As Bluestem has noted in the past, regulatory capture can be part of policy making. Investopedia provides one definition at the top of a longer article:
Regulatory capture is an economic theory that says regulatory agencies may come to be dominated by the industries or interests they are charged with regulating. The result is that an agency, charged with acting in the public interest, instead acts in ways that benefit incumbent firms in the industry it is supposed to be regulating.
Reading an article published in the Minnesota Reformer yesterday, I was reminded of the concept. In Advisory group says Legislature’s green energy ambitions may need to be scaled back, Christopher Ingraham reported:
An advisory group tasked with drafting standards to reduce transportation sector carbon emissions issued its report to the Legislature on Thursday, finding that the current target of reducing the greenhouse gas intensity of transportation fuels 100% by 2050 “may be very difficult to achieve given what is known today about the market and clean fuel technologies.”
The 40-member Clean Transportation Standard working group, convened by the Minnesota departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Transportation and Pollution Control, found that under a business-as-usual scenario the state would likely achieve a 30% reduction in fuel carbon intensity by 2050, and that a “moderate” policy effort could yield a 65% reduction by that year.
But getting that number to 100%, as targeted by the Legislature, would require “an aggressive outlook that aggregates many optimistic assumptions with respect to clean fuel deployment in Minnesota,” the members found.
The group recommended scaling back the Legislature’s ambitions, aiming for a 40%-50% reduction by 2040 and changing the 2050 “target” to a more flexible “goal.”
Even a moderate reduction would be cause for celebration, according to many backers of the working group’s findings.
“Today’s strong backing by the working group is a compelling and unprecedented step toward what we hope will be historic passage later this legislative session of the first statewide Clean Transportation Standard in the Midwest,” said Brendan Jordan, vice president for Transportation and Fuels at the Great Plains Institute, a green energy group.
But the CTS report is also being criticized by some members of the advisory group that created it. Representatives of four environmental organizations on the committee released their own minority report today, faulting the main report for an overreliance on “bridge” fuels like ethanol that allow petroleum companies to keep producing oil and may actually be associated with worse total greenhouse gas emissions than traditional fuels.
Instead, the four authors of the minority report write, the task force should have focused more on promoting adoption of electric vehicles.
“Electric vehicles (EVs) are already significantly less polluting today and this existing advantage for EVs over vehicles with internal combustion engines will only grow as our electric grid continues to decarbonize,” they write.
The environmental groups are further opposed to the main report’s promotion of carbon capture and storage technologies. They write that those technologies are necessary to achieve the on-paper reductions in greenhouse gas emissions associated with ethanol. Petroleum companies are enthusiastic about carbon capture from ethanol, in large part because it can be used to increase the output of aging oil wells.
The CTS report specifically recommends against using carbon capture for enhanced oil recovery. The authors of the minority report, however, write that “further commodification of CO₂ (pollution from ethanol plants) creates a perverse economic incentive to never stop producing CO₂, a cycle which has been described as ‘the more you burn, the more you earn.’” . . .
Three other states — California, Oregon and Washington — have adopted low carbon transportation standards. A report by California regulators found that the standard reduced transportation greenhouse gas emissions by 47 million metric tons between 2011 and 2018, which amounts to about one-tenth of the state’s total yearly greenhouse emissions at the time.
Representatives from CURE, COPAL, Health Professionals for a Healthy Climate and the Sierra Club’s North Star chapter signed on to the minority report’s criticisms of the main group’s findings. But members of other environmental organizations on the working group — including Conservation Minnesota, The Nature Conservancy, The Union of Concerned Scientists and the Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy —did not sign the dissenting report.
But the authors of the minority report say that more aggressive climate targets should not be abandoned simply because getting there may be a challenge.
“We just do not have time for more ethanol, more pipelines or carbon shell games from the unholy alliance of the oil and ethanol industries,” said Peter Wagenius of the Sierra Club. “Helping to extend the lifespan of polluting liquid fuels is not the answer.”
Here's the list of working group members' affiliation, from the group's report. I've only listed the groups and firms involved, since that information, rather than the individuals, is the factor related to determining capture. Readers can download the report here.
Work Group Collaboration
Work Group Members Organization/ category
Conservation Minnesota. Conservation organizations
Minnesota Farm Bureau, General farm organizations (2 representatives)
Great Plains Institute, renewable energy and low carbon transportation (2 representatives)
Minnesota Corn Growers Association, Agricultural commodity groups
The Nature Conservancy, Conservation organizations (2 representatives)
Alliance for Automotive Innovation, Automotive manufacturers
Nature Energy, Renewable natural gas and organic waste interests
Allete, Inc./Minnesota Power, Electric utilities or cooperatives
Fresh Energy, Environmental science organizations
Grand Portage Band of Chippewa,Tribal governments
UMN Forever Green Initiative, Sustainable agriculture or regenerative biofuels producers
Delta Air Lines, Inc.. Aviation interests
Great River Energy, Electric utilities or cooperatives
ChargePoint, Inc., EV charging infrastructure companies (2 representative)
Fueling Minnesota, Conventional transportation fuel producers and retailers
CHS, Inc., Conventional transportation fuel producers and retailers
Gevo, Inc., Aviation interests
Minnesota Trucking Association, Automotive manufacturers
BlueGreen Alliance, Labor unions
Minnesota Forest Industries, Forestry interests
American Lung Association, Public health interest
Minneapolis Northside Green Zone, Environmental justice organizations
Partnership on Waste and Energy, Renewable natural gas and organic waste interests, General farm organizations
Tesla, Inc.. EV charging infrastructure companies
Union of Concerned Scientist, Environmental science organizations
Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, Tribal governments
CURE, Water quality interests
Minnesota Environmental Partnership Statewide, environmental and natural resource organizations
Cargill, Inc., Sustainable agriculture or regenerative biofuels producers
Comunidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina (COPAL MN), Environmental justice organizations
Laborers' International Union of North America (LIUNA) Minnesota/North Dakota, Labor unions
Friends of the Mississippi River, Water quality interests
Minnesota Forest Resources Council, Forestry interests
Health Professionals for a Healthy Climate .Public health interests
Minnesota Center for Environmental Advocacy, Statewide environmental and natural resource organizations
Sierra Club. Renewable energy and low-carbon transportation
Minnesota Biofuels Association, Renewable fuel producers
Minnesota Soybean Growers Association, Agricultural commodity group<
Minnesota Biodiesel Council, Renewable fuel producers
Reading the list, one suspects a stakeholder approach is conductive to regulatory capture.
Since the Reformer article doesn't link to the minority report, I've embedded it here:
Minority Report on Minnesota Clean Transportation Standard uploaded by Sally Jo Sorensen on Scribd
Ingraham calls the Great Plains Institute a "green energy group." Looking over the Great Plains Institute's Financials & Reports Bluestem found some of the corporate donors in the latest annual report (June 2020-June 2021) to be very interesting. On the other hand, I haven't paid much attention to this group since I posted Project Tundra's clean coal; or, does Petra Nova project's tech really reduce carbon emissions?.
The think tank's commitment to carbon capture is mentioned in SD News Watch: Proposed CO2 pipelines thrust SD into billion-dollar climate change debate. though it's worth mentioning that it's not just ethanol CCS that the Great Plains Institute has encouraged. Ceratinly training for having a staffer take the role of public spokester for more modest standards than the legislature envisioned.
It's forty shades of green, but I tend to suspect some of the stakeholders were invested in the majority report's conclusion even before the advisory group met.
The Minnesota Reformer article is republished under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Photo: Sean Rayford/Getty Images, via Minnesota Reformer.
Related posts
- Jean Wagenius: Knowing history of regulatory capture on ag pollution can help us end it
- Annals of regulatory capture: read these Intercept articles on pesticide makers & the EPA
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