Low Carbon Fuel Standard

Bioenergy > Standards > Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS)

The "Low Carbon Fuel Standard" (LCFS) is a standard to regulate the carbon emissions associated with the manufacture and usage of fuels.

The state of California in the United States has established a Low Carbon Fuel Standard that mandates reduced carbon dioxide emissions for fuels under California State Executive Order S-01-07. This Executive Order, signed into law on 23 January 2007 by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, "requires fuel providers to ensure that the mix of fuel they sell into the California market meets, on average, a declining standard for GHG emissions measured in CO₂-equivalent" gram per unit of fuel energy sold.[1]
For information on the California Air Resources Board, see "Indirect land use impacts of biofuels".

Overview information

More Bad News for Ethanol, by Energy Roundup (the Wall Street Journal's energy blog): "Another brick in the wall against ethanol. Academics tasked with plotting California’s transition to a low-carbon fuel have delivered more bad news: Ethanol appears to come with a higher greenhouse-gas price tag than previously thought — higher, indeed, than fossil fuel."
- This article reported on a 12 January report by the University of California at Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center for the California Air Resources Board.
- "'Simply said, ethanol production today using U.S. corn contributes to the conversion of grasslands and rainforest to agriculture, causing very large GHG emissions,” according to Berkeley professors Alex Farrell and Michael O’Hare.
- “Even if only a small fraction of the emissions calculated in this crude way [through land use change] are added to estimates of direct emissions for corn ethanol, total emissions for corn ethanol are higher than for fossil fuels.”

	California policies	edit
Executive Order S-01-07 (establishes Low Carbon Fuel Standard) Executive Order S-06-06: Targets for the Use and Production of Biomass Products AB32: the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006

	Climate change	edit
Carbon/Carbon dioxide (CO₂)/Carbon balance: Carbon emissions/Net (carbon) emissions \| Carbon footprint \| Carbon negative biofuels \| Carbon neutrality \| Carbon sequestration/Carbon storage \| Life-cycle analysis \| Low carbon Policy: Kyoto protocol \| Clean Development Mechanism Low Carbon Fuel Standard

	Environment	edit
Climate change - Greenhouse gases \| Life-cycle analysis Species: Biodiversity \| Invasive species \| Orangutans \| Soil Genetically Modified Organisms \| Pollution \| Soil erosion \| Forests: Deforestation/Forest degradation RSB Working Group on Environment

	Bioenergy issues	edit
Agriculture (Land use) \| Climate change \| Economics \| Environment \| Social (Poverty) \| Trade Controversies: Food versus fuel \| Net energy \| Carbon debt

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