayze Said you got to get Andy Wicks on your side. You got to call him So we reached out to Andy Andy is the owner of dyno tune speed and performance in water town It's an interesting shop. It's not your normal mechanic shop He typically doesn't take just normal run of the mill products or projects, but if if you have a Oh, let's say you decide to buy a Corvette You want to get a little more not if uh 600 horsepower isn't enough But if you want to get 800 horsepower out of that car, you're going to take it to Andy and uh, so he and to get that he's you know Fuel is what he works on in performance and efficiency He specializes in high performance fuel injected engines Um Over 15 000 tested and tuned across the us Since 2006 he tested ethanol and oem and high performance applications are a vast array of makes and models Knows this stuff inside out And it has been a trainer for some of the the big three and others And then at one point in time had been selling Uh Flex fuel conversion kits for non standard or non flex fuel vehicles And then I believe the epa came and told him to stop doing that too. So For the longest time they had their eyes on water town south dakota in one way or another But Andy Andy after I first met him I thought you know, this is the guy There is no question about it. This is the guy and here he is right here in our backyard What more could could be what what could be better? I guess the other thing I'd add is Andy is very well respected within the Automotive circles and not only water town or in the area It was interesting the first time I ever went into his shop Nice big shop clean shop And I looked around the room and here's all these muscle cars and high performance cars And there's very few of them that have south dakota plates on them They're coming from like a six or seven state re area up in the midwest So he's he's got his name out there and you know, these are folks that Like to spend money on cars and probably go through a set of tires and in a month So early on, you know, one of the questions that we kept Anticipating that we kept hearing was will premium e30 work in my auto and I think this is what we put in front of Andy Of course, some of us knew what would we've had a lot of shareholders that had these stories Uh, I think mercy has got a what's what's your Honda Accord? What year? 2007 it's got about almost 300,000 miles on and maybe only a handful of fuel Tanks that were e10. It's all e30 So, uh, you know, we we had some examples like that But still we have a vested interest shareholders have a vested interest Marcy has a vested interest so, you know, we we knew that Okay, this this can't just be Within gl e it's got to work its way out into the community and and have others experience And believe what we believe What we found out in in the trial is vehicles react somewhat differently Although the data was fairly consistent across across all test subjects and in other words Chevy pickup with a with a 305 in is going to act a little differently or maybe a lot differently than a Ford eco boost and now that's a high compression engine. So right away You could see that difference, but even within Uh, the same line different engines that weren't necessarily high compression engines. We're going to perform differently Any car with a closed loop fuel control most which is most anything 1988 newer is Is is You know the fuel system would adapt to That that higher ethanol concentration And that's kind of referred to as what andy calls the adaptive fueling strategy technology There had been some large-scale testing done in the past Uh, and there was significant parts compatibility research that had been done previously with higher blends as well To dispel any uh corrosion concerns So one of the questions that kept coming up Well does e 30 by itself trigger a check engine light because that's the diagnostic system that's that's Monitoring everything that goes on in that in that vehicle and then it triggers a light and there's Over 2,000 different issues or codes that could could come up E 30 was tested and it it produced about 11 percent variants Well, most vehicles are set with about a 25 plus or minus Tolerance level and so we early on we knew that e 30 was not gonna Was not going to check trigger a check engine light So the check engine light again just a little background here 2000 codes that can be triggered um Most vehicles uh 20 variants either way uh, and then our conclusion was or at least the the the uh advice we're getting from andy was Andy wicks was premium e 30 will not be the only thing that triggers that light There will be something else going on in the background when coupled with e 30 That's going to trigger that light Again very important because to this day we still have people that say well I put the e 30 in and guess what happened the check engine light when came on I took put in regular fuel guess what happened it went off So those are that's that's some of what we anticipated could happen But here's what's really going on in that situation So you've got your your original tolerance Or trigger of 11 percent which is far below the the check engine threshold If you happen to have a dirty mass airflow sensor And andy has estimated that could be as high as 18 percent And then you go and put the e 30 on top of that guess what you're at 29 percent now You're over the 25 percent tolerance. So that would explain You you take the e 30 out now folks think everything's okay You put it back in here comes a check engine light So those are some of the things and we still have these that come up And in every case Andy has hooked that that vehicle up to we invite them to bring those vehicles forward We send them over to Andy. He hooks it up to the computer and he can see there's something else going on in that vehicle So as part of the test or part of the challenge we we we went out to our sharehold or excuse me our The public and we said, you know what if you try this We will buy you three tanks of each e 10 and three tanks of e 30 There's a few things that we would ask you to do for us one is to That that e 30 test vehicle sticker. We wanted to get that out into the community These folks are driving around the community. We wanted them to see that that is an e 30 test vehicle So it wasn't just something they were hearing on the radio or reading in the paper They were You know Seeing it in the traffic too We had data loggers on there and these were the same data loggers used by the epa And we had a number we wanted a random Uh collection of makes and models and so here's the list of some of those vehicles And as you might not be surprised lots of Ford Chevy's and Chrysler products up in that part of the country But really we if you'd pick your way through there, you've got a Mercedes in there You got a Nissan you got a Volkswagen lots of Toyotas Um, so we we did get not every make and model, but we got a good collection of makes and models So in the end the results Over 80,000 test miles were driven with e 30 and the test vehicles We didn't see any reduction in performance. Some actually felt an increase in performance Particularly the an Andy tested this the high compression engines Stable or improved fuel economy in again primarily in those high compression engines Uh And in uh horsepower increase that was proved out on on Andy's dyno tune We estimate that there's thousands in fuel savings alone No check engine lights from e 30 and certainly Although this probably isn't uh as much of an issue in water town south dakota We get we get a lot of wind there got wind towers that surround us And so we we don't typically see the issues at Denver would but we know that the Air quality is improved So who else is using e 30 just run through uh this trolley that runs around town in the summertime is on e 30 You got uh the police department the ambulances in water town are on e 30 now There's a testament if the police and the ambulances can use it It's safe Over in Aberdeen, which is a another sister community about 100 miles to the northwest of us The brown county sheriff is is on it the uh the county fleet boys and girls club and numerous private businesses And there's the uh the water town area transit just a picture of the buses and some some uh statistics 268 000 miles that they put on All but one vehicle slightly increased mileage police department street department Saving money. There's a statement from one of the captains the Aberdeen Boys and Girls Club again And I think uh Mike Herman over there big supporter once we had him believing he made the statement no problems in the winter so To date since may of 2016 we've uh sold we've been tracking the fuel sales in water town south dakota Almost 6 million gallons if you use a 20 mile per gallon average, that's 120 million miles on on e 30 Thank you very much and we'll take some questions Thank you very much jim and uh I think we're right at two o'clock if i'm not mistaken so Uh, we'll probably just move on to the next panel unless somebody is just Going crazy to ask a question Thank you very much jim and uh Now i've got the bad news for you as i'm on a panel now So i'm going to turn it over ernie and ernie's going to introduce the next panel I can't well you Are you the moderator? I think we're looking for burl. Yeah Grabbing those notes. All right. We'll get we'll get a slide up on the screen here us in the middle Good afternoon everyone while we're waiting for the uh Us uh screen to change here. We'll segue to our next panel. My name is ernie. Shea I am the coordinator of the 25 by 25 renewable energy alliance and the facilitator of the agado ethanol work group And uh with many many of you and other partners have been working for the past 15 years Trying to accelerate the introduction of high octane low carbon fuels into the north america light Uh duty transportation fleet and it's been quite a journey quite an adventure And the one thing that i've really taken away Is the critical need for partnerships to get to the shared goal that we all have together so Throughout the morning and the early afternoon. We've been taking a look at the role of ethanol and america's energy future We've spent some time talking about health impacts national security benefits Climate and environmental benefits economic benefits to local communities The list goes on and on in terms of ethanol's Contributions to america's energy future america's economy america's health And now we're going to go back and take a deeper dive into health public health by taking a look at the Uh gasoline aromatic health effects and impacts And we have a panel Composed of two veteran presenters read dutchard and dave halberg Who have been introduced before and you've heard from already so you get to go again gentlemen We're also joined by burl haigwood with the clean fuels development coalition And burl and i have worked together for many years over the course of this march to a new energy future And look forward to his contributions as a member of the advisory board of the clean fuels development coalition So to get us started read i think you're first up to Take us a little bit deeper into this question of What effects do these aromatics have on public health? So read Thank you, ernie I don't see the clicker up here Ernie did pretty well considering he didn't know until about a minute ago that he was doing that. I thought that was pretty nice, ernie Thank you for that Intro we're a good team. There you go Ernie and I have suffered together a lot of these many years Since 2002 if you can believe that So i'm gonna i'm going to review a little of the bidding I'm not going to go fast through the fuse first through a few slides And then we're going to dig a little bit deeper into what exactly We know and why we know it so just to review the bidding We we've heard a lot about octane. I thought Boy the story about octane this morning was terrific But until we had the change administration, we were aiming at 54.5 MPG we've got a rule in there that's not as aggressive as that but you know automakers Don't operate on congressional cycles or even presidential cycle presidential cycles And we'll hear later from reg modeling about how they need at least a five-year planning window to Uh Design their new vehicles. So they're moving in this direction anyway, and That's why the industry is split about the quote-unquote relief that the administration wants to give them And we heard about the the the history of why why this benefits Vehicles because you can set them at a higher compression ratio that makes them more efficient, but you need higher octane The history led aromatics alcohol fuels Yeah, we've heard about aromatics And the clean air act amendments that limited them and yet we still have Roughly 25 of every gallon of gasoline. So there's a benzene ring for you The reason that Aromatics help with octane is that that benzene ring is harder to break up in combustion So you have a little bit slower combustion and that leads to a more even burn But they also end up Producing emissions of particulate matter and it's particulate matter that People are zeroing in on is the biggest health risk remaining From motor vehicle emissions in particular We've heard and will reiterate that Aromatics are the most carbon intensive fraction to produce and so Uh, not only are they more expensive, but they are running up the greenhouse gas emissions profile of the oil industry And then once the emissions come out of the tailpipe They recombine with sunlight and air and produce secondary organic aerosol or so a and the recent research We've learned is that this so a is able to travel long distance these very, um Tiny particles Well below 2.5 Penetrate not just to the lung but into the bloodstream heart and brain and have effects on mortality and morbidity and The the 2.5 Exposure alone Was estimated and this was a meta analysis that was done at harvard Some years ago Was a 3,800 premature mortalities and a total social cost of 28 billion dollars a year now Sometimes you come across people will say well 3,800 mortalities. I mean is that the worst thing in the world? Well, in all the time we've been engaged in the middle east since 9 11 We've lost 7,000 american lives American soldiers have been killed In in that time in the middle east and that's two years worth of deaths from Particular matter. So yeah, I think it matters Now we're going to dig a little deeper and this is a little bit dense on the screen But it's because I want to give you some actual data here So this is an excerpt from epa's tier 3 rule in 2014 So now i'm not saying epa should have known we're saying what epa actually published so They acknowledge that Light duty vehicles cars and light trucks Contribute to air toxics as a result The population experiences an elevator risk of cancer and other non cancer health effects From these air toxics and they're included that they list A half a dozen of them that number one is benzene and Later on in the list is polycyclic organic matter. Well, that just means The same these are all interchangeable terms really organic matter Defines a broad class of compounds including pah's So As they say and this is again taking this from the epa rulemaking That they're formed from combustion. They're present in the atmosphere and gas in particulate form I'll say as a side note and we're going to come to this in another slide or two This is before they have had shown to them that in fact their understanding of how SOAs are formed and how they continue to exist in the atmosphere was contradicted by the research we'll refer to but in any case Even at this stage in their understanding they acknowledge that cancer is the major concern from exposure to pom Then they then they recognized the research by ricky perera Which was studies have shown that maternal exposure to pah's in a population of pregnant women were associated with several Adverse birth outcomes including low birth weight Reduced length of birth as well as impaired cognitive development in preschool children Uh these that's that particular research that they're referring to they're writing this for a publication in 2014 has since been augmented further by columbia and they acknowledge that mobile sources are also This is where they get they they at least acknowledge secondary organic aerosols. They're contributors to precursor emissions which react With sunlight and air to form secondary concentration of air toxics So along comes a scientist at pacific northwest national laboratory named aliz laniuk And among other things, um aliz laniuk Did a research uh that looked at what happened to air quality on the west coast of the united states during the olympics That were in beijing Well, what what's that got to do with the price of eggs you wonder? Well, if you remember during the olympics, they shut down beijing's industry and car transportation I mean the effect on air pollution in china was remarkable So here was a wonderful natural experiment that for a couple of weeks there was no pollution coming out of china Well, lo and behold there wasn't any pollution reaching western oregon either Now i'm exaggerating of course, but they saw an actual relationship between the pollution in Beijing and the pollution of the west coast of the united states What does that mean? That means that this pollution is not settling out on the roadsides of beijing It's traveling across the ocean Thousands of miles and still existing when it reaches oregon so Her research showed and this is again. Now i'm i'm quoting from her published documents. I'm not uh paraphrasing here When secondary organic aerosol particles are formed in the presence of pah's Their formation and properties are significantly different From those formed without pah's now. I added the underlining here just to point it out Compared to pure soa particles without pah's These pah infused particles exhibit slower evaporation kinetics Higher fractions of non-volatile components and higher viscocities Assuring their longer atmospheric lifetimes So here was scientific analysis Uh underpinning the reason that these particles were making it all the way over from china to oregon Because they they combined and rode the soa across the ocean And as she explains The increased viscosity and decreased volatility Provide a shield that protects pah's from chemical degradation and evaporation Allowing for the long-range transport of these toxic pollutants The magnitude of this effect is surprisingly large The presence of pah's during soa formation increases mass loadings by factors of two to five And particle number concentrations. These are these Ultra fine particles that penetrate so deeply in some cases by more than a factor of 100 So we're not talking about a trivial effect here. We're talking about Something that's central to understanding the health effects of these pollutants So this is my summary. This is not ala speaking. So just to repeat what we just heard they ride along and in my Term they weaponize these ultra fine particles That might otherwise be relatively harmless But now are carrying this toxic payload of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons these Particularly high molecular weight pah's is derived from aromatics and gasoline You'll sometimes hear diesel blamed But in fact diesel tends to produce low molecular weight pah's High molecular weight pah's come from gasoline. They seem to be the more dangerous And the pah's As pah's are not in the fuel. They're a product of the combustion of the fuel So the aromatics are in the fuel. They get combusted and the outcome is pah's This is the a little excerpt from the Parerra findings that exposure of pregnant women in the single-digit parts petroleum Was associated with a variety of adverse developmental effects in children including IQ deficits similar to those from exposure to lead Well, we heard earlier today again that it was discovering the IQ effects of lead On child development that turned the tide of public opinion and forced The industry and epa to act on lead and we may have the same Thing going on right now And then the last little item here is a kind of a refresh from harvard Which Concluded in addition that high daily exposure to pah's may cause molecular changes that accelerate aging Now this is a little bit beyond my capabilities, but trigger damage to dna methylation Which has been shown by other studies to be associated with premature death Even accounting for cardiovascular and other disease risk risk factors So adding on top of everything else we've talked about there's an additional More mortality factor A very recent study by korean researchers that appeared in nature um Made the very important point And i'll i'll quote it here, but first i'll paraphrase it that all Particles are not equal. Well, if you think about how epa regulates particles, they do it by size Well, how likely is it that size is the determinant factor of toxicity? Not very likely. It's going to be a chemical aspect And so as these researchers found Fine particulate matter smaller than this 2.5 level Is strongly affected with adverse health effects However, it is unlikely that all fine particles are equally toxic in view of their different sizes and chemical components Our results were disclosed higher toxicity of combustion From in other words from combustion aerosols the non-combustion aerosols The mutagenic effects of soot particles which come from aromatic hydrocarbons Are suggested to be associated with the organic components Generating reactive oxygen species that term of art that you come across in the medical literature That are able to break dna strands. So this is in effect the mechanism that explains these health effects They were primarily looking at diesel exhaust But the gasoline engine exhaust particles showed comparable Or slightly lower toxicity relative to diesel engine exhaust particles In there in their findings if you look at their charts you can hardly tell the diesel and the gasoline charts apart Here's another interesting thing that they found the aging process Of freshly emitted particles Has an effect on toxicity What does that mean as they say aged combustion particles oxidized by ozone Are suggested to exacerbate lung injury and inflammation relative to non-oxidized particles So this goes back to our so a story. It's not so much the direct emissions as what happens when the Particles coming out of the exhaust pipe combined with sunlight and air oxidized and Are enabled by this so a transport to be aged they stay in the atmosphere for a long time and they have different health outcomes because of what's happened while they were in the atmosphere Now Dave and I continually call up each other and say well, where's the smoking gun Dave? Well, here's the smoking gun after the azzalaniak research came out epa had a workshop in 2015 on ultra fine particles At which azzalaniak presented her research This is a summary. It's not my summary. This is a summary written by an epa staffer and published in a peer review journal For many years available cladmas atmospheric models were not able to predict so a formation All the models relied on the assumption that so a particles were well mixed low viscosity solutions Don't have to necessarily understand that except the next sentence Recent studies demonstrated that these assumptions were wrong And that so a particles must be viscous semi solid So in other words everything that epa had been doing to predict Atmospheric results predict health effects was based on the wrong model of how these actually these secondary organic aerosols were formed and and what they even consisted of They these studies showed that there's a synergetic effect. This is the azzalaniak work again between pahs and soa Since pah is trapped inside the soa particles slow down soa evaporation Increase soa yield and lifetime. This can explain the long-range transport of toxic compounds like pahs and other persistent pollutants In conclusion and again, this is the conclusion written by an epa staffer and published in the peer review journal In conclusion a new soa paradigm has been developed Particles are semi solid nearly nonvolatile. In other words, they don't just self destruct And trap organic material during formation This is the marching order to epa to regulate soas and by inference Ufps and pahs generally So that's the hard work you had to do today. I'm sorry that was so technical But it's important to see that it's not just us blah blahing up here. This is scientists and epa itself Acknowledging the the health risk that is present here So what's the answer? We know the answer mid-level ethanol blends provide the octane of premium gasoline allow increased compression Increased compression leads to greater energy efficiency greater energy efficiency offsets the lower energy content of gasoline as Oak Ridge has shown They call them quote-unquote renewable super premium fuels, which Maybe they're not going to be marketers, but it was a nice term And Boyden mentioned Mercedes once this morning. One engineer was quoted as I recall in the Wall Street Journal As say these fuels produce ridiculous power and good fuel economy Now that is a marketing statement that you could go to the bank with So If we were to displace Aromatics with mid-level ethanol blends, we would not eliminate aromatics In all likelihood aromatics are naturally present in petroleum They are added during the refining process to increase the octane of gasoline So you probably are not going to eliminate all aromatics One study by Ford Concluded that e30 would displace 60 percent of the aromatics and gasoline Well, when you see those kinds of health effects, I think 60 percent would be a good start. Thank you very much Great, we're going to turn it over to But before we do that, I really want to thank you for that deep dive and that was very detailed But it it strikes me as it reinforces one of the key messages coming out of this forum Which is to direct EPA to do their job and we heard that this morning over and over again Around how difficult that is but what we're talking about now is building A evidence-based case For that action to occur. So this is the type of granular Facts that need to be brought forward In an organized way to allow for EPA to do their job So now we're going to continue down this theme That the the title of our panelist is a truthful accounting of gasoline aromatics health effects And we're going to hear from Dave Halberg Around some of the modeling work that they're doing and how they perhaps need to make some adjustments there. So Dave Thank you very much Ernie and read great job I should apologize to all of you actually for My posture. I had some neck surgery last week. So if I look a little bit like a hunchback I hope it wears off It's a great pleasure for me to be with you because this has been an area of passion for me for 45 years I came back from the middle east after the seventh free war came here to washington I got my degree at johns hopkins school for advanced international studies and worked on the hill For about five or six years as These issues were developing after which I formed the renewable fuels association in 1981 so I am If you accuse me of being an alcoholic. I am I'm really stuck on ethanol. I believe in it very very strongly And I'm absolutely passionate about this particular issue because I have children and grandchildren I think you're going to find my time here is going to be a little bit different In the sense that I may have a little edge And if if I do I'll apologize But after the last 45 years and in particular the last 10 years In which we have spent as a group of us literally thousands if not tens of thousands of hours researching this going through all the documents the peer reviewed studies My takeaway from this is that this is more than just a complex issue That's some very smart people which they are have have overlooked I think there's something else going on so anyhow We'll go on to I I think it's time for epa to get real As ernie says to do their jobs. We think they need to control gasoline's phantom poisons Some of you may have seen last week the pbs documentary Called the poison squad Was written up in the in the wall street journal book review Kind of an interesting quote regulation can be a dirty word to american business But the poison squad does an inspiring job of detailing how filthy things can get when you don't have any regulation at all Really it was a story about a usda chemist That finally got fed up Literally with the way us food policy was allowing Processors to get away with murder Part of the book that really caught my eye was about dairies in Omaha That laced spoiled milk with formaldehyde Which they then sold the orphanages because they thought they could make some money off it And dozens of of children died as a result The entire book made it very very clear that The food and drug the pure food act was a critical part of the turn of the century Change in our culture And at the time americans literally did not know that what was in their food Was killing and maiming them and their children Many of us now believe that a century later Most americans literally don't know that what is in their gasoline Is killing and maiming them and their children And we think that needs to stop there are many parallels, but one major distinction Which is good news i think for us In the in the food case it took 40 years for This harvey wiley and his Contemporaries to get rosa veldt in the congress to pass the the pure food law We have a law that's already been passed. It's in place. It's in force. It's been reaffirmed in 2005 What we need to do now is make sure epa Does its job We're going to talk this story as we we've said now is is about the use of lead and gasoline As many of you know historians think that one of the main reasons for the fall of the roman empire was because they drank their wine from ledic goblets Um, it's a poison. It's a terrible neurotoxin uh toxicant, but despite all that John rockfeller was able to to roll henry ford and and uh, we had led a gasoline for 70 years My particular talk is going to focus on three primary inflection points. The first is the 1990 clean air act amendments Which ban ledic gasoline and restricted? Aromatics btx The second is 15 years later the 2005 epact law Which greatly expanded ethanol production and then reaffirmed congressional restrictions on btx And the third is the 2020 safe rule In clean octane demands the safe rule is now pending before omb As we talked about with boyd this morning, there's a mandatory congressional endangerment finding on the books And we don't need to go back to congress fortunately in these gridlock days to get the authority we need Very briefly the us transportation sector Is dominated by gasoline. I think a lot of people think It's kind of a mix between gasoline and diesel and epa likes us to believe it's mainly Diesel and power plants and maybe trees No, it's it's all a gasoline story. There's 270 million vehicles out there Americans drive trillions of miles Every year on 140 billion gallons a year of gasoline Which is reed says contains from 25 to 30 percent Of these carcinogenic highly toxic Octane compounds and that's 35 to 40 billion gallons a year Of toxic poisons that that are being combusted and they're not combusted completely So so that's our target and I think the last thing we need to remember is EPA would have us believe that the vehicle emissions control systems, which they've really focused on just the automobile Clean all this stuff up They get all the the criteria pollutants pretty well But they do not get the toxic products They do not get the photo oxidants that that react in the atmosphere Which is where the bad stuff are the ufps And and the pa h's Well, as I mentioned ford and rockfeller headed out over 100 years ago ford and the other guys needed octane for their for their vehicles Henry ford said that e30 was the best way to go. He is in writing warned about lead And btx rockfeller on the other hand had a different idea his kerosene refineries had this waste product that came out of them called gasoline and He was trying to get gasoline into cars. He had a lot of gasoline And he did not want to have that gasoline Displaced 30 by an agricultural product. He didn't control Lead was perfect for him because he only added three grams And so he used all his gasoline in the end rockfeller one and 70 years later We had a major public health crisis on our hands Again ethanol's octane properties are superior um There was a 1933 Navy study that found if you took an e30 blend you'd get the same octane boost As three grams of lead which we talked about and or 40 btx So it has enormous octane boost as steve van ergun has told us We already saw the quote from bill keverick about the The scientific american prediction that it would be ethyl alcohol that would be in future fuels And oak ridge national lab and other experts have done a number of studies that say definitively E 30 would give automakers the octane punch they need to increase their compression ratios Cost effectively and safely So let it gasoline we we haven't gotten the weeds on that but very quickly it was really horrible stuff uh, un commissioned report. I think it's 2014 Estimated global annual impacts of lead of gasoline to be 1.1 million deaths again. This is annual Loss of 322 million iq points close to 66 or 60 million crime cases Economic loss of us dollar 2.4 trillion per year, which is 4 of global GDP chicago to ruin tribune recently ran a series that concluded elimination of lead of gasoline was a major reason Why us crime rates dropped sharply nationwide during the 1990s again related to what happened to children and their in their IQs As epa began to phase outlet of gasoline experts warned many experts warned and I was here in washington when it was happening That aromatics btx ex was bad or worse So the inflection point number one was 1990 cleaner act amendments In 1987 there was a tone def report that came out of epa to the senate epw committee That proposed that they should increase The btx limit for certification gasoline to 45 in certification fuels Now basically in their defense they were doing that to respond to what they knew was going to be the loss Of lead and all that loss of octane But what they didn't do was to be forthcoming with congress about the implications of that down the road and Plans for how that might be avoided over time Despite enormous industry and epa opposition and a lot of us in this room were involved in this battle congress passed a mandatory legislative endangerment endangerment finding That requires and I say s instead of d because still today epa is required to substantially reduce gasoline btx as technologies present themselves congress anticipated in in Applying the maximum achievable control technology Standard to that provision that epa would be involved in a proactive way With helping to encourage and advance those technologies Instead epa as we can demonstrate and burl will talk about has worked hard To erect barriers as opposed to encouraging The oil industry of course never gives up after this law was passed. They were determined to somehow eliminate ethanol's threat oil based btx So We can go through this in detail But the bottom line is epa sided with the oil industry. They consistently erected roadblocks to ethanol's use They they Did have an excuse at the time we admit that in that there was not enough ethanol to be used as a replacement And ironically enough after a hundred years. There were really only three real commercially available viable octane enhancers there was lead there was btx or there was ethanol and uh so There was a try with congress in the 1990 clean air act where they required oxygenates and gasoline Oxygenates happened to contain octane There were two types of oxygenates at the time ethanol and mtbe The oil industry went to mtb because they controlled mtb So after about seven or eight years of that program, which did Help cap aromatics at 25 percent, which the law required The mtb contaminated groundwater and it had to be banned so there was this huge upheaval again in the gasoline markets and an epa regulatory policy and So congress went to inflection point number two Essentially what happened is congress called epa's bluff because epa had a legitimate argument saying there was not enough ethanol So congress decided to help and it repealed the mtbe portion of the of the program And then replaced it with the first renewable fuel standard The rfs And that mandated nationwide ethanol use and the ethanol industry responded beautifully and expanded very rapidly In that same law in 2005 oil interests and epa Did everything they could to repeal mset 202 well or the clean octane amendment They tried very hard at three o'clock in the morning in the conference committee on the final day as some of us know But fortunately congress refused and in fact they doubled down In that law they required epa Which for 15 years had done nothing To finally promulgate An mset reduction rulemaking within 18 months When epa did that Predictably they manipulated the the the data they used 19 dollar crude oil for instance, which was based on 1993 numbers They assumed it took two gallons of ethanol to replace one gallon Of toluene btx for octane when in fact it's the opposite And of course when doing that cooking the books on those numbers they concluded that it wasn't feasible to work on replacing btx with ethanol epa another Shot it in a tier three rule a few years later their proposed rule said very good things about e30 and its octane properties looked like they were going to Really open the door and then they played lucy with the football of the final rule. They shut the door Pearl will talk about some of the foyers and the investigations that we've been doing Others have been doing that prove Inappropriate interaction, which I think is a very nice term between epa bureaucrats and oil industry representatives So All of a sudden with rfs in place in the ethanol industry responding so dramatically Without tax incentives and the increase in production capacity epa we had a problem because now all of a sudden their excuse for stonewalling was gone that that In fact, they admitted when governor perry asked to to uh I'm sorry withhold the renewable fuel standard program that year They rejected that by saying the ethanol out is out there and there's more than enough of it And it's working to to uh, you know lower gasoline costs and replace aromatics. So no, we're going to reject your request so epa included with oil interests To manipulate their models and pin btx emissions on ethanol steve's been talking about that today Move's model is kind of the short word for that I call this the unicorn fuels phase Where they went out there and basically invented fuels gasoline that will never be sold in the marketplace they were adding aromatics to uh gasoline at the same time they're adding ethanol And nobody in the right mind would do that because aromatics are expensive and you don't need that both But they did it anyhow, and they're still defending that model steve worked on them and anard over this week But we know they manipulated the fuels. We know they manipulated the data and on top of that They still insist upon relying on atmospheric models that is Reed just said they have admitted Artifactive that they're wrong that not only are they wrong they're misleading But they won't change the models so 2015 when they admitted to the the btx so a linkage One of their contractors desert search institute, which is very very respected and I made was amazed when I ran across This paper of theirs because they still do contract work for epa They basically this is their cartoon. They basically said how can this be? In other words the moves model Excluded 86 percent Of the most potent pah's gas phase in particular They only included 14 percent And so they conclude that really there's not much problem From gasoline with pah is in urban environments Dri said, how could you do that? so Reed and I were at a meeting with the health effects institute in epa A couple of years ago And they were talking about p.m. And epa was saying that ethanol increases p.m And 90 percent of all the experts in that room Told epa some of whom are epa contractors Literally, you're crazy your models don't work and you need to use real world measurements real world fuels That's why we say they need to get real This is a very busy slide But if you can if you could go down and take the time to read it, which I won't do all of them with you But their track record is really abysmal Okay, if you look at their assertion on the left hand side, for instance, there's not enough ethanol So we can't you know hope to use it to solve the problem After the rfs passes there's ethanol all over and there's no tax incentive and it costs less than aromatics So that one goes away My eyes are so bad. I can't read some of the rest of them, but they're all good arguments And and in fact, we do have this data To refute and rebut and it is all third party and it's linked inside it Dave i'm going to read your last one epa assertion must wait for electric vehicles because we hear that today right and millions of children will be harmed Or prematurely die before EVs arrive Why should we do that makes no sense their job is to protect children not the weight on them So the last inflection point number three The 2020 safe rule, which I think stands real correct if i'm wrong for safer affordable fuel efficiency Okay Is as as I said On omb's desk it's been in In process for a couple of years. It's the ideal vehicle if if there was a A perfect world or even just a reasonable world as boyd mentioned this morning in the epa Mindset They would be Fashioning this rule in such a way To respond to their request in their proposed rule, which was Tell us recommend to us How we can encourage a national higher octane gasoline standard That is quote consistent with title two of the clean air act title two of the clean air act is where section 202 well is housed and We have submitted comments to point out that under the maximum achievable control technology standard There is really only one answer And that is literally e 30 not e 15 not e 25 Because all of the data that we have from automaker studies and everything else shows that at e 30 You get the maximum improvement of fuel economy And and reduction in in in air toxics and that sort of thing multiple winners, of course Because you've got agriculture environment trade deficit I think that's the one on this slide that I would like to Emphasize the most a lot of people don't realize that today e 10 is displacing 350 plus million barrels of oil a year It's about a million barrels a day of ethanol So even if you don't count its benefit in reducing the reformer at the refinery level which saves even more crude 350 barrels a day around number If you go to e 30 That would become a billion barrels a year. I'm saying today a billion barrels a year At current price is that somewhere between 600 billion and 1 trillion dollars over 10 years That's a pretty big hit to a problem that president trump is so worried about and should be with our trade deficit All these other benefits 45 to 85 reductions in so a ph black carbon big number 7 percent improvement fuel efficiency and reduction tailpipe co2 In 90 million tons a year of soil carbon sequestration Which is equivalent to taking 30 million cars off the road every year that comes from corn acres summing it all up section 202 L is a mandatory provision EPA must act somebody needs to make them act All the pieces are in place to act now infrastructure vehicles ethanol economics The technology is there Safe rule offers an immediate pathway congressional action is not needed And if they don't act in the safe rule the only remaining alternative Most of us in this room Will be to compel EPA to enforce that provision in the courts Thank you very much Okay. Thank you very much Dave continuing down the trail of truthful accounting Of fuels health impacts We're now going to hear from burl who's going to draw some correlations to Issues that happened within the other part of the fuel industry the diesel fuel industry. So burl Not diesel but gasoline gate. This is the other side of that story And Dave, it's the safer affordable fuel efficiency vehicles rule And what we're talking about here is bringing in the fuel side of that. It's just not always the burden Of the vehicle and the automakers, but again, it's the fuel so I don't do this often. So I'm trying to figure out how to juggle my new microphone and a clicker I'd like to thank Doug Sopke and his organization for all the For his leadership and what their organizations have done to support the safe gasoline campaign We're going to have safe vehicles. We need safe gasoline to go with them So this is a story about gasoline gate trump's diesel gate based on a report By the farmers By the farmers union enterprises It was over a year of research A lot of thought a lot of experience went into it And if you think, you know, Dave has an edge. This gave me The edge and i'm about to jump over it So i'm really happy to be able to to share it with you It was this gasoline gate report They really created the basis for the safe gasoline campaign And also the cfdc fact book what's in our gasoline is killing us mobile source air toxics and the threat to public health You know, you've heard it today the The evidence is overwhelming It's beyond a reasonable doubt And we need to know why And if we can get from here to there Why not? And we think it's gasoline gate How is it that after 100 years of intense competition and innovation of every other product? From the period you're drinking water food clean food clean water Toothpaste cars Gasoline still remains the same It's basically a monopoly after 100 years Especially when you consider War funding terrorism We still get 25 percent of our oil from OPEC Which is missions to manipulate the price of oil At across the 62 billion dollars a year which Can fund terrorism And then there's the sickness and death that we've heard about that's caused by the aromatics and gasoline What's the problem? It's gasoline gate Gasoline is a problem Big oil is a problem Automakers are held responsible for big oil's problem EPA should be held responsible for all three problems And right now they're not So a growing number of industry observers the more You understand this issue and connect all the dots That for three decades they've been negligent of reaching To the greatest extent achievable the reductions of these toxins can gasoline Uh, they've colluded with big oil And they've thwarted the competition to gasoline And that's not a free market. What's another problem? It's the real cost of gasoline Consumers and taxpayers Are the same and they pay at the pump and they pay again through taxes They pay again through healthcare You spend a hundred billion dollars a year defending oil in the Persian Gulf A recent study by the IMF shows that the United States is spending six hundred forty nine billion dollars In 2015 alone To subsidize oil But you still have to add the cost of war climate change And healthcare These are real costs if there's 3,800 people that are dying Or it's 50,000 from transportation feels like MIT estimates That's a lot of money that's driving up everybody's healthcare costs So like NATO there needs to be a cost shared burden to actualize the real price of gasoline Biofuels are cheaper better cleaner safer and faster to market than EVs Even if EVs get to 50 of the market which MIT says will be in 30 years We're still going to need 70 billion gallons of fuel For the rest of the vehicles This is something that's here and available today Which shouldn't be exposed to barriers So it's a challenge the challenge is EPA EPA is embraced a culture of roadblocks detours delays Their cost-benefit analysis is is it now 20 years 30 years? How many how many years is today? 2007 15 months It's a bit overdue So list those on you know again. This isn't something that Has happened overnight. It's a body of evidence that continues to grow They've failed to emphasize mobile sources aromatics and it keeps going Not acknowledging the the science is changing You know, this is not your grandfather's ethanol And ethanol is not flat either And we found the smoking gun And we found the bullets They look a lot similar to the story of tobacco and its product And a shameful story Of how long it took to change that for many americans and the lives that it cost Objectives of the gasoline gate report Provide enough credible information to make a case that EPA has failed to protect public health And we're going to do that in the court of public opinion first We're going to provide the research needed to change existing pr-induced negative perceptions about ethanol And instead provide information about aromatics Because people don't know Who's our target audience The court of public opinion The above average body of key inflores media congress NGOs Activists they must know what we know Then decide before there's any significant change In our fuel quality It's a complex issue But if people can read People can change the world was flat Smoking was cool Didn't have to wear your seat belt Didn't have airbags I mean everything has changed Except gasoline And we need to know why I'm always the first to fight the new adage people don't read Maybe some people don't but leaders and her betas in the sui-sui read Then people read What they wrote and they follow the directions So we don't need to reach everybody We need to reach those key influencers and that was the objective Of the report The primary goal was to make media and policy makers less susceptible to a hundred year old anti-ethanol campaign by big oil It's a very competitive market Many people would do the same But mcdonalds wouldn't tell wendy McDonald's wouldn't tell worms and wendy sandburgers. There is a sense of fair competition that needs to be Invoked and it's not So we hope and we pray with the salad foundation of accessible and validated public knowledge The environmental health national security advocates and the media can easily create an immediate rebuttal Internally or publicly So we um, we're going to go through some key findings. A lot of them are online the whole thing's online You can find the report at 69 pages. There's 100 footnotes. They're all live linked This is an opinion piece and what we're looking for is the opinion back From all of our key influencers who are in charge of making public policy and making change So as much as congress can't agree For decades, they've agreed that congress can't be trusted. That's why organizations sue them It's just an accepted business practice Even the ethanol industry is finally doing it now Getting their day in court Why is it that the ethanol Is never compared to benzene you got my question today You know, how is it that the greenhouse gases aren't compared to aromatics? You know, why is ethanol compared to gas needs? It needs to be compared to aromatics and what it displaces Um, why? gasoline gate There's a body of evidence That needs to be addressed Why isn't always considered when when you look at, you know, what are we going to do next when you look at the environmental community? Public health advocates, you know, people need to ride the bike people need to take the train Well, you know, they're not People ride the bikes they ride them at the gym And they drive the car to the gym Ethanol needs to be considered as the senator Said, you know, you need to take another look at biofuels This isn't the the same anti-ethanol campaign that was based in 1980 So i'm going to give you the cliff notes. I'm not going to go through all this But the cliff notes are so you will read the report not so you won't read the report because we desperately need your opinion So when you look at parts four through six, there's 11 pieces of legislation that favor ethanol and EPA still in a way The clean air act provides a 30 to one return on investment Biofuels can do more EPAs in a way 10 compelling tail tail events over the decades and 10 000 emails People leave EPAs in a way Collaboration conspiracy or is it just negligence or ignorance? It doesn't matter We're looking at history to find a way in the future You know Science is updated. EPA needs to be updated. We need to move forward MIT says there's 200 000 premature deaths from air pollution 50 000 of those are from transportation fuels If you look at the source, if you look at gasoline, you got to attribute half of those to gasoline at least Okay, that's That's you know, that's the flu. That's the epidemic. That's 9 11 times 10. That's awful And yet you never hear about it. I didn't hear about i've been following this issue for 40 years I didn't hear about that until you know two years ago. So You know death is a big deal Seven of the top 10 causes of death Are related to air pollution Aromatics are the new lead as carol says Aromatics are also the new tobacco Aromatic admissions are strikingly similar As was stated earlier And so is the shameful cover-up story Part four the return on investment The real cause to gasoline again EPA's analysis that cleaning the air has saved two trillion dollars Why stop? They've stopped short Let's get more Part five the cover-up denial for health effects of aromatics and detours for ethanol Biofuels are cheaper better faster to market Why are there barriers? There should be there should be acceleration ramps Or there should be A damn good reason Inter-updated cost benefit analysis As to why it's not you can't have you can't have a void of both The grand conspiracy, I mean is this a conspiracy? Are they are they really adversaries? Is it just a missing void? Is there a a knowledge bank that that hasn't been tapped? So we're looking at magnitude You know you look at dieselgate 500,000 cars Gas linkate 263 million cars that have higher than necessary emissions gasoline gate trumps diesel gate and trump can trump gasoline gate There's an opportunity here for correction through the safe rule EPA admits in correspondence and elsewhere. They don't have to take technical capability Did they miss the ball or did they hide it? An analysis of the FOIA emails is conducted by Boyd and Gray and Associates And it illustrates how EPA violated the federal advisory committee act and other government guidelines I mean that's It's worth pulling up the report in order to Just read those emails and read those analysis. It's truly astounding how You can move the moves model with an email Some knowingly some unknowingly have bought into the oil industry party line and misinformation campaign including EPA Maybe they bought into it It's a crap trap And now this is research everyone can avoid so they don't get stuck in the same trap So did oil companies break into EPA through that revolving door? Are they now just getting caught? You know these are this is the research these are the questions these are the information We're bringing forth that we want key influencers to Validate or object or tell us where tell us where we're wrong You need to understand the process There's there's some easy math in there to follow They've got money. We've got the truth It's the people versus big oil and EPA And the anti-ethanol wars. I mean, it's a it's a great story That that people need to understand a lie can travel around the world back again while the truth is lacing up its boots It's not me. That's mark twain And anybody who's followed this issue for more than a year at a time There's always something new is it going to be land land land use is it going to be food versus fools As we say because you can look back now and each one of those campaigns some paid for publicly caught Senator grassley put it right in the public record Paid five million dollars for the food versus food campaign and it created a lot of fools Okay, so it's not food versus food versus fuel. It's food versus fuels people need to be educated And they can read and they and they do Uh, the war is not over. It won't be over. It's a competitive market. It's a lot of money It's something you have to deal with API wants to kill the rfs if you don't believe me going to the website They say it right there And then when they couldn't kill the rfs they tried to kill the section 202l I mean, this is a very very competitive market tobacco There are 763 oil and gas lobbyists reported That's more than one lobbyist for each member of the house Senate 37 committees that have oversight over epa Each federal agency and each of the president's cabinet We are simply overrun What's at stake It's benzene versus biofuels Will we be able to get a new octane standard? It's going to be met by biofuels or aromatics What's the end game replace aromatics with biofuels So here's the good news epa. It's already working. This is not something you have to prove As the ethanol has gone in The octane level of the pool has gone up and the aromatics have gone down There's nothing left to prove But the key part of the key findings is when you climb That's going to be the fight. How are we going to set a higher standard? A higher octane standard so automakers can meet their efficiency goals in the safe rule So if you read Doug Sompke's Des Moines Register opinion piece or got a copy of the letter several governors sent to the president As you've heard from others You can now understand trump can trump gasoline gate There is a solution. We don't need congress. We can move forward next slide So if it works, why not more? Again, it's gasoline It's gasoline gate Fake test fake fuels fake results 263 million cars Emitting emissions that are higher than necessary That can be replaced by a cheaper better faster to market fuel Than the hope that people buy an ev Slide 13 So, you know, what's gas? What's what's our summary here? It's the greatest story never told I've been engaged in this issue for 40 years I'm still fascinated. I'm still convinced I'm equally excited as I am disappointed I don't think anyone had to defend nicorette And even the tobacco industry did not attack them Your extra credit assignment is to google gasoline gate and you'll find a copy of the report The links to the research Please read it and please give us your opinion For people that don't read go to youtube and search for gasoline gate and your first choice Will be you can watch our animated version of gasoline gate with jack Why jack? Because people don't know jack about what's in their gasoline If you want to have fun in an Uber Takes some time you ask them a few questions Do you know what's in your gasoline? No. Do you know where it comes from? No. Do you want to know that then all is? Yeah, it's on the label Is it good? I don't think so Do you know what benzene is? No. Do you think it's bad? I don't know What's the safe threshold for benzene? I don't know. It's zero Do you know how much is in gasoline? I mean you go on you know for 10 questions and you know Man on the street. It's astounding what people don't know. Why don't they know? gasoline gate You've taught about everything else somebody needs to teach them about what's in their gasoline and the impact on their lives For all you Pulitzer prize winning journalists we've been trying to reach Here's your research It's called gasoline gates all in one place the greatest story Never told The greatest story never told And you know come on man. This even has a sex plot Because every time an american breath They're getting screwed And if you read the report It won't be consensual for you either People read and they need to know the truth Thank you for your time and consideration of our research Okay, bro. Thank you very much Again the title of this segment was truthful accounting and we've provided you with lots of information that in my mind fallen the category of Evidence-based facts to make our case And all that's great But today is what February the 6th and I'm reminded that Earlier in the week it was groundhog day and as I sat here reflecting Over the course of the proceedings today. I kept thinking about that movie Where we wake up day after day after day and go through the same Conversation it changes a little bit. We have a little bit more information But we wake up and it's the same day So I want to move us beyond the facts And talk a little bit about strategy of how do you build Ownership and support for the type of transformational change that we're calling for And it strikes me that the coalition of the committed that's in this room And others that are watching Have been doing yeoman's work Over the years over the decades over a century But we're still fighting the same fight that for rock a fellow we're fighting and prior to that So my question is if the evidence is here And we can document that people are hurting people are dying That there are serious Issues affecting the entire nation Who is that that's not in these chairs out here? That we need to be talking to that can help carry this message forward Because as good as we are apparently we're not good enough And if the president couldn't solve this problem mediating a battle between The oil industry and the agricultural industry Uh as capable as he is it's solving problems. This is one that's even surpassed him So how do we do this read who's out there that we need to be more intentional about bringing into the fold to help champion our cause Well, it's it's a it's a challenge Ernie. I'm not going to discount the difficulty of it But I think that the target audience in my mind is uh mothers Uh through a public health lens if if they know that uh their Children to be or even the children they've had Have been affected by Invisible pollution that they didn't even know was present that penetrates through homes Through their bodies into their bloodstream I think they will be motivated to action and the one thing I know about the political process is If you put motivated mothers into every congressional district office in the country, you will get legislation So if the motivated mothers can partner with the coalition of the committed here in this room, there's probably some other stakeholder communities Uh that would be aligned with that those that are involved with risk management those in the health professional industry So connecting their Called action with the horse the tim worth talked about this morning is part of this as well So what are your thoughts about this new evidence-based moment in time? Dave about reaching out to a fresh horse To help step up and take on maybe the challenge of this century when it comes to the transportation sector That's a great question and it could be due to the pain in my neck Uh, but I am that's not me. No, it's not not read I I'm not sure after 45 years of this that I think we have I think your analogy was outstanding Um, I think the groundhog day movie is exactly what we've been living through And you know in my mind, we've got three branches of government We've got the congress which has spoken a lot of us went through those wars for 20 years And frankly we won we beat the oil industry the laws on the books We have the president and his agencies and as you said That's not working Certainly, it's not working with EPA those guys have been there for over 32 years In an arbor and they're dug in We have one other branch of government and that's the courts And I'm not saying it's easy. I know that that's a tough row But the law is clear the legislative history is clear It's a mandatory set of provisions We have some pretty smart folks here listening in that are that are getting ready to go to war. So My view would be we take the court of public opinion, which everybody here is right about We got to mobilize that build it up as best we can But we need to go into the other court And that's where we have some equilibrium. In other words, we lawyer up. They lawyer up You have depositions you go under oath And at least we have there a chance for a fact-based outcome. That's my view So we we talked a lot today about EPA doing their job and whether you're a conspiracy theorist and Have concluded that they're not doing their job because they have an ulterior motive Or whether or not you're someone just thinks they're incompetent or whether or not you're sympathetic I think they're overwhelmed and don't have the capacity to pull all of the tools together with the resources they have Whatever it is. They're not doing their job So bro as you put the gasoline gate study together And you talked about the analogy with the tobacco industry and the smoking gun Did you look at any of the strategies and tactics that were deployed by the anti smoking Stakeholder community that they used to go up against a similar entrenched major industry that was Incapable to be moved in other ways but prior to that Yes, it was the surgeon general's report Which was you know a government analysis that came out and said hey That's killing you and it needs to be labeled as such And and that started that campaign It was a relentless campaign to save lives and we're in the same one We coined you know the true cost of oil the true cost of oil and you know We were going to write a book about the true cost of oil That we just changed we just did a pivot because all the commercials to see on tv It's the real cost of tobacco And people understand that Before the tobacco industry got sued Cigarettes were three dollars a pack They're twelve dollars a pack Because that price That healthcare price tag is now in the product And it should be the same thing So it's a relentless information campaign And Dave and I get in this all the time I have high hope for consumers in the public They wear their seatbelts most people don't text I mean there's lots of things that you know man and women have evolved And it's because of education Why haven't they been educated about gasoline and in burl? I'd make one other point there though The real breakthrough on the tobacco settlement case Was the paralegal person I don't know if it was male or female That taped the documents to its body So we could get out of the office the building and evade The patent search Patent search and and that provided the ability of the people that were trying to get Tobacco on the run to go into the court and prove the case It was a it was a combination event I'm surprised with the revolving door with oil going in and now a lot of loyal EPA workers going out That at some point there is going to be a whistleblower There is going to be something that comes forth that says you know This evidence and this the length of time three decades is entirely too long And in the end it has to be personal and I have to ask you for an amendment to my slides I've got one more It's the filter from my new CPAP machine And I forgot I wasn't I was supposed to change it every two weeks and I left it in there for a month mainly because I didn't know where it was I took it out I was appalled It was black I mean it really put a chill down my spine because I know why it's black This is in my house in my bed And I live right here And it and it really it scared me so you know this is personal it is tobacco It's about saving jobs lives and money everybody Can hear this message and understand it and they don't even have to read They just have to hear it enough to believe it On that point. I think we need to wrap up and move on to our next panel I hope this was informative as we build the evidence case And now what I think we need to reflect on is do we have the will to act? So please join me in thanking our panel members for their input today And we have saved the best for last Doug's Doug's returning to the stage with reg modeling And we'll hear a perspective that we Have talked about but not in an informed way all day long Which is what about the auto industry? and reg modeling has been at the center of The action in the auto industry for his career and Doug will draw it out of it. No, it's not quite dropped on mike. But we're not done yet, but Well, thanks read real pleasure for me to sort of see we get some discussion on What we said is sort of most important part is where do we put this stuff? And that's really where the accounting Comes through the emissions are gauged and that's uh That's the consumer issue. I mean it's it's the cars. I mean it really comes down to the cars So uh reg modeling has a 40 year career with chrysler We're just delighted that he came in for this. He's been a Great advisor to several of our groups 25 25 and ernie's Ag auto ethanol group my group clean fuels development coalition reg's retired but continues to be a Advisor in many ways and and certainly he and I talk about these issues all the time But we thought it was uh very important reg has a technical background in engineering legal background in law Again 40 years. I met him during the and I was a young pup and the clean air act was just starting But uh very fortunate to have you engaged in the ethanol end of things now and Able to get you to say some things you couldn't necessarily say we knew where the chrysler So that's the good news But we do want to talk about that and I thought maybe you could just free will a little bit reg on You know, we all think it's just so easy. We make the stuff. We know the benefits. Let's just put in cars Why aren't cars using it? Why don't you do it? But all of the issues that you you know better than anybody Whether you like them or not the legal ramifications the studies that have to be done the body of evidence Things that we might consider anecdotal particularly out in the countryside where we're running fuel and say hey garden breakdown Must be fine. There's a little bit more to it than that And so we're trying to navigate through that but at the same time For some of this action as you've told me many times put the fuel out there get it out there And if automakers see the fuel out there, they'll they'll see the trend that's behind it But let's just start if we could with some of the things we've discussed over the last couple days You're outlined but some of the thoughts that that from an auto perspective as you're watching us on the fuel perspective Say, all right. This is what we would need to happen and these are the the obvious obstacles. So let me turn it back to you Sure, I appreciate being here. This has been a wonderful day. I think This section is I hope we're going to sort of tie in where how does the auto industry fit in with this? But this is all fuels Discussion today about aromatics and fuel what the implications are Had been well laid out. I think a lot of people can make a lot of use with the information that came out here So this I'm just going to try and knit some Let's call it some factoids together and then hopefully we'll get through this quickly enough So if you have some questions, we can brought it out to where you wish to have some questions answered first off there is a fellow and uh, my team when I was at Croiser had a A little placard up in his office for the whole time he was with the group And I quoted an unnamed oil CEO said something along the lines that the duty of the auto industry Is the plan to use the product that we give them and that for And that's what you see today. They're they're out there and of that sausage that we call gasoline as a concoction that they use to As you sell the Rockefeller, that's how he got rid of the a lot of product He didn't know what to do with it became a part of this product. We call gasoline So how important is that composition of that fuel? In today's fuel pole I recall the the test fuel island at Price I'm going to speak maybe it was some price of references, but let's be clear. I'm not speaking for any company I'm speaking on the basis of experience. I've had with in the auto industry. I think these opinions Although they're mine. I believe for me that they're substantiatable Through a lot of publicly available information So anyway, the fuel test fuel island at quicer or park Contained something just short of 30 different fuels Uh, that wasn't because there are 20 30 years fuel specs That's because the variety of fuel across the united states and some other countries in the world Very so much. You had to select A representative fuel package So once you design a powertrain that powertrain could be tested to make sure that the vehicle Didn't hiccup on some particular formulation Because the ramifications are that particular Customer or customer group would come back So it become a warranty and have them from build up a recall type of situation. So The breadth of test fuels is very broad And the desire on a part of the auto companies is to narrow that down if they can get down to one They'd be perfect Because in that one they could optimize the performance of those powertrains Where right now they have to broaden it out to accommodate the varying parameters of the many fuels So the that's where the goal becomes In a discussion the debate of What about that ffv in a vehicle using e85 and e10? They were under the realm of Continuing tightening of a fuel economy or co2 emission requirements That that noose is starting to get pretty firm and the wiggle room that they Indeed had For many years where the test parameters will allow them to float within the test results pretty nicely They're running out of room to wiggle. So the tighter the fuel spec the better they can meet standards in the future And then they in this case I think they would then make a choice as to what combustion regime they wish to use And they can use some more aggressive combustion regimes like high High compression engines The Wrinkle this year is with epa poised to back off the obama era requirements Isn't this sort of The positions started nullified First out just a personal observation The obama era requirements were never in place. The second phase of the program was only a recommendation And it was a recommendation the execution of the recommendation was to be based on a Study that epa was to conduct and that's what the fight was about as we transition between obama and trump Were the accusation was that the obama administration hustled out The results the analysis before it was really fully baked. So Then that the reason for backing off is only to reset on the basis of facts that the trump administration feels are now In place, but the the bigger issue is is that really going to happen? Yeah, maybe sort of but Please notice that the rest of the world has been playing catch up with the united states standards United States and europe for quite a while Where it was the united states of europe, japan and maybe a couple of others Outliers it's now Regulations covering something like 70 percent or more of the world's auto park Saudi arabia for Pete's sake has fuel economy standards now. They're pretty darn strict So the rest of the world trend is set And if the united states standards backs off somewhat from what we had a couple years ago We'll just be out of sync with everybody else for a while I'm very confident that at the end of the day The united states will not be an outlier And the rest at only during the interim the rest of the world including china would be the one thriving The performance specs for the vehicles that the car companies in fact build Well, okay, then what about that electric vehicle thing and we're going to world's moving to electric vehicles quickly We saw a slide here. It said the epa just wait for the electric vehicles I agree with the statement that was made if uh if we get to you know, even 100 of the vehicles on a new vehicles being produced Uh by 2030 Our electric is still going to take 20 years after that for the whole car park to change over That's uh, that's a real dreamy position. I think I've seen Many studies recently And all of them fall way short of 50 and most of them fall in a neighborhood of maybe 10 to 20 percent of the total car park being electric By 2050 Which tells you you got to have something else if the world is moving towards lower carbon emissions from transportation That tells me you can't leave the current stinky fuel on the road And hope to get there you got to do something with the fuel to give the current car park and the new vehicles in the next 2030 years a chance of reducing emissions and a chance of reaching some much lower carbon threshold so That that just says a new fuel is necessary now For the car makers to start planning for the next few years to get those cars on the road that will occupy the car park of the next by 2050 So what's that technology? High compression Sort of period There's variants on that and we can talk about a lot of details that people think about and talk about but high compression is really the target uh and that too was mentioned earlier the of gasoline of the early days needed something to Have any not characteristics and that became tetrothelete that became mtbe now it's uh Aromatics and ethanol but with the octane up, which is a key thing The vehicles can be designed with higher compression with a known Good high octane number in place well controlled in a marketplace the efficiency in the engine can go up pretty dramatically How difficult is that? It also depends on who you're talking to It's not It's more it's a couple of things it's one it's uh the DOE testing that has been mentioned the Department of Energy of In their national labs. It's underway for a lot of reasons for direction by the car industry and many others What they're doing is getting current vehicles and they're Modifying the pistons to give them a better or higher compression Then testing the vehicles with a modified controller usually provided by the car company So that tells you where it's at you know the heads may need to be redone the pistons need to be redone And a controller with new carburetor or calibration needs to be put in place uh fuel systems are Another thing that people keep talking about maybe and those uh, but today's fuel systems are the result of an evolution from Zero ethanol gas lanes e zero we now call it Through e 10 that transition took what 12 13 years between about 2000 2000 13 or 14 And the car companies got serious about Firming up the performance of the fuel system about mid 2000s were The elastomers throughout the systems all got modified to be tolerant of increased ethanol how much ethanol don't know but one thing I can say that With great sincerity the elastomer companies that all the companies share weren't going to come up short So I don't think they stopped at 15 and a half percent 10 a half or 10 15 and a half percent I think they went way beyond that just to make sure they had lots of head room And didn't have to modify their formulations again how much We got that's we'll talk about the e 30 test programs in a minute All right, so how difficult is to put this in production how these things are already in production folks that's in europe europe already has a 98 ron or 95 ron a 95 average Octane fuels in place That's where mercedes gets the absolute 100 assurance that octane matters They know they already designed their product in europe for it and they have to dumb them down to get to the united states and use our less than optimized gasoline But the the technologies are well known The modification parameters are well known In production probably and most if not all companies in the world just not for the product here in the united states So if the fuel was there the transition could occur as quickly as the companies can provide tooling Enough to produce the volume necessary to produce product united states That is not an overnight situation That is a modification testing of tooling certification So that that's a multi-year process, but it is not Not a difficult one. It just costs money and time The money and time piece reflects in another Oh, then the vehicle one one point there's one comment that gets made Fairly often that's the engines have to be our product has to be hardened and that's going to take time Um That too is a fairly clear Target now these are under giving you know fairly straightforward pieces and they're probably smaller Things that to be brought in also, but that term hardening Does predominantly aim at the metallurgy of valves and valve seats so To modify those it does take engineering takes tooling takes testing But once it's done the car companies are not going to make two engines Not if they run high volumes of these things because it costs money to run two Different products in this inventory and we're moving around the world So typically a company will make the modification to an engine platform And that would be their 100 production run. So the engine then would be capable Of being compatible with the high octane fuel provided it has the right calibration in its computer Uh, the calibration in a computer is not insignificant Uh, the artists that do those jobs are Not plentiful. They are probably some of the highly most highly valued people in the industry And they're uh, they don't just crank them up Off the engineering product engineer production line. They they need to be trained over years with good experience so that That segment of the engineering team is uh highly prized valuable and not plentiful so to Try to make a switch When a company argues that that uh, it takes time It's usually in the time to process the testing necessary to get the calibrations done Again that and then when you look at a whole product line A company that really wants to put something in Can drop it into a product in i'll call out a number of let's say three years a known known of Fairly easy since the system requires tooling and testing and certification But to put it through a whole power train family within a product within a company's vehicles That could take that could take a long time that could take those six ten years at least If many times something you want to put in production it even takes longer But let's just for this conversation here. Let's use six to ten years to turn over Introduction of some product like this so at this point Now if uh, if you're getting a sense for for where this goes Yeah, the car companies already sort of know how to make this thing. They made FFB's They put these things into Of brazil for p.c. You know we're using 27. That's not brazil So don't you already have it in production and if you can do it in brazil, can't you do it here? Two big considerations are one is brazil is a pretty big car market on its own and they're very protective of their in-country business. They Work pretty hard not as obvious as some countries may but they work pretty hard about keeping others out I heard today they have 38 car companies building product in brazil Yeah, and they like to keep it just that way so Most of in my observation most of the world's companies unless they don't build down there at all They'll bring If they don't build down there at all, they'll bring some product in but that's not going to be I'm going to say High volume or they might team up with a company that does business there And bring in bring their product in that way That's where he mentioned this morning that there might be I think If I hear heard it right now about some of the neighborhood about 10 15 or so 20 percent Of the vehicles aren't ffvs. Well, that's right because those are products probably made For another market outside of brazil And brought into the country that they don't control very well, but that's that's the product that is designed and made there Maybe a design brought in let's say from the united states and there will be tooled there engine built there And that product there would be designed to be certified there there and It would be made for an in-country product using a an e 27 product Those are not necessarily exported and very rarely exported here to the states Make it and use it locally as a real good part of car companies Sometimes power trains are brought in from out of the country And in brazil what happens when that happens most of the time The product is brought in It is recertified in brazil by brazil Company employees just because the country likes it that way That's at many times the car the car is modified Maybe in this case to put in a different controller to be compatible with the Ethnol product. So what does that mean to why can't we do it any everywhere because it's designed for a specific market and it wasn't Designed tested here. So what at least would have to happen Is the whole testing and certification process would have to be run here And if that's the case it's a resource issue Not only with the car companies but with epa in california because they have limited resources also So it's a very least a long term timing problem to get the product shifted. So that it's not that it can't be done It's in the difficulty of getting the product approved and then certified for sale in this country in the country to some degree this the E30 testing program, which is that was isn't that life outlaw flony of epa showed up and said you can't do this You got no kidding It's a no legal fuel and there's a provision in the cleaner acts says you cannot Modify a certified product. I mean the product's been certified is against federal law For you as a customer to modify that vehicle So now you take it to a commercial setting and somebody walked in said i'll modify your vehicle for tell me a number And epa knows where those people are and epa does whenever they find extra time on their hands They go out and chase down those guys, especially the ones that are good because that way the word gets out faster if it was just somebody, you know Joe bob in the his back shop a backdoor shop doing one or two vehicles for his buddies They're not going to care but a fellow like the one that was pointed out here today It's obviously got a following And when when they walked into his shop a lot of people heard about that So that epa likes bang for a buck like the irs, you know, they're not going to necessarily go after Any one of us, but they're going to go after somebody big with a big tax bill to make a headline Right. So the same thing with epa chasing down the of the engine modifiers So the illegal fuel a little legal operation, but also Note They walked away I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this But isn't that sort of curious and doesn't that tell you something that maybe they do know They have a sense of the pulse on this and maybe it's something that They figured they shouldn't be hammering on too hard The issue With a competitive with can you use e 30 e 25? I don't care what a number is but the number in vehicles and how far back are new vehicles It's in testing the car makers The question is how come you guys just don't warrant the vehicle for e 25 and be done with it and Well, because the vehicles of the past were not tested Simple as that It's not like they don't agree with everybody It's simply that they do not have the test information in hand. It says that the vehicle is compatible Oh, but there's all this test information. We've got how many millions of miles and vehicles A test program at an agency or a car company is very regimented Highly disciplined and runs for millions of miles And that testing is usually done on a comparison So you run an e zero or e 10 vehicle and then you run a corresponding modified vehicle to accept a new fuel And you run a whole bunch of them then you try to industry testing. So these things take millions of dollars in years And the well very disciplined and result gathering is such The relatively anecdotal approach of going out and putting vehicles into a community's fuel in a community's vehicles Is is really good stuff But it's not going to be robust enough to convince the car company to take the risk That that product going to be able to enter the field on a nationwide basis Running this fuel And run the risk of somebody or some percentage of vehicles turning on mills that they can't fix Because that becomes a big time warranty And at worst it becomes to a diligent of Class action attorney which of which there are many around They would love to find something like that where the car company said I don't know what the test result would be But I approved the use of that fuel Didn't have a thing break up and then they go into court and say mr. Engineer. What did you on what basis did you approve that? We had no basis. We just went along with the anecdotal information loser So that's that's the reason that the car companies aren't going to do it Uh, they got the product liability attorney sitting in the background Saying you just can't you don't have the test information unless you go back and do the testing And that they're not going to do we say I'll have the resources. All right, so why don't you do it now for your current product? One the the fuel that's being requested isn't illegal fuel The best way to fix that is to get EPA to declare illegal fuel by setting up a test fuel Well, yeah, but why don't you just do it for this and I want that bring EPA along Not a bad idea. It's not a bad idea if this were the only request Remotely similar to this that a car company might get But even on the fuel thing it's not going to be just one somebody's going to say e15 e20 e25 e30 e27 for piece sake Uh, then it's going to be uh, what about this thing? I'm a jig For a traffic stoplight detection that you can put on your autonomous Vehicle that right now is not legal either Or what about name name some other invention that might pop up that somebody thinks is a great idea It's a resource simply a resource issue And even though it might appear to be a good idea feel like a good idea It takes something more to make that happen So in this case it's in some fashion We need to get EPA to say the new fuel looks like this And whether it's 94 95 fran or if it's 98 or 100 Get them to say that and once they say here's a fuel that can be Tested you can use in a fuel economy testing And put it in place and you get you know five stations in kansas to put this stuff in a tank Does it would be available for the car company to use? I am absolutely convinced that if the epa said 98 ron e25 fuel we approve that and here's the spec Um, and somebody put that into a tank someplace The car companies would use it because they can take the fuel economy benefit Now they will argue At least going in that g has got to be generally available for all the customers that want it Let's have that discussion later Let's have that discussion later because if they can get a fuel economy benefit by using that fuel My bet is they would grab on to it And if the fuel is priced right and you know the market's going to pick it up They'll take advantage of it and run with it. So but that's a discussion I think we need to have in a broader audience and just put the gauntlet down to say about what So how long would it take to put this in? You guys folks know that First off where we've already said that Need for the fuel is there And that's the united states worldwide It's a it's a big need and it's going to be around for Our families are all the way through our grandkids at least Out many many years. So people are going to make good living off of this It's going to be a long time thing in the market. So the need for the fuel is there We know what it looks like Name a number high octane And we know that Corn is available to provide that product now in the volume that can be used now And again, I'm pointing we've done this review looking at e eight at e 25 Uh, and how how fast can that be ramped up? I can't supply all the vehicles that would want it now. Well If I go with the car our car company will say I'll have a product certified to do something that they'll make it like a 22 23 model your product And our estimation is that clearly there's enough fuel Potential to put in a market in volume to satisfy all the new vehicles that would be produced in that model year Will it be evenly distributed? Yeah, the infrastructure is coming in too folks The underground tank stuff is supposed to be done the only question is Is is all that equipment certified to the requirements that are on the books for them to perform against now Understand what i'm saying the stuff that's in the ground Is supposed to be capable of supporting an e 100 product Whether it does or not is subject to records keeping that has been a bit weak up until now, but the anecdotal information we have shows that People who are going out and trying to convert their stations to use the 25 e 30 product Are finding that most of this stuff is done or if it needs a modification It's an inexpensive switch. So the infrastructure and also by 2022 Above ground equipment needs to be Chip card Readable read ship cards and the tank the new pumps are being produced with that capability are all being certified to an e 40 product so We estimate that just on normal turnovers can be at least 40 percent of the pumps in the country will be E 25 e 40 capable, which is far more gasoline is necessary to supply all the new cars and the So the infrastructure is there So the only thing is missing now is where is epa? So back to i think the fundamental bottom line here is epa do your job For all the reasons you guys mentioned i won't double down on those This is all the same ones, but the information is available to them the products available The will would be there if they were uh, they Called out of fuel specification and And recognized the value of ethanol as an oxygen enhancer in current day gasoline well great stuff bridge lots of Lots of Great progression of thought there are just some things that are jotting down That we've either talked about in the past or you just came in an idea, but When was it? You know you talk about the fuel spec and how important that is for unity Recall that i know you would that the world fuels charter idea But what happened try to remind me what happened to that? That was in that blur of the clean air act and that movement that that whole time period where we were Doing so much with fuels for the audience There was an effort to to establish sort of a single formula that included oxygen I believe it was a cap at the time mtb hadn't gone bad yet So they preferred mtbe, but it was a recognition that oxygen Brought you the oxygen that benefits plus octane and it was that whole effort by the auto industry and Refiners everybody else say look let's have one formula and that's a heck of an idea that As you just alluded to is hurting us right now What what happened to that and is that something that could be brought back because you know Refiners and automakers That's actually a good one. Doug Something that I think it would be worth worth asking now that people are interested in Better formulations above what has been in the past The the worldwide fuel charter is A living document It is being used by the oil industry and the car manufacturers the world's car manufacturers To describe of the the proper matching of fuel formulation with vehicle technology level And the vehicle technology level is being set at Emissions standards levels, so you know european one tier one two three four five maybe six Now and the u.s. Standards tier one two three Then the fuels that are necessary to necessary to make those vehicles perform at those levels The last one I recall Calls for an e10 product And again the world's car makers agree that they will Match the technology in a country provided the country provides gets the fuel in there at the right level So looking at the next fuel Could be time to get that discussion going Couple of things just them throwing things back as I you know as you've got me thinking and I jotted down some things And I hope we get some discussion from the audience, but Another issue that We're working on I'm not sure it came up earlier today, but Is this whole concept that since e10 is the is the base cert fuel now that we would argue that it's There is an argument Boyd and grazed me at this argument very effectively Um that the substantially similar law now has no no cap if 10% is in there and you've approved 10% ethanol We have certified on that that the burden of proof is on epa to show that higher blends Actually degrade emissions or cause problems again with your legal background in addition to your regulatory background How does that argument hit you because he again? This is not a something we thought about over over drinks I mean Boyd and has has made a very A compelling case for this and we put it in front of epa and of course they haven't answered us Well, I this is pretty simple. I agree I've spent some time with that with Boyd and his staff Really enjoy the The thought process they went through and the proofs that they've come into And it appears from that analysis. That's really clear. The epa's got themselves backed into a pretty Black corner that they need to approve higher blends if asked to do that But the big challenges are they Not going to they're in How how does the community get the epa to Not be able to reason a lot of of that kind of a corner Well, another thing you mentioned is um And so obvious to me I use it in most of my presentations I don't know if it still exists, but you were you headed up us car Which was ford christler and gm the three domestics But I have some old charts from that where that the zethnal volume went up And each time it went up a little tweak of compression and at the end of it And I think dave had it in his presentation. We were at seven percent Efficiency that's a whopping increase given that we think the new safe rule is going to be calling for one 1.5 and I think even obama was calling for five So the question is what why why didn't in your opinion now that you're out of it the autos Now jump on that a little bit more the whole octane argument Just didn't you know Just didn't quite quite risen it came and went fast. It seemed to me that there was a There's always a technical recognition of that, but I can recall the rfa conference That was the whole theme of the conference a couple of years ago We see some some of the autofolks out talking about and it's like no never mind we've shifted gears and and That's seven percent or anywhere in that range three four five seven percent that the whopping increase Would minor changes to your cars and and I would argue it slows down the the electric push So it's curious why you think that petered out so fast I'll take the five six seven percent thing as a given whether it's that number or not Let's not get into that but that is as a fundamental for this discussion. That's a good number For for this discussion at that time That's in a generally before The current president came in and Pulled back the standards the standards for at that point were moving up like at five percent a year and the What got the car manufacturers to agree that the goal setting could be Properly appropriately set at a to Set at the rate that they were Set for going out to 2025 Was Two things one was a very important one that we call it the mid-term review and nitsa had a Let's call it statutory requirement that they can only set standards out five years. So that was a nice break point So the nitsa standards never did go into place, which are the fuel economy rules And EPA standards, they could not make them final beyond five years So they became recommendations, but the ramp rate was five percent And that mid-term review was going to assess is industry capable of doing it and the biggest question That was targeted The biggest question was are the customers accepting the technology in the marketplace at the rate that needs to be introduced I'll bet you never heard that one because EPA sort of forgot that one but the the second Part of that was Well, the technology had to be Well, the second part of it was Nobody knew What the technology package was going to be out past about 2020 2022 at that back in the 2011 and 12 when these things were negotiated and that that's People say, well, yeah, your guys are smarter than that. Well The car companies don't even know how they're about price vehicles next year Let alone what technologies are going five and ten years from now so The technology packages were coming along pretty good at that time and that We were there running out of ideas so the The the technology Not being known a provision was put in to that list of regulations That allowed for the evolution of new ideas yet unknown So the adoption of credits against not understood or off cycle or some sort of packages That could come in come into play I elaborate there because the fuel component in the automaker's mind was one of those Was one that they could sort of see out there They could see if the fuel was there we could use it But I understand that if if the fuel was there we could use it The problem was they don't control fuel They needed EPA help to do that and then the industry itself was actually putting it in But Nonetheless, it was that's one idea And let's say it's good for five percent. That was one year worth of Step for An ancient family or two that they could put in on a yearly basis So it was far from the total Technology package necessary. So what they did is they said that this is part of that, you know You need to allow us the opportunity to do more And what happened with the new EPA is that that those optional packages have been Held back quite a bit So they don't want to be arguing for one At the risk of oh, you got that one. So we're not going to do any more So they wanted to have a assurance that they were going to have access to the full future of unknown Technology packages. So it's not that they wouldn't Accept it or wouldn't push for it Once the fuel was in place just one the fuels was not in place And if the fuel didn't show up they'd have to go some other way So they weren't going to waste political chits on something they had no certainty of seeing in the market Well, that's the dilemma though. We're in I mean we make ethanol When we put it out, we can use it in a number of different ways including as e 30 or 85 or e 10 or anything else But to go, you know All in on that and try to get e 30 in in lots of places Then the obvious question is, you know, I hope the cars can handle it So that's where this I don't want to call it civil disobedience But you know this sort of sort of go ahead and use it anyway and and it ties in with the testing And uh, governor gnome, uh, you know, we had hoped to be in here today, but Larry pierce alluded to this earlier, you know in Nebraska the dakotas some other places They're they're going past what what jim and dug talked about earlier in south dakota and they're going to state fleet tests So that's way above anecdotal. It's way above what they're doing It's closer to data that can maybe lead to widespread acceptance But I just would always argue that, you know, because when we show me the fuel We know some people I won't name and who always challenges us at at our ag auto ethanol meetings But I can't show up at the fuel and say, sorry, nobody can use it. So there's got to be some Cooperation that's why the world fuel charter or something like that where the autos were working closer with the with the ethanol community And sort of going down this road together rather than saying you go first No, you go first and that's a real problem for us Well, maybe fuels world fuels charters a nice place to Be able to start getting the right parties together, but that process is a bit Duller-gent and along But it's not not we shouldn't do that. That's actually a good idea Getting epa to not in the direction of if you bring it bring a product in and test it On a new fuel that will give you a certificate. That's the sort of bottom line and What we've seen in the last couple of years is reluctance on the car companies to be first They seem to have a great fear at this point of not getting the right answer and the discussion we saw today were epa's reluctance or Opposition to putting fuel in the market might be a real a real challenge I think Maybe part of a company's Reason for not not taking the first step but that discussion folks In my opinion, we've not you know, we've we've heard those dug you and I've heard it Companies bounce back at us and then what we do is we get hit by it and we sort of drop the conversation I think we need to get some small group Together and say let's let's start this conversation again and say on the basis Would you guys use it? What would it look like if you saw it and can we get and who can actually take that request to epa and Who's willing to make that shot? We have not wrestled that one to the ground One more thing read before I just want to close this thought project. So okay. So how do you get the autos a little more engaged? One of the things we talked about on you know the other day and and I just want to talk about for a minute here is credits You know, I think the idea of credits to automakers Is just a left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouth the e85 program was Called a loophole by the environmental community because there was no Set way to demonstrate that these ffvs are actually using Using the ethanol and yet they were getting credits. I get that and but I think the ethanol industry was asleep at the switch to fix that it was fixable There were some things we talked about that could measure These and but by that time it was too late But in even our our other meetings since then there's been a lot of discussion about well If the objective is to not use oil and you got credits at 85 percent Why wouldn't you get credits at 30 and if you could prorate those 30 is actually a better way to use it than the 85 from an efficiency standpoint. So You've told me many times that the other guys would take the credits, but they're not going to fight for them I'm not sure that's I'm not sure we couldn't turn that around to go and say look You guys are going to tweak your cars to get maximum performance maximum emission reductions maximum mileage And meet the objectives of calf the original cafe, which was not use oil And we can provide you with what you need there. So come in and And at least smile a nod and say that credits would be helpful, but that's another thing Like octane. I feel like they've just stepped off of so I'm not going to give up on that And I think it's an extremely defensible Position to ask for credits if you want me to not use oil I cannot use oil But I want to I have to do something for it and I think that's that's a road we could go down But let me take a break and read has a question or comment Reg you made a very compelling case why the auto companies want to have A standard fuel that they are going to Build toward and and that suggests a process of collaboration toward agreement on a single spec fuel My worry is that the least common denominator Nature of that process will lead to A fuel standard that the oil companies are happy with because they can still use aromatics At their maximum value that would be the worst possible outcome from our perspective in terms of public health and climate change How do we avoid that outcome? But that's a huge question probably much bigger than we have time left to resolve So I'll just give a short shot The refiners and GM Largely came and supported sort of subtly by Ford Came up with that solution and that was a 95 Ron E 10 Proposal and that was linked to pulling off Removing or eliminating the RFS And that had so many Negatives like one they can make it while the current that is current premium is what it is Uh, so you wouldn't have to make any change and then a lot of people who counted as necessary lose the RFS So that that was in the place to start Uh And the people who are making that argument Right now that appears to me there's a lot of people afraid of the refiners and for some reason don't want to go in Separate from them, but they can't shoulder up to them because they don't agree with their position So that leaves everybody outside the door. I think some group folks They've got to resolve you got to leave the refiners outside the door and go and talk to the policy makers The car companies deep down don't really care About the RFS and they really don't care so much about the number just as long as that number is Bigger than it currently is and very narrowly scoped They settled for 95 because of a couple of reasons that we won't get into right now But if if it came out as 98 They'd be happy. That's that's better higher is better So I don't think we and I think the argument pretty much is settled not died it's just gone away right now to your point dog because Uh safe rules under debate, uh the huge fight between california and trump administration Uh the separation of the companies gm honda for Uh for a safe rule whether to involve california The political fight right now is uh potentially so hot or at least simmering Strongly that they really have to let that die before I go away a little bit Then we can get back into this fuels discussion Now The problem with that is that sort of says you gotta wait for the safe rule which then may or may not have a fuels component Again, we got to talk about the strategy and such That the fuel component does not have to be in the safe road be really convenient But doesn't have to be And or is anybody talking about the fuel economy component or fuel component in the current safe rule? I just don't know because I've been outside of that discussion with you guys, so I think that demands a much Deeper discussion maybe another couple hours sometimes some place but Great topic though. That's that's uh in the next steps discussion That we should bring that up as far as we got to hold that discussion to actually frame it up if nothing else Steve any question would you share that mic please? Uh read you've mentioned this a couple times and and a few times I've even defended the auto industry because you know you look at all the challenges the auto industry faces I mean in tier three comments the autos are very positive on higher octane Um, we have a lot of issues at the EPA both for the auto industry and the ethanol industry I mean look at the r factor and the fact that if you can't fix an error at EPA, how do you fix policy? We have a letter by EPA in 1997 that we can't take more than a three percent advantage on octane between regular and premium We've got you know, so the EPA hasn't updated their testing protocol yet for for the oams And we've had moves we have EPA coming out by march with the anti backsliding study on on ethanol and we know that's not going to be positive How do we how do we get? More traction at EPA if EPA Clearly doesn't even listen to the auto industry And uh, you know to me that's that's always amazing just the r factor alone is an example Where you clearly point it out a error in EPA's calculation And I don't know if they were just mad because someone pointed out an error that they just refuse to even go to their own recommendations So how do we fix EPA? That's been a discussion of the day, you know, how do we get EPA to do their job? You know, maybe we that's better left to the next segment to look at the things to do But that is that is a challenge, but I In one one thing it might I would use to start like the next segment would be Whatever we result to do to set our ladder to get to the next level We got to start with a real firm pot of pots a real firm Assured attention grabber that they then get stuck to and can't release And they get them to grab the next one, but we one thing we can't do Is lay out the whole litany of things we got to have fixed because They'll just flat out ignore us because they'll know nobody else is listening to that whole list So we got to get them in the room so they can't get out And then what I think will happen I'm very convinced will happen if they get the right direction from the horse Is they will then have to fix those things to make the their conclusion come up, right? So That's anyway, that's we'll leave it at then Well, we talked about maybe just having a round robin discussion here rather than people physically changing changing spots and Oh, that's true. So And we're going to leave reg and Doug's still in charge so everything's fine here We're going to bring Dave Hallberg back up and Steckl Carol or And uh, we'll just continue the discussion among ourselves for everybody's entertainment Ernie, Ernie Shea may join us. He's on a call and Doug and uh, Doug and Jim and or And if we need to pull on up pull on the chair Yeah, well, you guys aren't on camera. We need you. Oh come on. We're recording Carol. We need you. We're recording it come on I was going to just say that but I wanted to make sure I didn't say it wrong But well, I thought you know after a tremendous Series of presentations and great discussion and most of everybody up here was a speaker or presenter of some type It's interesting that that we wound up sort of where we started the epa You know void in this morning and and tim worth this morning Both experience and working with epa, but as I said this morning It was a much more positive experience when they did it back around the time of the clean air act But it's funny how almost the last word comes right back around again to epa So I don't want to throw two general a question out that we just said how do we get epa to change? But I think we heard some ideas engaging moms for clean air and groups like that I think this awareness as borough pointed out You know some people still do read we've got to get them to see and read this information The the book that we did on that everybody hope gets a copy of the mobile source air toxics It's a fact book and nine tenths of that book is the health impact It's only at the very end where we say by the way we have a solution Carol was one of the reviewers for that and helped me put that together But a lot of research went into that but we got to get that information out But let me but there's a lot of other things. There's auto issues. There's ag issues There's everything else So I'll start with you in at the end. I mean from a whatever standpoint, but obviously an ag You know if you were king for a day, you know What's what's what's something that we cannot in a two general of a sense, but what is something we can do? You know what's what's something we can do to move? We're a little bit stuck on the ethanol side of rfs e15 slash rvp, you know Okay, so what is something we could do in this town with epa congress get congress to move epa whatever it is We need to do that that we could Everybody think about this. What's one thing you you'd like to see done? And then we can determine if it's doable And that's a great question. You know, I think with this issue You know, it's our challenge and our opportunity right is to coalition build because there's a lot of different Aspects that talk about when you're talking about the benefits of ethanol depending on who you're talking to I certainly think that the health aspect is one that resonates With everyone and so I think that we need to really focus on Embracing a lot of these health groups and trying to talk to them and educate them About why it makes sense to them and bring in a lot of the urban folks into this too I mean, I think Doug Sompke's presentation on that Really hit home because you know, it's great if we're we're talking to ourselves in agriculture And we all agree to it But we have to talk to the rest of the country too and so I think really digging a little bit deeper on the health aspects Will really get us where we need to go Carol I I agree about the need to really kind of zero in on the health aspects It's been disappointing that it hasn't been easier to Attract people with regard to that in terms of thinking about the kind of the professional public health Organizations, but I think that there hasn't been enough of a concerted effort and all this really takes a lot of time But I think that needs to happen and I also wonder about the health insurance industry because so many of these costs and everything come right back to thinking about insurance and And that one thing I have been thinking a little bit about is is You know and raised the whole thing in terms of building broader coalitions. Well, I think while that's important to do nationally I think it's also important to do within states And to look at you know, because if we had folks going to their respective governors or or to their opinion leaders or you know or to And I think that media could be very very important here in terms of a horse that we also need Is somebody to tell the story In a really, you know, like in a couple credible, you know, like media outlets You know so that it's really being talked about and finding ways to really talk about it And I have also in terms of thinking about health insurance, you know, you've got state blue cross blue shield plans So what I'm wondering too is whether it is worth trying to At least take a stab at engaging some of them and seeing whether there is any any interest I'll stop Dave, I know what you want to do, but And you can sue Dave only wants to do one one thing, but it's no, I mean it's and that's a really important compliment Yeah, that's maybe the only thing Well, I liked Ernie's Ernie Shea's analogy to Bill Murray and Groundhog Day Most of us have been doing this so we need Bill Murray Bill Murray would be a good shot. Let's call him up. Most of us have been doing this for 30 years As Reg Modlin said, you can line up about 12 different issues and confuse everyone I think we need Turn this from a shotgun game And a broader conversation to a sniper shot I think that sniper shot is the Achilles heel of the oil industry, which is BTX and aromatics We watched them try to defend that in the 1990 Clean Air Act and all their ads and they spent millions and they lost huge on the floor. That's because you cannot explain that So instead of having to go back again and try another 20 or 30 years in Groundhog Day I think we need to focus on a that point of vulnerability And b how do we get there from here? And yes, I am going to say the courts because you're not going to get there with Congress Ain't going to happen. We can talk to them. We can educate them more But they are never going to break out of their gridlock on an issue like this And it doesn't look like EPA is ever going to budge So we got to budge them And that's where the court of public opinion helps complement whatever court we go into And we've got the data We've got to get the attorneys, we've got to get the industry allied behind us so the resources get applied Doug, I don't want to answer your own question, but from an ag standpoint from a state standpoint, you're doing a lot of stuff state levels We heard we heard Tim Ehrth this morning say, you know, you guys need to get a governor You know, so we are doing that but you know, so I'll kind of Yeah, I mean the question with that We've been trying to do all that. I mean, first of all You know, when I started looking at this several years ago I've seen the things that were tried and that were successful But you couldn't do them today I mean in this town it just can't be done today and We should learn from the past The one thing as a farmer You don't want to repeat the same problem twice because you're not going to be around very long What Dave has just said, I agree wholeheartedly. I think The patriots that led in this fight ahead of me Have done a great job. Have like he's spent his whole life doing this Ori Swayze another one spent his whole life doing this But we really haven't moved the ball So far, I mean Jim and his group are doing a great job showing how it should be done Um, Christy Gnome has stepped up to the plate to to take it to a state level um Minnesota's uh tim waltz has done the same thing We really if you're going to do it by the the state thing you got to do at least two or three more states at least And then you might only be a regional thing And how long is that going to take I can tell you right now farmers don't have that long We are up against the fence right now Matter of fact, while you've seen the numbers and we've got 20 higher bankruptcies today than we had Since 2012 we've got Income of farms predicted to be down just released Yesterday 11% less income this next year for farmers than this year That's not counting the expenses are going to be higher because these damn tariffs I mean, we're getting we're getting pinched and we can no longer take it in. You know, you know that saying You know, I I'm fed up. I'm not gonna take it anymore. That is hell. I'm not sure we are and I agree with Dave. I mean I just don't think that there's any other choice and I'm really frustrated with my commodity group friends Because they put us in this box they they fought and fought to build their commodity And where's it gotten them? We've we depend on trade And look what that got us We're trying to do the same thing with ethanol and that's going to take us to the same place Um Look what brazil is doing. I mean, I read the article that uh, your brother steve Dave wrote the Brazilians are coming Now if that don't wake you up when you read something like that and so we're gonna wait And wait for them to come I don't think so My farmers in south dakota aren't gonna take that my friends and national farmers. You're sure as hell don't want to see that Um, we just don't have any place to turn anymore in agriculture. We just don't Um, we thought ethanol was the best thing going since sliced bread We still believe it could be But we've run up against the likes of the oil companies that are holding us back and epa is infiltrated with them That's the way. I see it. I mean The letters that I wrote To chris grendler Where's he? Where's he now? Oh, hey, he's going scared the shit out of him. That's what it did And i'm just gonna be But naked honest with you. That's what should happen They should be scared to death and as farmers We need to stand up and farmers are on these commodity groups. So just you know Think about what you're doing here You you're fighting against yourself I'm I'm fed up with our south dakota corn growers association Because they can't even bring themselves to agree that what we're doing with jim and the e30 thing is right They won't even say it out loud Although you visit with each individual board member and we're with you man The other thing i'm fed up with our commodity group check off members Is the fact that they go around telling about people that are taking their check off back I mean they're trying to pit us against each other. That's not right I mean I thought that this was a great event the information that was shared here today was wonderful It was very enlightening to me. I feel like what i'm doing is worth something And my members need to hear this They want to know this too and they they really appreciate the fact that there's others out there that want to help I agree that the the health care thing because I mean again, it's personal I've lost my mom to brain cancer I've lost friends to cancer and we all know what we're doing here Why are we letting it slip by as burl said You know everything else we're we lock our kids and heck I was raising a car that you didn't even strap yourself in and what you know, you just wandered around the car I made it My mom or my wife's Traverse has three car seats in it because she babysits our grandkids I can't even get in the back seat without taking one of them out to get in the back seat Uh, and that's a great thing, right? I mean, it's good. We're safe. There's no no problems there But yet we're putting this fuel in a car that we don't even know. I mean I heard Here's what a seed salesman told me one time at a at a seed event Field day This this is brian hefty for those of you that know the hefty boys he said He's talking about the the roundup case in california and he said you think that's bad He said waiting. Do you see what's in your diesel fuel or in your in your gas? He said You'd wear a hazmat suit. You wouldn't let your kids even in the car when you fill it up This is coming from A guy that's very reputable in the egg industry so Why aren't people like that fighting with us? Why why don't why don't they jump in if that's Truly how they feel I think it's for the same reason I think it's because they already know that the past If anything's like the future like the past is We are not going to get there I really think as I said before the only way we get there is through this safe rule and Works it works, but don't it. No That's why I see it Reg we touched on a lot of it, but I want to come down the line here again, you know, you've heard all the different All the different perspectives of this thing, but again in short terms said, okay, let's get to work tomorrow What's what's something we could really focus on? You know in the short term and start on I think message-wise The health angle is one that I haven't heard used strongly before And 202 l calls very directly for health or damage to a nutrition control device I reflect with the guys on another example of Some of that actually did work at one point. You know get the lead out was one thing In the 90s, there was a considerable study of the constituents of gasoline It was it was a very joint effort between the oil and the car industry the Detroit three at that time 10-year program constituents There were many reports that came out of that and one one report in particular But it came up with at the end of the day was A pile of data is so big you couldn't really measure it and So compelling that the engineers just loved it, but then they recognized that The difficulty with that is there was just so much information. It just overwhelmed People who were going to look at it. So there was an effort if you're going to do one thing to gassing as a result of that study What would it be and it was get the sulfur out This the sulfur report was published in 1993 and the sulfur and diesel was directed out in early 2000, right? Then we said well, what about the gasoline? Oh, well Need more proof of the Correlation So the industry's got together and did that and eventually sulfur got taken out of gasoline in the late 2000s The point is that that did work at the point to that point the administrator carol browner was of of Wide-eyed full-blown advocate of getting sulfur out of fuel and we were on the stump Together as epa in a car industry to convince people to do that And it went along with provisions protect the health and then also protect the functionality of the mission control device I'm sort of long with you know, the legal action is Sort of next phase if people won't listen to it. I just i'm i continue to be baffled why epa won't pick up demands on that And but maybe carol you mentioned something this morning. I thought was it was an attention getter for me. It was along the lines of You haven't seen or haven't heard of I think clear deliveries of message to the hill on the topic and That too some of us is a bit frustrating as we think here. We've been working on messaging and stuff and if that If that message if your message plus is that precise What are we missing? Who do we get the message to who do we get this health message to? Then who needs to carry it? I guess that's where i'm at But I think we've got membership at a and all through this organization that Would be willing and maybe we're just all going into shotgun on the what we're saying I Is it okay to respond? Okay. Um, I would I would just say that You know based upon the conversations that I've been in The level of knowledge is very very low if not non-existent Part of it is because a lot of staff Have pretty broad portfolios. There's also a huge turnover on staff. There's been a huge turnover in in members You know and so it's not really anybody's priority So in terms of thinking about leadership and here's where I don't know in terms of thinking about Whether there's any hope in terms of of Again somebody banging the drum It as far as somebody who's on a committee of jurisdiction And one of the things that I you know because I I'm actually going to go back and make some Some inquiries about this too because there's also Climate legislation that is moving forward or it's being talked about a lot And therefore because this also ties in That I really want to go and talk to a couple senior committee people About this and to see what You know to start to feel that out a little bit more but But I think that there's got to be much stronger harder outreach That that has to happen Because people all talk like they haven't heard anything from anybody on this stuff I want to come back to you on that but but read I think everything everybody said is fine I don't have any quarrels with anything that people have suggested But I want to come back to where I started out today, which is One of the sort of threshold difficulties of this issue is it's so darn complicated It's so hard to explain it involves so many disciplines It is a really difficult story to tell and and so I have sort of two Pathways out of that thicket one of them is internal to washington and one of them is external to washington I think the story internal to washington Is that we have become too dependent on a priesthood of experts Who are Hold all the knowledge to themselves and act on their own without any Democratic or congressional or even administrative review. They are Situated in Ann Arbor. They pronounce Their view of the world and everybody bows down in a basis now I hate to tell stories on myself but A great idea that was an abject failure of mine Was a few years ago during the obama administration when we had friends in the white house And we had friends At doe we had friends at USDA We had friends at dot And we thought we ought to have friends at epa But epa refuses to cooperate with anybody And so we said to the white house Let's have an interagency process You know, you have the this expertise in the national laboratories You have agencies dedicated to different issues here bring in nihs bring in the whole team Let's not just let Two guys in an arbor decide the future of this issue well turf arises and The administrator of epa put her foot down and said this shall not go forward and It didn't But it's still a good idea And the problem is still there and who knows maybe this administration would be more sympathetic To having different voices. I mean certainly the white house has not been able to solve this issue Maybe it would be sympathetic to the idea that there may be one more source of wisdom that isn't Situated solely at epa So that that's that could be through a congressional directive. It could be through Lobby in the white house. There there are different ways that could happen So that's the internal that's sort of how do you stall this problem of how complicated is by bringing in a bunch of Different experts and try to reach a consensus I don't think that works outside of Washington. This is too hard a story to tell So I think what we have to say is very similar to the the the problem I've dealt with for the last 20 years on climate change. That's too darn complicated to explain anybody either And what has worked on climate change was kids saying i'm scared What else do you need to say to a politician? I'm scared. What are you doing about it? Or i'm scared for my kids or my grandkids. What are you doing about it? And that's the exact same message we have here. It's not complicated Kids are being poisoned by the gasoline that we're burning in our cars. Do something about it Stop the poison Well, I've gone with you it isn't that complicated. There's bad stuff and good stuff I was going to come back to you but you sort of touched on your edge, but you know Again too general of a question, but you know, why hasn't this resonated? I wrote an article with Dave Vandegren and biofuels digest after that oil that houston oil spill In the harbor that was it. I forget the numbers now. It's been a while, but staggering numbers large numbers oil industries on camera cnn said well, it's just reformat Reference benzene reformat. It was just a different word for exactly what we're talking about that should have had people up in arms I mean because that houston harbor then feeds to all kinds of things So it's it's it's very uh Frustrated us that this stuff hasn't resonated. I mean we put out a lot of stuff Thanks to mr. Sopke here through cfdc We launched something that and I hope people will visit on our website as a safe gasoline campaign We have compiled a bazillion things that are should scare people out of their boots And they don't so I don't know how we do it other than You know look at the attention of this this young Greta got you know on climate change things like that But that houston thing was a local. It's like, you know tip used to sell politics are local whole sore health effects And you know people all over this country are in cancer wards And so we've got to figure out how to do that and then that was we all know from working here that drives things here But I just was staggered at at how that houston thing and there are many more examples. I just won But how that sort of came when yeah Bazillion gallons of benzene in our water and as borough pointed out in our research and our other project EPAs I mean api is on record is saying the safe safe threshold for benzene is zero There is no such thing So anyway, I think I think we just got to get a keep pounding that and then For those who might sort of doubt then you're bringing in these ancillary benefits of agriculture of energy security of economic development but It's just shocking to me. You're a bridge carol. Can I can I jump into one point there? I think the the houston Case is again a lot like climate change is well. I don't live there. What do I care? You know It's a bad Story, but most people react to what's affecting them. Yeah, it was and I think I think what's compelling about this pH story is This does not have a geographic boundary. This is happening in new york and burbank as well as in Omaha. So What moves politicians Are motivated passionate people who come into their offices and tell personal stories Now they can be corn growers. That's fine in those districts. They can be mothers in the Bronx. That's fine, but we have to get Individuals with compelling personal narratives to say what are you doing to protect me from this hazard? Well, we did that steve there is the icm sponsored that Did the young fella who was in one of your race one of the various things you guys sponsored? I had suffered directly from Yeah, you know, so I mean, yeah, so I don't I don't disagree with that at all but I guess we just got to do a better job of it because While you're right about that Yeah, I don't live in houston, but if you can turn that out and say Well, that's in your gas too That you know, did you just say it's not geographical? We're not limited to that. It's in my gas. It's not just in houston No, it's in your it's in all gas. We're all affected by it So I think, you know, we've got to figure out a way But I look to the hill. I agree with dave alberg entirely. We've had, you know, we're not going to get any legislation But they are a bully pulpit. They can beat up an epa. They can hold hearings. They can make noise I still come back to and you spend a lot of time on the hill You know, we had someone from senator marky's office here today. I have personally You know Gone after them because I know that when marky was in the house and chaired the health subcommittee on the house side He knows the stuff inside out. I talked to mature retirement thing carol. Yeah He's he's interested. He really was genuinely interested where you need someone like that to say And he's not even an ethanol guy. We don't need him to be an ethanol guy He just needs to say I forgot we we got to get this stuff out of gasoline. What are the alternatives? I'm when he learns of them then become an ethanol guy. So I I think there's a balance between the media the hill states the governors, you know And and oh and and absolutely there's no question while that's going on That will strengthen the lawsuit boydin has said that for years. That's a built-in Communicator to built in public relations platform to direct constantly update people on the lawsuit And you're always informing people then of why we're suing him. So there's it can all tie together, but It takes resources and time and people, you know, Doug carol you touched on it Because we've had this problem Getting into rounds his office or staying in front of rounds his office of the staff turnover That it's not like in the old days where there were someone would be a staffer for 15 years That you're lucky. They're there for 15 months And so then you lose that ground that you thought you were establishing and now you got to start over from zero And I really thought that we might have a better chance with rounds To pose some questions to epa for the simple fact that his wife is dealing with cancer today So, I mean Talked while making it personal And I just for whatever reason it's not reaching him For whatever reason Anything from our audience any words of wisdom or concerns questions? We've covered a lot of grounds today Did you know that in 1925 Alice Hamilton wrote an article in the American Journal of Public Health Saying if you're gonna try to keep lead out of gasoline you really shouldn't have You know put benzene in it also benzene is worse Sorry in 1925 Alice Hamilton of Harvard University Wrote an article in the American Journal of Public Health saying that benzene was worse than lead in gasoline Because it was carcinogenic. It was very clear even at the time. So I just offer that maybe history can have a role in this too But I think You know, there's there's a long A lot of ground to recover I'll just say in the history that That's a strong point to and we use this in a lot going all the way back to clean air Act stuff in the clean act amendments when we were working on that in the late 80s We knew it then and we really am done thing about it. I mean that's that's the day of Holberg's point about 202 well I mean we have we have quotes from physicians from Legal experts and others and say we got to get this stuff out of gasoline. Well, we didn't and in the sera club Uh had one of the greatest lines when they went after him on for not enforcing the toxics provision And they created this benzene averaging scheme that they said how could a provision that requires the removal of toxics Result in no removal at all all that it was average it out into the pool from rfg areas And it was kind of this the shell game of moving benzene around so But but but the point at your point is a good one that We've known this for a long time and it makes it even that much more compelling How many bazillion gallons of gasoline have been we've been exposed to since then so I'm gonna come back to the science for just a minute and then see if anyone wants to comment You know an epa came out the e15 rule last summer They also said e15 over e10 raised vocs Raised knocks raised p.m And I don't think the ethanol industry or people supporting the ethanol really realized the science already Put up against us Because we all know ethanol burns cleaner. I mean that's not a that's not a disagreement But they're using the argument that ethanol and like ethanol's cooling effect makes gasoline burn worse And I think we have to understand their strategy to how they say we're worse So that we can give the right questions I was in an arbor at epa this week And I had one of my slides had the denver results when denver's using their models That shows e0 is better than e10 and they're not disagreeing with denver's results Of course, I argued they're not using real world fuels when they do this So I think it's it's the ethanol industry or the people that want to support a cleaner fuel We have to have the right people that understand our fuel understand ethanol from emissions and a performance side Because it's not just EPA it's not just crc enrall has just done another study Giving the cooling effect of ethanol a possibility of being ypm goes up And I'm looking at the study and I'm honored to just kick somebody at enrall for doing that study So, you know, we have some science against this and I think we got to so that when someone goes to epa We're giving them the right questions to ask So there's certain questions you can ask epa. They're not going to want to answer So steve, I think the epa should be forced to ask those questions under oath Okay When they can't be cute Okay, and they have to say yes or no And and suffer the consequences you and I've talked about this a lot There is nobody in the world that understands the moves model better than you You have studied this for five years and you are brilliant at it Okay, you can spend the next 20 years again groundhog day Sitting down with those guys and their successors and they will never admit That they concocted a model that is not only wrong, but it's idiotic never Okay But if you force them into the court of law and you present the case What read presented today? Which they themselves buried in their documents Have got up and admitted That their moves model is bust That they were absolutely wrong on every count and on top of that their contractor Said how can you leave 86 of the bad stuff on the cutting floor? What that says is it goes back to the law How can a law where congress says reduced to the greatest degree achievable? Allow them to concoct in collusion with the oil industry A model that they themselves admit is defective Right with manipulated fuel samples And they can continue to use that model To tell people that E0 is cleaner than e10 That's not just stupid. That should be illegal Right and my point is We need the right people to support the legal to support the lawyers So you can go in and just absolutely with the right questions. You need you call that expert witnesses Hello, thank you. My name is Shetha. I'll spare you my last name Um, I haven't been here all day, but I've been tuning in remotely and so apologies if what I ask you You might have already covered, but it's something Reed. You were just talking about so you were saying how to Get the attention of politicians. You need to you need that child in the room saying that they're scared and to draw attention to it I actually work with a group. We don't have time That's largely credited with launching gredith unberg turning that picture making it viral on their u.s. Representative here in the states I also am a behavioral scientist. So I study in my colleague study What is what is that gap between perception of risk and the reality of the risk? And why haven't we been able to succeed in closing that gap? What I would argue is that even though it's not in your backyard We have been really effective in identifying the communication and that's what it is It's a communication challenge. You're never going to be able to make every risk present for a particular population But if you can communicate that experience in a way that makes it immediate for them and not so far away Then you can begin to come overcome people's perceptions And so there's an entire field of study around this and I'm wondering to what extent we've talked about it And if it's being applied, um, we're applying it in everything We're doing with the social media network with we don't have time But this might be some of the missing component here that I'd love to talk about some more We may have to hire you. Um I think you're absolutely right One of yeah, you're at that's that's great points and absolutely right one of the challenges we have just wearing my ethanol hat is we have other sort of daily fires at our feet that have the ethanol industry has and I've been in it from the beginning but and Has a the ability to really mobilize and have a single message and be very effective at it because for years and years We had a tax exemption. We had to all defend the tax exemption Then we had you know oxygen we had to defend that then we had the rfs and we had so we're pretty good about You know kind of kind of getting together these last five years or so the renewable fuel standard Which has been the basis for a lot of ethanol use has been under constant attack So I think it's I think it's fair to say it's you know Some of us have broken off and Jeff Cooper said me taste I'm really glad you guys are laser focused on on the health aspect But they're fighting the so so we haven't been able to bring our message together So it's a it's an unfortunate but unique situation we're in where Every time we think things have settled down. Okay, let's go do something positive and And you know somebody attacks something that we have to go defend the north wall You know kind of things so if we can ever get past that and frankly a lot of us have Made the argument that maybe if we could get this we don't need a renewable fuel standard We're already don't have a subsidy anymore So we could really be free of this which is which is dragging us down but those are good points and I think at some point if we could mobilize our financial resources and tap into that sort of really high level Communications expertise. I think it would it would do as well And I would love to connect with you to talk about this further Just one other thing that I always think is kind of amazing about this issue too is that when you think about All of the work that has gone into clean air on the power sector side And how strong That whole thing on the health side everything has been It's really incredible to think when you juxtapose that to all of these health impacts On the fuel side in transportation. It's kind of mind-boggling. Well, these studies Come out and they show spikes in autism spikes and cancer rates spikes in urban areas Well, you don't have power plants in urban areas. You've got cars that are trapped in buildings You know, I mean sometimes it's just it's frustrating that someone doesn't ask the obvious questions like that Or you guys looking at fuels too and to so many these studies aren't but it also goes back to EPA in the particulates And not recognizing the nano and the microbes saying look we control diesel and we control power plants We're good. We we did pm. No, there's a whole family of pm under that that, you know, but they don't even know about So I agree. It's a totally disproportionate prioritization of how you control pollution and Well, it's dysfunctional I'm jonathan hers. I work with carol at esi I want to reinforce your comment about working with other organizations And observe I think like responding to scientific studies very, you know precisely There's Maybe it's not fair, but there's a little bit of a perception. Maybe that the people who produce ethanol are interested in selling ethanol and Maybe just, you know, that angle is alone is not going to Yeah, that's another reason to work with other groups, but Uh, I think one of the things that we're trying to look at is Getting people to think about this what are called the social determinants of health And it's so it's not just it's what the way that the public health people look at public health And these are the things that we can control that affect people's health And the idea is that it's it's not just, uh, you know asthma. It's it's all the various, uh, You know things that lead to deaths that we can actually respond to so one of the ideas that um, actually there's just something in the journal of american of journal the american medical association is looking at the Impacts on the social determinants of health in the budget process So that when when uh laws and regulations are evaluated, they don't just look at the cost They're actually required to look at impacts on health in the environment But it's not it's not the guidance really isn't there So the idea is how the benefits of your What your program is about is going to benefit The health side of the government As well and there are all these different groups working all these areas and they all and they do kind of add up You know under climate as well. So it's a much broader coalition and and as you say You know if you ask the question the right way People will say well, you know benzene isn't doesn't work. What does and it all it all sort of comes back together So I think I think that's a really that's like that would be a really strong way to to purchase Well, I just said one thing and thank you for that and I agree your very first comment though um Be aware of ethanol guys bearing gifts, you know But I I would just say and we fight this fight all the time all the time. Oh, yeah We again wearing my ethanol hat, but we make no apologies for the fact that We produce a product that does all these things all these boxes that checks, you know energy security economic development All all of these things And as we said this morning was going great and it saves lives it replaces a toxic carcinogen. So I understand exactly what you're saying We've got to get over that initial hump that you know that you're not that there's not You know another shoe to drop or that you're not holding something behind your back But it is a clean product and we're not going to you know, we're not going to not talk about that So we've got to overcome some of that perception I think jeff cooper's presentation here this morning to the environmental community should that was terrific Yeah, that really was the super up to date and and we were aware of these numbers But you know, it was just an excellent presentation, but we just got to get over that I met at your retirement party. We burl and I had a couple of exchanges with a couple different people I should have another retirement party obviously Well, don't bring the guys that we met because unless we want to move we need more time to win them over But they were like same thing. Oh you ethanol guys. So but those are good points, but Well, look, I think Unless there's anything burning, I think we're on the homestretch here. We have a reception at five If it opens at five fifteen at five fifteen at the Occidental And we can give you directions to that but to give everybody a chance to catch up in their email and go to the restroom and unfortunately get your raincoat on and Get your raincoat on your umbrella out, but I know I speak for all the organizers of this dug and in the farmers union and ESI and my group clean fields development coalition. Thank you read and senator worth for giving us this terrific venue and Just a lot of great information. You can never have too much great information I hope we can snip at this and bottle it and do some different things with it But all these presentations will be available For those of you who stayed the whole day. Thank you very much And um with that, I think we yeah and our audience on the air. Yes, we'll live forever ever On the air so So again, thanks I was just going to mention to that the live cast that this will be on EESI's website. So that's EESI dot org or g. Okay. Okay. Okay with that. I uh, you should bang a gavel or something read your