Ethanol Update: The good, the bad and the ugly
There’s some good, a lot of bad, and plenty of ugly in this week’s Ethanol Update. To better cover each category, we’ve enlisted The Man With No Name to help us.
As you probably know by now, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finally released renewable fuel levels for 2014-16 as called for in the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). Unfortunately, the agency has proposed slashing the amount of homegrown ethanol by about 4 billion gallons.
Northfield farmer and Minnesota Corn Growers Association President Bruce Peterson shared his thoughts on EPA’s misguided decision earlier this week.
All of this week’s ethanol news items have something to do with the RFS, so as let’s get to it:
The Good
While in Minneapolis this week at the BBI Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced that USDA will be making $100 million in grants available in an effort to double the number of blender pumps at American fueling stations.
Blender pumps are capable of dispensing regular unleaded gasoline and fuel with higher ethanol content like E15 or E85. In order to maintain its monopoly on our fuel tanks, the oil industry has been slow to invest in blender pump infrastructure, limiting consumer choice at the pump and creating a ready-made excuse for not complying with the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS, more on this topic later).
Also in Minneapolis, Vilsack called out some environmental groups for using “outdated studies” to take shots at ethanol. Good on the Secretary for setting the record straight about ethanol’s environmental benefits and working to increase the number of blender pumps.
The Bad
Slashing the RFS and going backwards on homegrown renewable fuels is bad enough. But the reasoning behind EPA’s decision is even more frustrating. Check out these tone-deaf quotes from Christopher Grundler, director of EPA’s office of transportation and air quality (we’ve added a response after each):
“There continues to be a lot of overheated rhetoric on this topic, Grundler said”
So when a government agency changes the intent of a law passed by Congress and people raise objections, it’s nothing but “overheated rhetoric” in Mr. Grundler’s view? Wow…
“The EPA’s job on this is to try to gather as many facts as we can…”
Well, EPA missed the most important fact. The RFS is working. There’s no need to cave in to Big Oil’s demands and change it.
“…read the law in the best way that we know how and put out a proposal that meets the test of looking at the science, looking at the data … as well as a good dose of common sense. And that’s what we have tried to do here.”
If EPA truly looked at science and data, they would have seen the RFS reducing our dependence on foreign oil, giving consumers choices at the pump, and bringing a cleaner-burning alternative to gasoline to the market. Instead, EPA chose to ignore all the progress made because of the RFS. Does that sound like common sense to you?
“The marketplace is going to choose what the different mix of fuels ultimately will be.”
This is perhaps the most disturbing quote from Mr. Grundler. The marketplace can’t decide what the different mix of fuels will be when Big Oil has a monopoly on the marketplace. By slashing the RFS, EPA is enabling and strengthening the oil industry’s grip on our fuel tanks (and our wallets). The RFS was passed for many reasons, one of which was to give cleaner-burning fuels like ethanol a fair shot at competing on the open market. EPA’s decision to slash the RFS is a major impediment to that.
The Ugly
Leave it to the Environmental Working Group (EWG) to make a claim so outrageous and incorrect that it needs its own category. A recent EWG “study” (EWG studies are typically someone sitting at a desk and twisting numbers to fit a pre-determined anti-agriculture viewpoint) claims that ethanol is worse for climate change than the Keystone Pipeline.
Geoff Cooper from the Renewable Fuels Association wasted little time in refuting EWG’s completely whacky claim. Cooper writes:
The Environmental Working Group’s claim that ethanol is worse for the climate than the Keystone pipeline is like saying apple juice is worse for the human body than arsenic.
The Department of Energy’s latest analysis shows that production and use of corn ethanol emits 34 percent less greenhouse gas emissions than extracting, refining, and consuming gasoline from conventional crude oil. When compared with the Canadian tar sands that would flow through Keystone, corn ethanol reduces GHG emissions by 40 percent or more. These estimates even include soil carbon emissions from hypothetical conversions of grassland to cropland, which are not actually happening, according to recent studies from Iowa State University.
The Environmental Working Group is good at providing some unintentional comedy, but bad at actually protecting the environment.
