No One Wants Corn Ethanol…Not Even the Ethanol Lobby
Walter Russell Mead
The American Interest
April 24, 2013
American fuel producers are being forced to blend more and more ethanol into our nation’s gasoline to meet requirements set by the 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). Most of this ethanol is produced from corn, a biofuel that isn’t green, starves the world’s poor, and potentially fuels riots. But there’s an even bigger problem with the ethanol mandate. Demand for gasoline is stagnating, and there’s no way to use—or even produce, for that matter—the amount of ethanol required by the RFS this year. The Financial Times reports:
World biofuel production is stagnating….In the US, which produces 60 per cent of the world’s ethanol, optimistic mandates emanating from Washington are crashing into a post-financial crisis reality of weak petrol demand and emptier roads.
The ethanol lobby is just about the last stakeholder still supporting this biofuel boondoggle, but as the FT reports, even they can see that it’s time for reform (h/t Smarter Fuel Future):
The US ethanol lobby has asked Washington to put the brakes on government biofuels targets, in an acknowledgment of a widening gap between policy goals and reality at petrol stations….
This was the first time the association recommended cutting the total renewable fuel mandate, the association confirmed. “We’re trying to be reasonable,” Bob Dinneen, president, told the Financial Times.
If you’re keeping score at home, that means that we’ve nearly reached a unanimous consensus that the ethanol mandate is in dire need of reform. As it happens, a bill was introduced in Congress last week to do just that. Let’s hope it wends its way quickly through the legislative maze.
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