On Oct. 25, California Governor Gavin Newsom encouraged the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to accelerate its study of E15, a gasoline-ethanol blend, as a way to potentially lower the cost of gasoline in California and “save Californians as much as $2.7 billion every year —with little to no impact on the environment.”

The idea that E15 could lower gas prices in California is, itself, controversial. Even more controversial, though, is the notion that expanding the use of biofuels comes with few consequences.

Policy changes in California, especially when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions or offsetting emissions through carbon credits, can have ripple effects throughout the U.S., and even around the globe; if California were a country, it would have the fifth-largest economy in the world. In the case of E15, California’s decision-making could impact land use in places like the Midwest, which produces most of the corn that goes into ethanol. 

Ethanol is a renewable fuel that can be made from a variety of products. According to Silvia Secchi, a professor of geological and sustainability science at the University of Iowa, ethanol was originally sold as a “bridge fuel” that could one day primarily be made from cellulosic materials like wood shavings and other waste products.

Overwhelmingly, this has not happened. Corn still dominates ethanol production.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 45 percent of all corn produced in the U.S. is used for ethanol production. The USDA admits that increases in corn acreage are “a result of expanding ethanol production” and notes that while the acreage of farms growing other feed grains, such as barley and sorghum, has declined, the number of acres of corn has risen. 

Increased intensity on the land in places like Iowa, which produces more corn than any other U.S. state and, as a result, uses a significant amount of fertilizer, has caused an environmental situation so dire that advocates are calling for federal intervention.

“I really wish that every time people put ethanol in their car, they would drink Iowa well water at home,” Secchi told Inside Climate News. “California is not going to be producing that ethanol. It’s going to be importing that ethanol from places like Iowa or Nebraska or Kansas or South Dakota, and the environmental impacts of that ethanol, in terms of land use change, in terms of water quality, all the degradation that ethanol brings with it, they’re going to stay with us.”

Nitrogen-based fertilizers, commonly applied to corn, can leak into aquifers and waterways in the U.S., causing nitrate contamination in drinking water that could take decades to reverse. The potential effects of nitrate-contaminated drinking water on people range from blue baby syndrome in infants to colon cancer in adults. In Des Moines, Iowa, the worlds’ largest nitrate-removal facility may need to get bigger to keep up with rising rates of contamination. 

For Danny Cullenward, senior fellow at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, the impacts of biofuels on the land are difficult to overstate.

“Huge industrial use of nitrogen-based fertilizers, destroying water quality throughout most of the country, that’s not actually good. And those are the consequences that come from this myopic and very narrow look at this carbon accounting lens through these flawed methods,” he said. “All of that is necessary to underpin the notion of, maybe this will be good for consumers.”

Experts Inside Climate News spoke with are calling for more environmental impacts of E15—a blend of 85 percent gasoline and 15 percent ethanol—to be taken into consideration, not just the potential wins for consumers at the gas pump. 

A “Bridge Fuel”

Ethanol is a highly subsidized biofuel. Over the last 40 years, U.S. taxpayers have spent tens of billions of dollars supporting the ethanol industry through tax incentives, farm bill programs and the Renewable Fuel Standard, a 2005 program which mandated that U.S. transportation fuel contain a certain volume of renewable fuel. That same year, the U.S. became the world’s largest ethanol producer. In 2006, California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) was first authorized as a way for the state, home to the most registered vehicles in the nation, to decrease its reliance on petroleum.

The program provides incentives for fuel producers to purchase “credits” from lower-carbon fuel sellers, or lower the carbon intensity of their fuel. Ethanol, a biofuel, became a way for producers to lower their carbon intensity. As Cullenward wrote in a recent paper, the LCFS “plays an important and increasingly controversial role in California’s strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

In 2006, excitement was brewing that “innovation might be just around the corner,” Cullenward told ICN. Perhaps biofuels could be derived not from food products themselves—like corn and soybeans—but instead from waste products. Year after year, things did not change, and biofuels are still heavily subsidized. 

“I think most transportation policy experts would tell you that the primary way we’re going to reduce emissions from the transportation sector for light duty vehicles is by electrifying them,” Cullenward said. “This is a really important part of the story, because the federal government has so heavily subsidized the production of ethanol, and because the California government sort of doubled down on this. There’s still a lot of financial support through policy mechanisms for crop-based ethanol production.”

Increased biofuel production has also resulted in the creation of carbon capture and storage projects at ethanol plants—the likes of which are already showing signs of inadequacy. 

Soybeans, the second-most popular commodity crop in the U.S., are one of the main ingredients in biodiesel, which is used to fuel medium and heavy-duty vehicles like semi-trucks and buses. According to Cullenward, California accounts for almost all U.S. biodiesel consumption, most of which is shipped in from Singapore.

In 2023, the Science Advisory Board, a federal advisory committee to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, wrote to Administrator Michael Regan that “almost two decades after the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program’s creation, the efficacy of the program in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions remains highly uncertain from a scientific perspective, and many other environmental concerns regarding the RFS have been raised.” 

The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), an industry lobby group, responded to SAB’s letter by sending one of their own to Regan. “The overwhelming preponderance of scientific analyses and empirical data clearly show that corn starch ethanol significantly reduces GHG emissions relative to the gasoline it replaces,” they wrote.

RFA funded the study Newsom referenced in his press release, which concludes that gasoline prices will go down with the introduction and adoption of E15 gasoline in California.

“The Renewable Fuels Association is a lobbying group, so they’re going to be looking to push findings that potentially benefit them,” said Aaron Smith, professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Berkeley. 

Most gasoline consumers are pumping into their cars contains 10 percent ethanol. E15 would increase the ethanol composition to 15 percent. Smith says policymakers would need to “jump through a lot of hoops” to believe that adding five percent more ethanol to the gasoline blend would lead to a dramatic decrease in gasoline prices. Not to mention, he told ICN, that just because E15 is legal does not mean fuel suppliers will provide it. Incorporating more ethanol into gasoline blends can require suppliers to upgrade storage tanks and take on added costs. 

In response to Newsom’s announcement, the Renewable Fuels Association applauded the governor’s efforts.

“Not only does E15 reduce greenhouse gas emissions and harmful tailpipe pollution, but it also delivers significant savings at the pump. Allowing the sale of E15 would provide economic relief to California families, while at the same time providing important environmental benefits,” RFA President and CEO Geoff Cooper wrote in a press release.

“There’s no credible evidence that I’ve seen that this is really going to affect gas prices at all,” Smith countered.

A “Win-Win” for Californians

In the October press release, Newsom called introducing E15 a “win-win” for Californians. But even if, in a perfect world, E15 brought down gas prices in the state, increased ethanol production is not necessarily a “win-win” for the climate. 

The California Air Resources Board did not respond to requests for comment on the criticism before publication time.

“When you clear land to grow corn, what you’re doing is you’re losing a whole bunch of carbon that’s in the forest or the grass or whatever is on those fields before you clear it to make corn,” Smith said. 

For Secchi, California’s renewed interest in E15 is a “sign they’ve lost their way.”

“The scope of their policy is not including these effects beyond the state boundaries,” she said. “Maybe even more important, these policies that are just looking at carbon are often really stupid because they don’t consider other environmental effects. So, if we’re trading carbon for water or water for carbon, that’s not a good policy. That’s not a win-win.”

On Nov. 8, in the midst of national election coverage, the California Air Resources Board amended its Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which some experts, like Cullenward, warn might even increase gas prices, though there is truly no way to tell. The amendments included an increased obligation for fossil fuel sellers to cover their deficits by purchasing credits from low-carbon fuel sellers. But rising credit prices could lead to increased gas prices, with the added layer of benefitting biofuel companies, some of which are owned by oil companies. 

According to Cullenward, because of California’s convoluted carbon credit program, there is a world where E15 gasoline could be a little bit cheaper, if approved for sale in California.

“You could conceivably say, ‘I am exploring a direction that will lower costs for consumers, but it really is primarily about consuming more biofuel products,’ which is terrible for the climate, and to the extent it’s cheaper, it’s because you’re subsidizing it at the same time you’re mandating it, which is just a really weird, weird system,” Cullenward said. 

A homeowner in Sacramento shot an intruder, who then went on to steal a car and lead police on a lengthy pursuit before being taken into custody, authorities said.

The attempted break-in took place about 3 p.m. Friday in a residential neighborhood in the 7200 block of Chandler Drive, according to the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office.

Officials said the would-be burglar arrived at the home and began trying to break windows in an attempt to get inside.

“The homeowner, who was home with his family, yelled at the intruder several times to stop,” the sheriff’s department said in a written statement. The intruder refused and continued trying to smash windows.

“The homeowner, fearing for his safety and that of his family, shot at (the suspect) from inside the residence, striking (him) in the hand,” according to the statement.

Authorities said the wounded suspect then ran to another nearby house, where no one was home, and managed to get inside.

He then found the keys to a car that was parked in the garage and drove it through a closed garage door, sheriff’s officials said.

Deputies caught up with the just-stolen car and tried to pull it over, leading to a pursuit.

The chase continued for about an hour before deputies used a PIT maneuver to bring it to an end at Highway 99 and Arno Road, officials said. The suspect was then taken into custody.

Emelio Correa, 40, was treated for his injuries at a hospital before being booked into jail on suspicion of burglary, auto theft, vandalism and evading police, according to sheriff’s officials and county booking records.

Bail was set at $100,000 pending an initial court appearance.

For Laura Ornelas and thousands of other South Stockton residents, harmful air pollution is a fact of life.

Hemmed in by freeways and rail lines and bordered by heavy industry and the Port of Stockton, the area has been dubbed an “Asthma Capital” by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

Ornelas, who rents a house in the Boggs Tract neighborhood, says she has to wear a mask just to work outside, or to clean the soot off her car every few days. She said her 91-year-old mother’s mysterious cough worsened after they moved in at the start of the year.

“We just need to get out of here,” she said.

For Ornelas and her neighbors, local air pollution could get even worse if officials approve plans for a massive forest management and biofuel project that would harvest trees across California through wildfire mitigation work, process them into wood pellets at facilities in Lassen and Tuolumne counties and ship them off to Europe and Asia to burn for electricity.

All of the wood — more than 1 million tons of it every year — would converge at storage facilities at the Port of Stockton.

The proposal has alarmed local groups that say the community has suffered poor health and government neglect for far too long. They question whether the proposal will actually reduce the threat of wildfire, and wonder why South Stockton should shoulder the burden of increased truck and shipping pollution.

Read more: The Mountain fire was the third most destructive wildfire in a decade. These maps show why

Environmental advocates also worry that the forest thinning portion of the project will focus more on biofuel companies’ bottom lines than forest health, doing little to prevent wildfires.

The enormous project has been proposed by Golden State Natural Resources, a nonprofit created by a coalition of rural county governments.

GSNR’s leaders — as well as many residents from Stockton to the Sierra foothills — view the project as a bold and much-needed step toward protecting California’s people and forests from wildfires, creating a renewable energy source and generating jobs.

GSNR claims that, although the project will release a significant amount of carbon into the air through operations and the trees that are burned for energy, the project could ultimately be carbon neutral — or even carbon negative — through the wildfires it prevents and the carbon re-absorbed by forests after they’re treated.

However, scientific studies have found that biofuel projects often fail to meet this benchmark, and sometimes even perform worse than coal. But researchers note that using more sustainable harvest practices, such as the wildfire mitigation work GSNR says it will perform, can result in lower carbon emissions.

“I think what differentiates us is that we’re coming from this from a public agency ethos,” said Patrick Blacklock, president of GSNR. “We’re here to help our communities and invest in our communities.”

Sixty miles inland from Stockton, Megan Fiske, an environmental advocate with Ebbetts Pass Forest Watch, drove through the winding dirt roads of Stanislaus National Forest in her black Tacoma pickup. The understory of the ponderosa and sugar pine forest was speckled with manzanita, oak trees and dogwoods with yellow leaves, marking the start of fall.

Piles of twigs, pine needles and larger logs are scattered through the forest. The bases of many pine trunks were charred black — but the culprits weren’t a logging company or a wildfire. It was the U.S. Forest Service.

The agency’s SERAL project is one of the Forest Service’s 10 initial projects trailblazing an ambitious national, interagency plan to confront the crisis of worsening wildfires and protect vulnerable communities. (SERAL is short for Social and Ecological Resilience Across the Landscape.)

GSNR hopes to use leftover wood from projects like these to produce more than 1 million tons of pellets annually.

Many forest health experts view prescribed burns as the golden standard of forest health management tools. But in many places where fire has been suppressed for decades — if not centuries — there’s often so much vegetation that even controlled burns run the risk of exploding into a megafire.

So, forest experts must turn to another tool.

Mechanical thinning does much of the work of prescribed burning methodically by hand: cutting down small trees, removing brush, pruning the lower limbs of larger trees so fire can’t climb up into the canopy.

Once all this vegetation is chopped, it’s typically thrown into piles in the forest, which are then burned.

GSNR wants to process this wood instead, and also conduct its own mechanical thinning work.

In 2021, a task force created by Gov. Gavin Newsom found that California needs to treat roughly 1 million acres of forest with mechanical thinning and prescribed burns every year to prevent the dangerous buildup of flammable vegetation that can fuel devastating wildfires, but in the 2023-24 fiscal year, California treated just over 130,000 acres.

GSNR plans to thin up to 85,000 acres every year. But whereas mechanical thinning projects like SERAL are backed by decades of forest science, some activists and forest watchers worry financial pressures could push GSNR to go too far.

Most forest health experts agree that trees with a diameter at chest height of around 16 inches are fair game for mechanical thinning work. But while GSNR’s draft environmental impact report guides its projects to follow this consensus, it leaves the door open for the nonprofit to chop down trees with a diameter of up to 30 inches.

GSNR says that it will do its best to stick to 16 inches and under, but that some situations may warrant larger trees to get the chop. It has yet to explicitly define which situations would allow for this exception.

Activists worry that, if GSNR is struggling to meet its production goals, it could abuse this ambiguity to cut larger trees in a wide range of circumstances.

“That’s why we’re going through this process — to get that feedback, to get the recommendations,” Blacklock said of concerns about the size of trees allowed to be taken. “Are there ways to tighten it up, to alleviate those concerns? … If so, then we would absolutely consider it and build it into the final” environmental impact report.

Parts of South Stockton already have worse air quality than 99% of the state.

In the most affected neighborhoods, residents have a life expectancy 13 years lower than the state’s average. They are also 60% more likely to die of a respiratory disease and almost twice as likely to die of heart disease.

“Asthma is so accepted in our community that it’s like getting glasses,” said Dillon Delvo, co-founder of Little Manila Rising, a group that was created to protect the city’s Filipino neighborhood — once the largest population of Filipinos outside the Philippines — from getting bulldozed.

The air near the Port of Stockton already fails to meet state and federal regulations on particulate matter made up of soot, metals, construction dust and smoke. A draft of GSNR’s environmental impact report found that the project would worsen the pollution by roughly 2%.

The pellet facility operations would also exacerbate nitrous oxide air pollution — which can cause eye irritation, nausea and respiratory issues — by roughly 18%, in violation of local air standards, according to the report.

“It’s not just the fact that they’re trying to bring these industries in,” Delvo said, “but they’ve come at a cost specifically to the health of South Stockton residents.”

In 2015, a San Joaquin County grand jury found that South Stockton — cut off from the north by a cross-town freeway — had been largely neglected by City Hall for years.

Through the early 2000s, Delvo and Little Manila Rising co-founder Dawn Mabalon successfully got the city to designate the Filipino neighborhood within South Stockton, just a few miles southeast of Boggs Tract, as a historic site and fended off an eight-square-block project to demolish homes and replace them with a strip mall. But they struggled to get environmental justice programs off the ground.

“The city refused to partner with us, which is insane,” Delvo said. “All the data shows — obviously, it’s in the 100% percentile for asthma-related issues. You built a freeway next to places where there are families and children and schools. They’re all breathing that air.”

Then, in 2018, Mabalon suddenly died of an asthma attack at age 46.

“I didn’t really understand that a diagnosis at the age of 11 could mean a death sentence at the age of 46,” Delvo said. “It took Dawn’s death for me to understand that.”

In the years since, Little Manila Rising has seen significant progress. It started a program — Decreasing Asthma Within Neighborhoods (DAWN), named after Mabalon — aimed at helping residents manage their asthma.

The city is also starting to see millions from investments announced in 2017 to clean up its air and address environmental inequities.

Delvo and Gloria Estefani Alonso Cruz, Little Manila’s environmental justice advocacy coordinator, view the GSNR project as a betrayal of these promises.

Although GSNR’s environmental review found that an increase in pollution in violation of current standards is unavoidable, Blacklock said GSNR hopes to support efforts to electrify port operations to reduce pollution. In October, the port won a $110-million federal grant to do so.

GSNR also claims the pollution from the port would pale in comparison with pollution created from wildfires — including in the Stockton area.

Particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in size, PM2.5, sits at a concentration around 40 micrograms per cubic meter in Stockton, but the 2020 August Complex fires raised that level to more than 70 for multiple days. GSNR’s project would raise pollution levels by roughly 1 microgram per cubic meter for the duration of its operations in the port area.

In general, chronic exposure to PM2.5 can result in health outcomes eight times worse than short-term exposures from sources such as wildfires, according to Joel Schwartz, a professor of environmental epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

However, he noted, GSNR’s project could potentially reduce short-term exposures for many more people than the number for whom it would worsen chronic exposures, likely resulting in a net positive.

That’s a troubling prospect for area residents.

“I want prosperity in our community, “ Delvo said. “I am not against economic development. I want more of our young people to be able to go off to college and come back and have jobs here. … We’re just concerned about — why is the cost always the health of our community?”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.