What Is a Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS)?
Sold to the public as a way to lower the carbon content of fuel and reduce the amount of CO2 emitted from our tailpipes, in reality the Low-Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) isn’t about making the fuels in your vehicle any better, cleaner or more affordable than they already are – it simply seeks to render those fuels more difficult to find and even more expensive to purchase.
State of Play: LCFS in New York
On December 30, 2009, New York joined 10 other Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states in signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on LCFS – a memo that lays the groundwork for the eventual implementation of a statewide LCFS regime in New York. In a statement issued the day of the agreement, New York Gov. David Paterson characterized the LCFS as a means for “creating the next generation of fuels that will address climate change.”
Unfortunately, according to several recent studies on the topic, an LCFS not only won’t do a thing to reduce the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere – it may actually contribute to an overall increase in global greenhouse gas emissions.
Production and Distribution: How/Where New York Gets Its Energy
Unlike many states in the Northeast, New York does produce small quantities of oil, and a respectable amount of natural gas — mostly in the western part of the state. Unfortunately, that production contributes only marginally to total energy demand of New York, with most of the state’s petroleum products supplied from the outside — by refineries in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the Colonial Pipeline from the Gulf Coast, and foreign imports from Canada, Norway, Russia, Portugal and India.
But while energy may arrive in New York from no fewer than 15 separate states and foreign entities, the vast majority of the state’s foreign imports come from Canada – energy that stands to be severely restricted under the LCFS regime currently in the works. The graph below details the disparity:
LCFS Impact on New York State
Like many Northeastern states, New York relies heavily upon home heating oil to keep warm during the typically cold and volatile winters (see: 2009-2010). All told, roughly a third of households in the state use fuel oil as their primary energy source for space heating – supplies that a regional LCFS program will make more expensive to purchase in the short-term, and much more difficult to access beyond that.
Last year, the state of New York secured $537 million from the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) to help subsidize the purchase of these fuel resources for those in need. Unfortunately, under the LCFS, a large portion of this fuel oil may be targeted for elimination under a regime that’s fundamentally set up to disadvantage Canadian reserves, adding additionally strain to an already over-extended LIHEAP budget.
