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Irrational Policy: Ethanol Rules Are All About Politics
By Mr Ethanol | August 13, 2008
Houston Chronicle:
Few government programs have had more unintended and damaging consequences than subsidies for corn-based ethanol and mandates for its use as a motor fuel. Unfortunately, the leadership of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, largely indifferent to environmental protection in recent years, seems blind to the harm the ethanol mandate is causing.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry recently asked the EPA to cut its ethanol requirement in half. Perry noted that ethanol mandates were driving food prices through the roof and threatening Texas’ large livestock industry. Americans, already hit with $4 a gallon gasoline, now reel from price hikes at the grocery store, and the level of poverty and hunger in the world has increased dramatically.
In denying Perry’s request, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said ethanol mandates were an important tool to lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil, improve air quality and aid American farmers. But with record prices for corn and other grains, farmers don’t need government help.
As for lessening dependence on foreign oil and cleaning the air, ethanol does little for either. It takes almost as much energy from power plants, diesel fuel and fertilizer to grow the corn, refine it and distribute it to gasoline blenders as ethanol gives out when it is burned. The fertilizer runoff creates a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. If the electricity used to refine the corn comes from a coal-fired plant, ethanol hikes pollution and carbon emissions.
Even with tax subsidies and mandates for use, U.S. ethanol made from corn couldn’t compete without the 54-cent-a-gallon tariff on foreign ethanol. In Brazil, the fuel is made more efficiently using sugar cane.
Topics: Energy, Ethanol, Legislative, News |
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