Biofuels, including ethanol, might be workable in the future. Heck, using sugar as fuel seems to be working well in Brazil. But, what’s being done in America, and much of the developed world, where it is mostly food being used to develop fuels, is an unmitigated disaster (article is behind the paywall. You can see the full thing here)
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. This 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.
When these mandates were enacted in 2007 under George W. Bush, biofuels were sold as the wonder-fuel of the future: a cheap and plentiful domestic energy source to compete with OPEC oil and reduce global warming. Six years later none of those predictions have panned out.
One of the biggest debacles has been the law’s requirement that the oil and gas industry mix cellulosic ethanol—made from the likes of switch grass and wood chips—into gasoline. The original law mandated the use of one billion gallons of cellulosic fuel in 2013, with even higher levels through 2022. This may have been the worst government forecast in history, which is saying something. Even with taxpayer subsidies, total cellulosic volume in 2012 was about 20,000 gallons. The government was off by a mere 99.9%.
The WSJ goes on to describe many of the issues revolving around cellulosic fuels, including that the fossil fuels industry has to pass on costs of fines for not using fuels that do not exist. Then into the silliness of the corn based ethanol mandates, and ends with
Maybe, but the biofuels program is a failure that can’t be fixed with tweaks. If ethanol is the miracle fuel its defenders say it is, why must its use be mandated? The effect of the quotas has been to raise gas prices and make food more expensive as corn goes to fuel rather than food. A rash of studies also shows no net reduction or even an increase in greenhouse gas emissions from corn ethanol.
But no matter how indefensible the program, no one in the White House and few in Congress want to take on Big Corn. Americans should remember whom to thank the next time they pay $4 a gallon at the pump.
We should also remember that ethanol fuels provide less MPG than standard fuels. Oh, and that the cost increases raise the price of everything that requires delivery by autos and planes.
And lest the typical Warmist starts caterwauling about the WSJ being a supposed “far right” news source, even the NY Times noticed a few years ago that using food for fuel is a Bad Idea.
