1. Changes to CARB’s LCA Methodology
Don O’Connor
NBB Sustainability Workshop
September 27, 2018

2. Agenda Changes to Pathways Opportunities for more user data
Steps forward

3. CA GREET 3.0
For 2019 CARB will be introducing CA GREET 3.0 and a simplified calculator for determining a fuels’ CI.
CA GREET 3.0 is based on GREET 2016
CA GREET 2.0 was based on GREET 2013
Changes in GREET 2016 are carried over to CA GREET 3.0
The changes are mostly beneficial
In a few, but not all, cases CARB made changes that were not in GREET 2016 based on updates in GREET 2017

4. GREET 2016 Significant changes
Fertilizer production emissions are lower
Benefits corn ethanol and canola biodiesel
Soybean N2O emissions are higher
GREET 2017 reduced soybean crushing energy and CARB adopted this change in CA GREET 3.0

5. Potential Changes for GREET
CA GREET 3.0 now has more realistic energy use values for
Heavy duty trucking
Per ton mile emissions are 50% lower
Barge transport
Per ton mile emissions are 25% lower
Medium duty emissions doubled.

6. Simplified Calculators
CARB developed 8 new Tier 1 calculators.
Plants will enter the data into the calculators and it will calculate the CI.
Plants will be able to track CI monthly if they wish.
Chemicals are now a fixed value.
Biodiesel, renewable diesel, and corn ethanol.
No need to track consumption of individual chemicals.

7. Simplified Calculators
New calculators have provisions for user defined values for soybean and canola farming.
Not clear what data CARB would need for this but it may be possible to have a different (lower) value for non-irrigated production.
This provision is not in the corn ethanol calculator.
There are also provisions for user defined oil extraction values for soy, canola, UCO (uncooked), tallow, and corn oil.

8. Oil Extraction Emissions
CA GREET 2.0
CA GREET 3.0
Soy Oil
4.10
3.54
Canola Oil
2.68
3.33
Corn Oil
4.81
2.84
UCO
5.00
5.41
Tallow
17.82
18.78

9. Opportunities Soy Oil Canola Oil
Integrated operations will have actual crush energy that they can use. I haven’t found a plant yet that is above the NOPA average.
Canola Oil
Integrated operations will have the data required.
They are better than average.

10. Opportunities Corn Oil UCO
Probably no opportunity to get better results.
There is double counting as ethanol plants won’t get a credit for their electric power for the centrifuges.
UCO
Opportunity for “uncooked” UCO to use actual values rather than doing a Tier 2 application.
3.5 to 4 g/MJ opportunity.

11. Opportunities Tallow Largest oil extraction emissions
GREET reduced the energy use by a factor of two in GREET 2017.
CARB didn’t make this change.
Potential to reduce emissions by 9 g/MJ.
At $185/tonne this is worth $0.20/gallon.

12. What is Needed?
CARB needs to provide guidance on what data would be required to be collected.
Probably two years of mass and energy consumption data.
The energy data would need to be processed to get CO2 emissions for use in the simplified calculators.
It wouldn’t be too much effort to build simplified calculators for oil extraction.

13. Oil Extraction Calculators
These could use the emission factor data from the existing BD/RD calculator.
It would have the same regionalization as the CARB models.
Plants would enter 24 months of data and it would calculate the average energy use and GHG emissions for entry into the new CARB model.

14. Oil Extraction Calculators
Model could be reviewed and approved (?) by CARB.
It should speed up the process for approval of user defined values.

15. Questions?