Free Republic

Amid growing demands from the corn lobby that the government mandate even more ethanol be blended into the nation’s gasoline supplies, new finding call such proposals into question. One of the chief claims of the corn lobby is that ethanol is a more “green” type of energy because it’s renewable. From there, the argument is extended to claim that it’s better for the environment all the way around. But the conclusions of a study underlying the latest EPA report on the environmental impact of ethanol (seven years in the making, dating back well into the Obama administration) concludes that the...

Yes, it’s true… the United States smashed another fuel production record this year. According to the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA), the country produced over one million barrels per day of this liquid fuel in the first six months of 2017. Unfortunately, this isn’t something to brag about. It would be wise just to keep this lil record to ourselves, rather than broadcast it loudly across the energy news wires and Mainstream media. Why do I say that? Because the U.S. produced a record 1.02 million barrels per day of corn-based ethanol, the lowest quality fuel in the world. Corn...

“If any candidate you're considering won't go to Iowa and tell Iowans that Big Corn's special status needs to end, why do you think he or she will go to Washington and tell the other ten thousand special interest groups that their special goodies need to come to an end?”Are you completely, totally, thoroughly repulsed, disgusted, furious, mortified, mystified, and aghast at how special interests seem to control Washington while ordinary Americans like you and I pay for their goodies on a seemingly endless basis? To paraphrase the late, great Jerry Reed – they get the goldmine and we get...

Conventional wisdom says that you cannot win Iowa without kissing the pinky ring of the Iowa corn lobby and pledging your fealty to the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the anti-science policy which is bad for the environment, fuel mileage, and America at large. Iowa’s traditional role as the first Presidential contest for both parties basically ensures that anyone with even a whiff of Presidential ambition has largely taken a pass at criticizing a policy which is a bad idea for everyone except an extremely well-connected group of corn farmer lobbyists.Ted Cruz has been challenging all that with his current Presidential...

CORYDON, Iowa -- The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America's push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water supply. Even the cemetery that disappeared like an apparition into a cornfield. It wasn't supposed to be this way. With the Iowa political caucuses on the horizon in 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama made homegrown corn a centerpiece of his plan to slow global warming. And when President George W. Bush signed a law that year requiring oil companies to add billions of gallons...

A Dutch company and an American ethanol producer hope to put a new kind of fuel in your gas tank — whether it makes economic sense or not. Thanks, Washington. Amid the cornfields of Emmetsburg, Iowa sits an ethanol plant that takes in 20 million bushels of corn and churns out about 55 million gallons of corn ethanol a year. Rising next to it is a revolutionary new facility. It will make ethanol as well, but instead of using juicy kernels of corn, its feedstock will be 285,000 tons a year of corncobs, leaves and husks. Although its 25 million...

Today's gasolines include up to 10 percent ethanol. Automakers are opposing a move to boost the ethanol content to 15 percent. Automakers are seeking to head off an EPA ruling that would allow gasoline to contain 15 percent ethanol, up from 10 percent now, and they've won some bipartisan congressional support. The two main automaker industry lobbies have argued that the U.S. Department of Energy has done insufficient testing to assure that gasoline containing up to 15 percent ethanol won't harm vehicles. Increased ethanol composition could affect engine durability, emissions, driveability and on-board diagnostics systems, the Association of International Automobile...

Get ready for the sugar shock. Raw sugar futures have almost doubled this year amid fears of a shortage, which could lead to slightly higher prices for candy but also a spike in the price of ethanol. Much of the rise in sugar prices has come in just the past few weeks as drier-than-normal weather in India, the world's largest consumer, threatens to leave production there far short of demand... The bigger impact may be felt at the gas pump, where the sugar shortfall is likely to drive up the cost of ethanol, increasingly used as a substitute for gasoline....

Everyone seems to think that ethanol is a good way to make cars greener. Everyone is wrong SOMETIMES you do things simply because you know how to. People have known how to make ethanol since the dawn of civilisation, if not before. Take some sugary liquid. Add yeast. Wait. They have also known for a thousand years how to get that ethanol out of the formerly sugary liquid and into a more or less pure form. You heat it up, catch the vapour that emanates, and cool that vapour down until it liquefies. The result burns. And when Henry Ford...

“For me it’s not too clear why some people are making bio-fuels,” said Cortez. “If you are making fuel from corn, then really you are just making a disguised gas,” which has high emissions. Cortez argued that bio-fuels should only be made if they are “clean,” with a policy to lower emissions. According to Cortez, for this reason the use of corn for the production of bio-fuels is not ideal, whereas sugar-cane could be. Otherwise it is just a policy to meet “social demands,” Cortez said, alluding to recent measures in the United States to implement funding of bio-fuels. “It...