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The life of a gallon of gasoline doesn’t start at the pump. From its crude state, to the refinery, to the blending station, fuel sometimes travels thousands of miles. And along the way, greenhouse gases are being released.

authorizes the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality to adopt rules to help the state reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. And one method the DEQ is investigating is a low-carbon fuel standard program, which would require fuel suppliers and distributors to be conscious of a fuel’s carbon emissions from the cradle to the grave. But if it isn’t done right, industry members say it could hurt the biofuels industry rather than help it.

The Oregon DEQ is working from California’s low-carbon fuel standard program, which requires all fuel distributors and suppliers to combine petroleum fuel with a certain amount of low-carbon fuel, such as biodiesel or ethanol.

Unlike Oregon’s Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires a 10 percent blend of ethanol in all gasoline sold, as well as a 2 percent blend of biodiesel in all diesel fuel sold, the low-carbon standard would consider a fuel’s carbon emissions from vehicle trips, transportation to get the fuel to the pump, and even impacts on the land used for harvest. A complex formula would be used to generate a number indicating how a fuel’s emissions compare to standard gasoline.

“The formula tallies up all carbon involved in producing that fuel,” said David Collier, air quality manager with the Oregon DEQ. “Ethanol made locally and transported a small distance, for example, could have a lower number than a fuel made from Midwest corn.”

But Robert Grott, executive director of the Northwest Environmental Business Council, said California’s method for calculating land-use impacts on carbon emissions is flawed.

“The fear people have is that if we use more of our land to grow biodiesel feedstock, it could displace land used to grow food or lead to foreign rainforests being cut down to meet demand for more sugar cane,” Grott said. “But there’s no data or scientific linkage on that. The supply chain is more complicated than we can model. California just guessed at a number for indirect land use, which has skewed the carbon intensity number for certain fuels.”

Ethanol has been blended into gasoline for many years because it produces fewer greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum. But according to Katie Fast, director of government affairs for the Oregon Farm Bureau, certain types of ethanol fuel produced in California have the same carbon intensity rating as regular gasoline because land-use impacts were weighted too heavily. Farmers could benefit from the fuel standard by growing more feedstock for biofuels, but not if those fuels have high carbon numbers.

“We need an accurate standard that looks at actual carbon release and not something that’s (valuing) certain types of feedstock over others,” Fast said. “The thinking already is that biofuels are more expensive than petroleum. If they also have a high carbon number, they won’t be as appealing for distributors to purchase for their fuel blend.”

Ethanol producer ZeaChem, which is building a cellulosic ethanol plant in Boardman, is also concerned about how heavily land-use impacts could be weighted in the low-carbon fuel standard. ZeaChem plans to harvest poplar trees from a farm near Boardman to produce its ethanol, a method the company says will have less land-use impacts.

“We’re using land that isn’t high quality enough for food to grow the poplars,” said Carrie Atiyeh, ZeaChem’s director of public affairs. “As an industry, we need to be focused on what kind of land we’re using. The land-use impact issue is definitely a concern.”

While the basic structure of Oregon’s low-carbon fuel standard program will be similar to California’s, Collier said he and a 29-member advisory committee are going through the standard line by line to see where Oregon’s model should be different, including land-use impacts. Also, the DEQ is hiring someone to perform an economic analysis on California’s model to see where fuel prices or demand could be affected in Oregon.

“Certain fuels may get a high carbon number if we have to consider indirect effects (from land use),” Collier said. “If you grow a crop in the U.S. that would have been food, and it becomes fuel, do you force other land in other places to convert from forest to food production? The jury is out on the best approach for calculating those effects.”

An initial report by the DEQ on the low-carbon fuel standard program is due in December. After public comments are received, the DEQ will then begin official rule making.