As the Trump administration mulls cuts to the federal mandate known as the Renewable Fuel Standard, Congress’s most vocal biofuels champions are urging the government to change course and instead ramp up support for ethanol.
Sen. Charles Grassley, Iowa Republican and perhaps Congress’s top ethanol backer, and other lawmakers met Tuesday afternoon with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt on Capitol Hill.
The meeting focused heavily on ethanol, and specifically on the EPA’s looming announcement on the latest round of Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) targets. The EPA is considering lowering annual requirements for advanced biofuels, a move that industry leaders say would be a crushing blow.
This week has brought a concerted effort from Mr. Grassley, fellow federal lawmakers, ethanol industry leaders, and a host of others as they make a last-ditch appeal to Mr. Pruitt, who historically has been highly skeptical of the RFS.
“The industry is poised for growth, in accordance with the intent of the law, if EPA sends the market signals with increased volumes. Reducing volumes and especially those [volume levels] that were previously finalized is disruptive, unprecedented, and very troubling,” reads a letter sent this week Mr. Pruitt and signed by Mr. Grassley and three other senators, including two Democrats.
The RFS, passed by Congress and signed into law by then-President George W. Bush in 2007, requires increasing amounts of biofuels be produced and blended into the nation’s gasoline supply each year.
Supporters say the program encourages energy security and directly creates tens of thousands of jobs in Iowa and elsewhere across the country; critics contend it amounts to little more than the government propping up the ethanol industry with an unnecessary mandate that distorts energy markets.
The EPA must finalize the next round of the RFS by the end of November. In a draft proposal released over the summer, the agency put forth several changes deeply opposed by Mr. Grassley.
In the draft, the EPA proposed that a total of 19.24 billion gallons of renewable fuels be blended into gasoline nationwide. Of that, the agency will require that 15 billion gallons of conventional corn-based ethanol be used, a number that’s unchanged from the 2017 figure.
But the EPA lowered the target for more advanced biofuels products, dropping from 4.28 billion gallons this year to 4.24 gallons next year.
The EPA also reportedly is considering allowing ethanol exports to count toward the mandated volumes — a move that opponents say could lead to less ethanol being produced here at home and would run counter to the core idea of ethanol helping to promote America’s energy independence.
On Wednesday, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, a Republican, will join with other ethanol sector leaders for a press conference in Iowa to address “threats” to the RFS.
In their letter to President Trump this week, Ms. Reynolds and other Midwestern governors appealed to the commander in chief to essentially overrule Mr. Pruitt and stop any cuts to the RFS.
“We write to you now, though, because we are concerned — concerned about where the EPA’s proposed implementation of RFS policy is heading, and concerned about what that will do to our renewable fuel producers, farmers, and rural economy,” they wrote in the letter.
Throughout his campaign, Mr. Trump was highly supportive of the RFS and of ethanol more broadly, while Mr. Pruitt was critical of the program when he served as attorney general of Oklahoma.
That disconnect has led to some confusion as to exactly how the administration will approach ethanol policy and has led biofuels advocates to sometimes bypass Mr. Pruitt and appeal to the president directly.
Underscoring how the politics of ethanol divides both parties and often leads to unusual alliances, a coalition of environmental groups this week sent a letter to lawmakers explaining why they agree with Mr. Pruitt and support lower targets for advanced biofuels.
The letter was signed by the Sierra Club, the National Wildlife Federation, ActionAid USA, the Clean Air Task Force, and Mighty Earth, a group founded by former Rep. Henry Waxman, California Democrat.
Read more at Washington Times
Every gallon of petrol you buy in the US has biofuel (ethanol) added to it. To persuade existing grain farmers to switch from producing grain for human food and animal feed to producing it for ethanol, the government offered a generous subsidy. Naturally, when the government was writing cheques, there was no shortage of takers. The upshot was that so much land was switched to ethanol production, that there was a shortage of grain for human and animal food. The price of grain doubled.
Now the American public was paying twice – and still is: once for the subsidy and once for the hike in food prices. For no benefit.
In Mexico, the staple food is the tortilla. The tortilla is made from flour from corn, (wheat) most of which is imported from the US. When the price of corn rocketed, there were food riots in Mexico and people starved. Much the same thing happened in other third-world countries dependant on US grain.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Association calls this “an environmental crime against humanity”.
Something else you don’t hear about: ethanol is bad for cars. When blended with petrol, it collects water, corrodes engine parts and increases maintenance costs. As if that weren’t bad enough, you get far fewer miles to the gallon with ethanol-blended petrol.
Another unintended consequence affected the international market in soybeans. Soybeans are a valuable source of protein where meat is too expensive for the poor. American soybean farmers switched to growing corn, to get the government subsidy, resulting in a shortage of soybeans. The price of soybeans shot up; worst affected were the poor.
With a domino-like effect, Brazilian farmers saw the opportunity and expanded their acreage, ploughing up pastureland to plant soybeans. That caused a shortage of dairy products; dairy farmers, needing pasture, started wholesale tree-clearance in the Brazilian rainforest to provide it.
To take advantage of the demand for biofuels, governments of south-east Asia have subsidised the palm oil industry. There, palm farmers have cut down millions of acres of rainforest to plant palm trees.
Ironically, when you cut down forests, the clearance process releases CO2 into the atmosphere, further negating the whole rationale.