hsnoil t1_jaato17 wrote on February 28, 2023 at 2:22 AM

Reply to comment by Steamer61 in This “Climate-Friendly” Fuel Comes With an Astronomical Cancer Risk: Almost half of products cleared so far under the new federal biofuels program are not in fact biofuels — and the EPA acknowledges that the plastic-based ones may present an “unreasonable risk” to human health or the environment. by nastratin

More like being forced to make compromises. If you want A you have to agree with B. Because burning plastics isn't green, even the EPA admits it does nothing if you burn plastic. The problem was the rules were vague enough stating making fuel from "waste". Usually that means from waste food and etc. And waste would also include plastic, so they have to change the rules to deny them. But these loopholes aren't by accident, so good luck getting them changed.

Ethanol is cleaner than burning gasoline, it wasn't at first but it is these days assuming you aren't cutting down a new forest for it. That said, being better is marginal, especially when talking about making it from corn. It's like at best 1.5X improvement, but you can get 500X more energy out of that corn field if it was solar charging an electric car.