Ethanol Worsens Climate Change, Yet EPA Demands More of It

by John M. Decicco | December 8, 2017

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt took a trip to Iowa last week to meet with ethanol producers. But the day before he headed to the Hawkeye State, the agency doubled down on the biofuel boondoggle, announcing it would mandate yet another increase in the amount of ethanol forced into our nation’s motor fuel.

This announcement is a win for the all-too-powerful Washington corn lobby and their political allies and another loss for American consumers and our environment. It also irked the petroleum industry because of the costs that it imposes, and a group of oil-state senators has now asked for a meeting to tell the president their side of the story.

The concept behind the decade-old Renewable Fuel Standard seemed laudable — get America off foreign oil, drive economic development and reduce climate-wrecking greenhouse gas emissions using home-grown biofuels. When writing the law, Congress assumed that requiring refiners to blend increasing amounts of conventional ethanol made from corn into gasoline would be a limited, temporary measure.

The reality turned out to be quite different.

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