The Ethanol Debacle
By Alan Caruba
The
government mandated blend of ethanol in every gallon of gasoline is a
full-fledged disaster and neither Congress, nor the Environmental Protection
Agency shows any indication of either repealing or abandoning it.
A recent
Wall Street Journal editorial said, “A strong candidate for the most expensive
policy blunder of recent years would have to be the mandate to blend corn
ethanol and other biofuels into the nation’s gasoline supply. Last month even
the Environmental Protection Agency essentially acknowledged that the program
is increasingly unworkable and costly to consumers. The EPA just won’t do much
to fix it.”
Some
future historian will calculate how many trillions this nation wasted when it
passed a law in 2007 that was supposed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to
save the Earth from global warming and to provide a domestic energy source to
compete with OPEC oil.
Implicit
in that calculation will have to be the millions, if not billions, of
automobiles whose engines were ruined by ethanol. Another element of the
calculation is the way the cost of food at home and around the world was
increased needlessly by requiring approximately 42% of the U.S. corn crop be
used for ethanol production. It is more than the amount of corn used to feed
livestock and poultry nationwide.
Only an
environmentalist would think it was a good idea to burn food as fuel instead of
permitting corn to be used as part of the nation’s food chain and for export.
As a former Republican member of the House of Representatives, Bob Beauprez of
Colorado, noted in a Washington Times commentary, “The ethanol mandate has sent
corn prices skyrocketing, harmed cattle and poultry producers, forced refiners
to waste money on ethanol credits, and hiked food prices worldwide.”
The
ethanol mandate is so crazy that, not just corn must be sacrificed, but
“cellulosic” ethanol, made from switch grass and wood chips, is also required.
It isn’t even being produced despite the law, but the EPA continues to levy fines
against oil company refineries for failing to buy and use a fuel that doesn’t
exist. The cost of that is, of course, passed along to consumers.
In
January, the D.C. Court of Appeals struck down the EPA’s 2012 cellulosic
mandate as unrealistically high. The EPA has announced that it is reducing the
2013 cellulosic ethanol mandate to a mere six million gallons.
In order
to remain in compliance with the requirement to blend ethanol, even though
refiners are producing less gasoline than the law mandates, they have been
forced to purchase ethanol credits called Renewable Identification Numbers
(RINs). The price of these RINs has climbed from seven cents in January to a
high of $1.43 in July. All this does is increase the cost of gas at the pump
without having a single good reason for the existence of the ethanol blend.
Determined
to force ethanol into our fuel, the EPA granted a partial waiver for the sale
of E15, a motor fuel that contains 15% ethanol and 85% gasoline, approving it
for use in 2001 and later model cars and trucks. The Wall Street Journal noted
a survey by AAA found that “only 5% of vehicles are approved for higher levels
of ethanol under manufacturer warranty.”
All this
waste and stupidity comes from three decades of lies about global warming and
the supposed need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The President continues
to lie about global warming/climate change despite the fact that Earth has
entered its seventeenth year of a cooling cycle.
The EPA
continues to distort the nation’s and the world’s food supply so far as corn is
concerned. It continues to ignore the damage ethanol inflicts on auto and other
engines. It ignores the needless increase in the cost of gasoline to the
consumer.
Americans
are afflicted with a government that is indifferent to the facts about ethanol
and the EPA remains intent on punishing Americans for their use of gasoline.
© Alan
Caruba, 2013
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