Chuck Grassley Rails Against 'Boneheaded' Biden Admin. Regulation On Sustainable Aviation Fuel
During remarks on the Senate floor Thursday, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) spoke about a Biden Administration regulation on sustainable aviation fuel.
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00:00 I come today to provide some real-world perspective from what I call the real America.
00:11 I'm honored to speak on behalf of the tens of thousands of Iowa farmers who this very day are tending fields across my home state that feed and fuel America.
00:26 I often remind people here in Washington that farmers make up only 2% of our population.
00:35 That means that the other 98% of the American people depend on the livelihoods of just 2% of the people for their next meal.
00:51 Here in the United States Senate, I'm one of only two grain farmers serving among 98 other lawmakers in this body.
01:01 This puts me in a unique position.
01:05 As a lifelong family farmer and a U.S. Senator, I use my platform to speak up on behalf of American farmers.
01:16 I know there's lots of other colleagues that I have in this body that do the same thing for the farmers in their state.
01:26 I think I do it from some hands-on experience.
01:31 From one generation to the next, the way of life of these family farmers upholds our nation's food security and in recent decades have strengthened U.S. energy independence.
01:49 The productivity of American agriculture has empowered the family farmer to supply the grain for our domestic renewable fuels industry and to displace foreign oil in the U.S. transportation fleet.
02:09 America's farmers embrace best conservation practices to strengthen soil health and precision agriculture to reduce their carbon footprint in food and fuel production.
02:29 Now it happens that my state is number one producer of corn and ethanol and number one in a couple other areas that I won't go into.
02:41 Clean burning renewable fuels are better for the environment, lower greenhouse gas emissions, and create good jobs in rural America and fuels the economic growth of that same rural America.
03:01 When it comes to the hard work and ingenuity of the American farmers, the sky is the limit, quite literally.
03:13 Now to the point of my remarks today to my colleagues. Let's consider sustainable aviation fuel and alternate fuel made from non-petroleum feedstocks,
03:32 something the environmental community in the United States is promoting to get greenhouse gas down.
03:43 Scientists say that this next generation fuel will help lower carbon emissions in the environment.
03:52 That's a pretty big shoe print considering aviation accounts for 2% of all carbon dioxide emissions and 12% for the transportation sector alone.
04:09 Sustainable aviation fuel that goes by the acronym SAF has tremendous market potential. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, or no, the U.S. Department of Energy,
04:28 more than 360,000 commercial flights have used SAF at 46 airports, mostly in the United States and Europe.
04:42 That's really just a spit in the ocean considering more than 10 million scheduled passenger flights in the United States per year, according to our FAA.
04:58 Displacing conventional jet fuel with sustainable products such as homegrown feedstocks presents a tremendous market opportunity for America's farmers
05:14 and at the same time reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I'm proud to say that Iowa is a leader in clean energy.
05:27 Nearly 20 years ago, I worked to enact the renewable fuel standard and this very day keep my thumbs on both Democrat and Republican administrations to faithfully implement the law as Congress intended.
05:47 As chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, I also created the biodiesel tax credit that's helped to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by around 74%.
06:02 Last year, my home state produced a record-breaking 4.6 billion gallons of ethanol and 350 million gallons of biodiesel.
06:15 Iowa farmers stand ready to help scale up production of this sustainable aviation fuel, the next generation of airplane and aviation fuel,
06:30 but it seems that partisan ideology might be standing in the way of that effort.
06:39 While we can find unanimous agreement that clean air is good for everyone, finding agreement on public policies to help keep our air clean is not always so clear cut.
06:56 In Washington, it's even harder than finding a needle in a haystack. Many people in this town would find reason to argue if the sky was blue on a cloudless, sunny day.
07:14 The consensus really clouds over when federal bureaucrats behind policy bend policy to fit ideology instead of sound science.
07:33 In December of 2022, I spoke on this very floor to urge the Treasury Department not to shortchange America's farmers when it wrote rules for the sustainable aviation fuel tax credit.
07:55 Unfortunately, when the Democrats wrote the partisan Inflation Reduction Act, they chose to ignore our very own Department of Energy and preferred modeling by the International Civil Aviation Organization.
08:13 Now that's pure poppycock. U.S. policy makers need to put America first. That's why I pressed USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack at a hearing in February this year to champion grain feedstocks for the sustainable aviation fuel market
08:40 because he's a big voice in this administration. American farmers are ready to provide low-cost and low-carbon fuel to consumers, whether that's on land, air, or sea.
08:58 For years, I've been fighting in the trenches to stop the Obama and Biden administrations from misguided regulatory schemes.
09:09 I'm glad that the Supreme Court recently kept check on their ridiculous plans, commonly known as the Waters of the U.S. Rule, that would have regulated dry creek beds and mud puddles on family farms.
09:28 When the government starts meddling and telling farmers how to farm, how to raise livestock, you can bet your boots that environmental extremists are bending the ears of bureaucrats and pushing policies disconnected from reality.
09:51 Writing federal regulations not backed up by science or common sense is hogwash.
10:00 Two weeks ago, the Biden administration put lipstick on a pig when it released guidance to qualify the new federal incentives for sustainable aviation fuel.
10:16 So, as a senior senator from Iowa and a lifelong family farmer, I'm here to squeal on the Biden administration's stupid regulations.
10:27 The decision-making process clearly got mired in politics and bureaucratic nonsense, not the sound science that has governed this process for about three decades.
10:44 So, let's take a closer look at the guidance issued by the Treasury Department two weeks ago.
10:53 The regulations would be used to implement Section 40B, Sustainable Aviation Fuel Tax Credit.
11:07 That's the federal subsidy enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act to help this alternative fuel lift off and scale up to meet market demand.
11:21 Unfortunately, rather than adopt the science-based GREET model that's been used by EPA and others to measure the carbon intensity of biofuels,
11:49 and they've been using that formula for decades, now the Biden administration guidelines instead played politics by adopting an untested and untried modified GREET model
12:07 to determine lifestyle carbon emissions of corn and soybeans for the purpose of calculating who can qualify for this sustainable aviation fuel tax credit.
12:25 And therein lies the rub. Let me explain.
12:31 First, everything in Washington goes by an acronym. GREET stands for these words that I don't know how you connect the title with the acronym, but here's what it says.
12:44 GREET stands for Greenhouse Gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy Use in Technology. The Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory,
13:01 a very respected laboratory, began developing the GREET analysis 30 years ago, back in 1994.
13:12 So that's why I said we've had decades of the use of this. And it was a science-based agreement that they came to for this formula.
13:25 And now the politicians step in to reform it, or to change it.
13:31 Scientists use the methodology to analyze the environmental impact associated with all stages of the supply chain.
13:44 Now, in a nutshell, the federal government three decades ago launched a process to measure the energy output and environmental performance
13:59 that could inform policies throughout government of energy efficiency, affordability, and sustainability.
14:09 Scientists develop models for particular purposes to evaluate, say, greenhouse gas emissions, water consumption, and air pollutant emissions.
14:25 Let me pause here to make an important distinction. Nonpartisan scientists develop methodologies to inform policymaking.
14:40 These methodologies should not be used by political scientists to advance a political agenda.
14:50 So you can understand my dismay when I reviewed the Biden administration's new formula to qualify for sustainable aviation fuel tax credit.
15:05 First, the guidelines, quite obviously, were written by bureaucrats who don't know the first thing about family farming.
15:17 And second, the formula is flawed from another fundamental standpoint.
15:25 It's going to be easy to violate and nearly impossible to verify and complicate decision-making for the family farmer.
15:38 To put it very bluntly, the Biden administration's Greek model update is a stupid approach.
15:48 While the lion's share of Washington can agree that more widespread use of sustainable aviation fuel is good for the environment,
16:00 the new Greek model fell victim to a political lion's den.
16:07 The Biden administration caved to extreme environmentalists who wouldn't know the difference between a corn planter and a combine,
16:16 let alone what the effects of uneven emergence means on crop yields or how soil compaction impacts germination of seed.
16:27 Every spring, farmers try to hit the Goldilocks sweetpot.
16:34 Not too wet, not too dry, just the right soil temperature when they plant to produce the best possible yields.
16:45 Every field on every farm is different.
16:50 For example, no-till versus what we call conservation tillage is tailored to the requirements of that farm.
17:00 And some of those requirements are based upon the soil compaction law, or no, the soil conservancy law that I helped pass in 1986.
17:12 Farmers are stewards of the soil, passing down this heritage from one generation to the next.
17:21 It's obviously that the Biden administration either doesn't care or doesn't get what its Greek formula, that its Greek formula is pigheaded.
17:35 The formula says all or nothing in order for farmers to qualify as a sustainable aviation fuel producer and help the aviation industry achieve its clear goals.
17:52 American farmers stand ready to help clean the air.
17:59 And I'm here today to clear the air on how the Biden administration is standing in their way.
18:07 For those who want to argue that these regulations make sense, let me explain why they won't work in the real America.
18:17 Let's consider the practical impact of the Biden administration's proposed rule.
18:23 In the fall, when crops are harvested, the grain is transported from the field to the market.
18:29 From the combine, it goes into a wagon or truck that takes it to the local elevator.
18:36 On my family farm, we go to the local elevator at New Hartford.
18:40 Ten thousand of farmers are doing the same thing.
18:45 In fact, in Iowa, it's 86,000 family farmers.
18:51 I say doing the same thing, that means either hauling it straight from the field or after a period of on-farm storage, then taking it to market.
19:03 Sooner or later, grains are weighed, graded, and commingled with hundreds of millions of bushel of grain from fields across the state, all coming from those 86,000 different family farmers in my state.
19:21 So do you see where I'm going here?
19:24 Let me summarize.
19:27 First, to qualify for the maximum SAF credit and additional carbon intensity score reductions,
19:40 the Biden administration dictates that farmers must comply with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Climate Smart Agricultural Pilot Program.
19:55 And that requires compliance with the following updates on the same acres.
20:02 You have to practice what we call no-till farming.
20:06 You have to plant cover crops in the fall after you harvest to protect the ground through the winter,
20:14 and more importantly, not to have soil loss in the spring.
20:23 And then you have to use enhanced efficiency nitrogen fertilizer.
20:30 Now when I first heard about this, what direction they might go,
20:35 it said you'd only have to apply for one of these three in order to get the tax credit.
20:41 And then that's where the outrageous opinions of EnviroMalus come in and said no, we've got to have them applied to all three.
20:53 I don't think that these bureaucrats would think in terms of what in the fall, if you don't harvest the last year corn crop until November and the ground freezes,
21:08 you can't plant cover crops at that time.
21:12 You've got to plant your cover crops in the early spring so they grow and get some root and can preserve that root through the spring and turn green next spring.
21:25 But if it's frozen, you can't do that.
21:28 Those are just one example of what I wonder if these bureaucrats in Washington know what they're talking about.
21:35 Now for the soybean farmer, it's a little less, but a little less number of requirements.
21:43 You just have to do no-till farming and plant cover crops in the same acres.
21:49 Now, the fact is, not every, let me emphasize this climate smart practice that the USDA has works on every farm in the same way.
22:13 No one in this town one size fits all. The GREET update then is unworkable for the family farmer.
22:24 Unrealistic burdens on farming are counterproductive to feeding and fueling the world.
22:32 Let me entertain the idea that farmers who want to participate have complied with all these criteria.
22:45 Now they must pass another dog and pony show. The sustainable aviation fuel producers or importers must get unrelated third party verification that their feedstocks have met eligibility requirements.
23:13 Of course, only accredited verifiers can grant certification to these individual farmers.
23:23 This is la-la land of verification will be paved with endless miles of red tape and loopholes as far as the eye can see.
23:36 The Biden administration changes to the Greek model needed do-over.
23:44 Bureaucrats who know nothing about farming shouldn't be telling farmers how to grow their corn and soybeans.
23:52 This is the kind of policy that farmers resent and rightly so because it's out of touch with what actually goes on on the family farm.
24:02 President Biden is abandoning Iowa farmers with this boneheaded update.
24:12 Now I think there might be a little bit of good news if rumors around this town mean anything.
24:18 I think there's a lot of people in this bureaucracy and there's four bureaucracies involved in making this sustainable aviation fuel rules.
24:29 It's only the treasury announces them, but other departments head to head in.
24:34 I think there's people right here in this town that know what I described that's wrong with these rules, are ready to rewrite them.
24:41 And of course these rules were written for what we call the Section 40B tax credit rules.
24:49 That expires at the end of this year.
24:52 Then there's going to be a new rule, Section 45Z takeover, and maybe we'll have a whole bunch of new faces in town after the first of the year when those rules are read.
25:07 But I think people, even today, realizes that what I've described here isn't workable.
25:14 So as Washington prepares to distribute tens of billions of dollars in federal incentives for the sustainable aviation fuel,
25:24 I'll continue to battle on behalf of the American farmer and taxpayer.
25:30 From the IRS to the EPA and the USDA, the alphabet soup of federal agencies makes consequential decisions that impact the lives and livelihoods of real people.
25:47 From the taxpayers to small businesses and the family farmers across America.
25:53 The Biden administration's Greek model needs to stick with sound science, not political science.
26:01 Before I yield the floor, Mr. Chairman, I'm going to ask you an ambitious consent to put in some newspaper articles from the, let's see,
26:13 the May 8th issue of the Iowa Farm Bureau Spokesman newspaper, a front-page story entitled "Sustainable Aviation Fuel Credit Rules Are Announced."
26:26 And on page 11 of the same newspaper, a section that is entitled "Questions Surround Impact of the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Guidance."
26:47 I yield the floor.
26:48 Without objection.