The American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) today provided feedback on the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s technical guidelines for quantifying, reporting, and verifying greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with agricultural production of biofuel feedstock and the Department’s Feedstock Carbon Intensity Calculator (FD-CIC), welcoming that they overall sufficiently inform farmers how individual conservation practices can reduce the carbon intensity (CI) of their crops.
ACE CEO Brian Jennings commended USDA for providing farmers with a practical, science-based pathway to lower their CI scores and create new revenue opportunities. “USDA’s guidelines are a significant step forward in acknowledging the critical role farmers play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” Jennings said. “By avoiding the all-or-nothing bundling approach and allowing farmers to stack practices like reduced tillage and nutrient management, these guidelines create flexibility and real-world applicability for producers.”
ACE highlighted the importance of ensuring these guidelines are fully integrated into the implementation of the 45Z Clean Fuel Production Tax Credit and adopted consistently in state and regional clean fuel programs. “Regulated fuel markets historically penalize ethanol based on many outdated assumptions around farm-level GHG emissions. It is long overdue for farmers to get credit for their conservation practices which, according to the latest science, reduce the overall carbon footprint of ethanol and other biofuels, and these USDA guidelines help unlock that value,” Jennings added.
The organization also emphasized the need for continuous improvement of the FD-CIC tool. ACE recommended accounting for specific crop yield, climate, soil, and management-specific estimates of nitrogen use efficiency and nitrous oxide emissions, as well as making updates based on real-world data, such as findings from ACE’s own USDA-funded Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP) projects. Through these RCPP projects, ACE is working with farmers across 10 states and 167 counties to implement conservation practices on nearly 100,000 acres. The initiative will gather extensive soil and crop data to validate greenhouse gas benefits and inform updates to lifecycle models like GREET.
“We’re proud to lead this effort to collect real-world data on the benefits of low carbon feedstocks for biofuels,” Jennings said. “Our goal is to empower farmers and ethanol producers with the tools to capitalize on their low carbon practices through clean fuel markets and tax credits such as 45Z.”
ACE also urged USDA to coordinate closely with the Treasury Department to streamline verification and recordkeeping, leveraging USDA’s existing expertise and infrastructure. “Farmers have trusted USDA to administer conservation programs for decades. It makes sense to build on this system rather than creating new, costly requirements,” Jennings said.
Finally, ACE reiterated its support for a book-and-claim system that allows farmers to decouple carbon intensity attributes from physical grain, maximizing participation and efficiency — similar to successful approaches like the generation of renewable energy credits from low carbon electricity production and biomethane production.
ACE news release
