It’s Nearly Impossible To Kill A Government Program–Even When It Doesn’t Work

Hot Air posted an article today about ethanol in America. The article notes that when the ethanol program (Renewable Fuel Standard) was put in place, it was based on two basic assumptions. The first assumption was that we would be producing huge amounts of biodiesel from sources like palm oil and recycled cooking oil. The other was that we would be pumping out massive volumes of cellulosic ethanol, derived from plants like switchgrass, which grows naturally all across the country. Well, both of those assumptions proved to be false. Because America is now the number one energy producer in the world, it no longer makes sense to use ethanol. Ethanol is not as environmentally friendly as carbon-based fuels when you consider the carbon footprint of its manufacturing process. There are also serious questions about the impact of ethanol on car engines.

The article concludes:

Corn is the least environmentally friendly way to create ethanol. It’s also a very inefficient fuel compared to gasoline so you wind up having to burn more of it to produce the same amount of energy. In short, we’re defeating some of the primary motivations that led us to start down this path to begin with. And yet the program endures for nothing other than political reasons. Midwestern states like Iowa want the government to keep demanding more and more corn ethanol to bolster agricultural markets. Meanwhile, refineries are stuck trading on a corrupt, fake market for RIN credits, driving some of the smaller ones toward insolvency.

The dream of corn ethanol has failed everyone across the board. But like most government mandates, once it’s been summoned into existence, it proves nearly impossible to kill. It would take a tremendous amount of political will to get rid of the RFS now, and that strength clearly doesn’t exist in the Trump administration. You won’t find it among the Democrats, either. And so we keep paddling upstream against the same forces for the foreseeable future.

The closest thing to immortality is a government program.

 

A Wise Decision By A Court

The Daily Caller is reporting today that the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency cannot force refiners to use cellulosic biofuels, which aren’t commercially available.

The article reports:

The court sided with the country’s chief oil and gas lobby, the American Petroleum Institute, in striking down the 2012 EPA mandate that would have forced refineries to purchase more than $8 million in credits for 8.65 million of gallons of the cellulosic biofuel. However, none of the biofuel is commercially available.

The decision applies to the cellulosic biofuel which is currently not commercially available–it does not apply to  EPA regulations regarding other renewable fuels, like ethanol and biodiesel.

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When Government Needs Money It Abandons Common Sense

On Friday Hot Air  reported that in 2011 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) fined auto fuel producers $6.8 million in penalties for not blending gasoline with cellulosic ethanol, an environment-friendly distillate of wood chips, corn cobs, and switch grass. Why are the oil companies not blending the gasoline with cellulosic ethanol–because it is not yet commercially available! The oil companies are being fined for not using a fuel that does not yet commercially exist. Obviously these fines add to their costs. The oil companies then pass those extra costs on to the consumer. Simply amazing! 

Please follow the link above to Hot Air and read the story. It is another examply of why we need less government and more common sense. The problem is not the oil companies–it’s the government.

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