Corn growers feeding the ethanol-gasoline market are unhappy with President Joe Biden’s push for electric vehicles.
Ethanol producers would get “only a tiny slice of the funds proposed in the infrastructure package, despite Biden’s assurances that he views them as key to reducing dependence on fossil fuels,” Politico reported.
“To not see [biofuels] listed as part of an infrastructure piece, I’m hoping is just an oversight and a misunderstanding — because I know that there’s support for it,” Rep. Cindy Axne, Iowa’s lone Democrat in Congress, said.
Via Politico:
Rob Walther, vice president of federal advocacy at biofuels producer POET, said that based on continuing conversations with congressional allies and leadership, the company is confident “the plan was an opening bid in order to set the vision of bold climate action.”
“You could take away that it was very electric-vehicle driven,” Walther told POLITICO. “On the other hand, we have a solution for the problem they are trying to solve, and so we expect to be a part of those discussions in the future.”
“The discussion between how electric vehicles will fit into our transportation network and how higher blends of ethanol and biofuel will fit into our transportation network seems to be going on side by side, rather than a competition,” National Farmers Union vice president of advocacy Mike Stranz said.
“We’ll be in touch with lawmakers and the administration as [the infrastructure package] comes together.”
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has taken the lead on getting a plan through Congress, wants to do so by Memorial Day, according to ForConstructionPros.com.
“We need to do something real; we need to do something big,” Buttigieg said.
“There’s at least a trillion-dollar backlog of work to be done. We can’t build back to what we had. We have to build it back better and sometimes that means building it differently,” he said.
Buttigieg claimed to the New York Times “Sway” podcast Monday that 70 percent of Americans support Biden’s sweeping “infrastructure” plan. [The survey Buttigieg refers to showed 60% approval for fixing roads and bridges, not the socialist pork that makes up 95% of the infrastructure bill. –CCD Ed.]
“We’re seeing this weird law of political physics that something that is wildly popular among the American people on both sides of the aisle can’t always get that same support in Washington,” he said.
Buttigieg refused to “give in” to that and indicated the administration will go to the constituents of those senators to win them over, citing a “child tax credit” and “healthcare for the elderly.”
Read rest at Breitbart
Ethanol from corn does one thing that could be view as good. It provides a subsidy to rural Midwestern communities. Even environmentalists recognized that emissions to produce ethanol from corn are as great as the emissions using it avoids. There are serious draw backs to using gasoline contain ethanol. Small engine repair professionals tell us that the fuel destroy many of these engines. Once this fuel came on the market, the carburetor in my 1970 Oldsmobile Toronado had to be rebuilt once a year.
Yes. Don’t use ethanol in small engines. There are some advantages to them running on partial ethanol, but the substantial disadvantages of ethanol in small engines easily outweigh these and can prove very costly.
But, then, I doubt this matters as everyone is rushing towards battery-driven power equipment. By the time small internal combustion engines become a thing of the past, we might well run out of lithium. No matter how many poor young kids mine the stuff.
Biden runs on Liberal Politics and Liberal Democrat Stupidity