Posted on 12/23/2005 8:37:03 PM PST by Charlie Peters
The federal energy bill has a provision for states to get a waiver from the gasoline ethanol mandate.
California should apply for it immediately.
Tucked in among the pork and subsidies Congress passed in the energy bill this summer was a provision that could work to California's advantage - if California officials take advantage of it.
According to Congressional Quarterly magazine, the Environmental Protection Agency "would have the authority to reduce or waive the requirement for a state in which a percentage of fuel sold in that state contains renewable fuel additives. The requirement could be waived if it is determined that the mandate would have a significant adverse economic or environmental impact on the state or region." The waiver would be for one year, but it can be renewed.
As we have noted previously, California has had problems with the federal mandates under the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990, which mandated that "reformulated gasoline contain 2 percent oxygen." Most California refiners chose to meet that requirement by adding methyl tertiary butyl ether (MTBE), but it created both environmental and economic problems. It escaped easily from storage tanks and in some cases led to water supplies and bodies of water having an unpalatable taste and odor. There are also allegations that MTBE can lead to diseases.
California governors Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, supported by elected officials from both parties, have in the past applied for a waiver from the federal oxygenate mandate without success. The energy bill, according to the Congressional Research Service, eliminates the oxygenate mandate but replaces it with a mandate to use increasing amounts of ethanol, made from corn. And it allows states to apply for a waiver.
California has led the nation in regulating fuel to reduce air pollution, and California regulators believe the oxygenate mandate and ethanol are not necessary to reduce smog; indeed, some environmentalists believe ethanol makes certain aspects of smog worse.
Gasoline with ethanol is also more expensive, so mandated ethanol use is a factor - though not the only one - in gasoline being more expensive in California. Gov. Schwarzenegger should move aggressively to apply for a waiver from this unnecessary mandate to subsidize agribusiness in the Midwest.
Copyright 2005 The Orange County Register
http://ocregister.com/ocregister/opinion/commentary/editorials/article_682070.php
(CAPP contact: Charlie Peters / (510) 537-1796 / cappcharlie@earthlink.net)
Not only more expensive, but less energy, so you need more (i.e. less MPG).
If CA had used ethanol back in the day instead of mtbe...
Some engineers do too.
Methanol and ethanol create very measurable amounts of formaldehyde and other aldehydes in the engine's exhaust.
Not quite the panacea the heavy-handed liberal politicians think it is.
That is the case in Tucson. We still get stuck with it because our market is too small. Phoenix has to use it so we have to use it.
Actually it's not quite that simple. Gasohol is generally higher octane. This allows the engine control computer to advance the timing without getting knocking. That produces more complete combustion, which is more efficient, so it gets more of the available energy out of both the gasoline and alcohol components. It also tends to clean your fuel injectors, and in colder climes helps prevent gas line freeze up. My cars have always seemed to like gasohol.
Did Fed EPA give AZ a waiver on oxygenates?
International Renewable Fuels Fellowship Announced by Eisenhower Fellowships
PHILADELPHIA, Sept. 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Eisenhower Fellowships is pleased to announce that it is accepting applications for its 2006 agriculture fellowship program focused on "International Use and Trade in Renewable Fuels (such as ethanol and biodiesel)." The program is for farmers with an established leadership track, aged 32-45, who are on their way to playing increasingly prominent leadership roles in the agriculture sector. Fellows are chosen to travel abroad for 4 to 8 weeks, with an individually-tailored itinerary of meetings with counterparts and key professionals in positions of leadership in another country.
Selection is highly competitive and based on a record of demonstrated professional leadership, potential for continued development, and a long-term commitment to the agriculture sector. The fellowship covers all international and domestic travel, hotel accommodations, and meals for Fellow and spouse.
Eisenhower Fellowships is a private, non-profit, non-partisan organization seeking to foster dialogue and leadership through the exchange of information, ideas, and perspectives among emerging leaders throughout the world. Established in 1953 as a birthday tribute to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the organization has sponsored some 1,600 Fellows from more than 100 countries. The chairman of Eisenhower Fellowships is Dr. Henry A. Kissinger; former President George H.W. Bush is honorary chairman. For more information and to download an application please visit our website at http://www.eisenhowerfellowships.org or contact Julia Ransom at jransom@eisenhowerfellowships.org. Application deadline is December 2, 2005, with finalist interviews held in Philadelphia in January 2006.
SOURCE Eisenhower Fellowships
Web Site: http://www.eisenhowerfellowships.org
I don't think so. There's still enough old carburated junkers around to make the leaner mixture argument viable.
Would be nice, but here in the socialist paradise of Wisconsin, both Dems and RINOs are working to mandate ethanol blended gasoline statewide, not just in the areas where it's already federally mandated. ADM and the farmer's lobby have been pushing hard.
When someone says that they have something better than regular gasoline, see if their lips are moving. If they are be wary, very very very wary.
California Scheming
By Christopher C. Hormer, 25 April 2002
The Washington Post first reported internal memos revealing that the vocal "global warming" movement and its 1997 Kyoto Protocol were fruit of a stealthy and extensive corporate lobbying campaign. The ringleader? Enron (surprise!). The memos disclosed that "green" groups were courted, funded and even created to spread the gospel that man is killing the planet by burning fossil fuels, a malady Enron offered to mitigate through its natural gas, windmill and solar ventures.
Now similar schemes, cloaking issues in green to garner political influence and economic advantage, are arising in the market for fueling America's automobility.
In California, which excluded coal from its electricity mix thus leading to its embarrassing, expensive, and dangerous summer of 2001, corporate interests are seeking to exploit green values to set a heightened, specific requirement for a particular gasoline additive, notwithstanding its well-documented environmental (and economic) downsides.
Incredibly, California's legislature again is lending a helping hand.
The Post's initial revelation of the corporate-funded Kyoto campaign involved a torrent of internal memos, including Enron's dictation of the need and content for an international treaty restricting energy use emissions. Among them was the 1996 internal Enron memo which included the sub-heading: "Making sure there is a treaty," detailing high-level meetings with Clinton administration officials. Oval Office meetings followed soon thereafter.
Enron's chief "warming" salesman, John Palmisano, provided a damning post-Kyoto assessment in another internal memo, in which he wrote: "If implemented, this agreement will do more to promote Enron's business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring of the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States." The memo went on that the Kyoto deal was "exactly what I have been lobbying for," "it seems like we won," "again, we won," and "another victory for us". It closed: "This agreement will be good for Enron stock!!"
Well, Enron, for obvious reasons doesn't have the clout it used to. But riding in the "global warming" wake it helped create, the ethanol lobby is riding on, led by the all-time political influence and corporate pork king, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).
Sniffing the potential of what wooed legislators and regulators can award them but actual competition never would provide, this special interest appears to have scored big in California. And it smacks of Enron's exposed campaign of fronting "green" groups to fuel its greedy agenda.
In the waning hours of the recently concluded legislative session, the Assembly passed AB 1058. That bill required California's Air Resources Board to adopt regulations yielding the "maximum feasible" reduction in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from passenger cars and trucks. CO2 is a naturally occurring gas. A small percentage (approximately .03) of the world's total is produced by releasing fossil-based energy through combustion.
The principal component of human breath, CO2 is also consumed by plants to produce oxygen. As such it obviously has no ill human health effects as long as, like with any ambient gas, you don't try breathing it exclusively. It does, however, pose tremendous business opportunities for new, high cost boutique fuels. But because of their higher energy costs, which hit seniors and the poor particularly hard, related fuel interests appreciate environmental claims such as "catastrophic global warming" being accepted. Hence industry's stealth green campaigns. There is a lot of money to be made by making the world a poorer place through energy suppression policies.
And that's where ethanol, the highly toxic gasoline additive derived from corn, comes into play.
Ethanol has serious fuel performance, production, logistical, and price problems dwarfing even those of the demonized MTBE. According to a 1994 affidavit sworn and filed in federal litigation, then-California Secretary of Environment Don Strock said that by "[a]dding ethanol to gasoline … the State would suffer increases in ozone, particulate matter, oxides of nitrogen (NOx), and a loss of carbon monoxide (CO) emission reduction benefits."
No objective environmental assessment of ethanol supports its use.
Yet, the California Senate is poised to consider the "climate" legislation desired by the ethanol lobby, currently rushing it through committees. Until cars requiring no hydrocarbons become "feasible" (quite possibly never), AB 1058 would seemingly require that gasoline contain a hefty dose of the "oxygenate" produced from corn.
Why? Well, according to energy trade reporters in California, those wacky ethanol boys are up to their "ears" in this.
As bad as the corporate scheming is the environmental groups that stand behind the effort. According to the Associated Press, a group calling itself Bluewater Network is this bill's green face. Who are they? Well, Bluewater is a self-described "project of the Earth Island Institute" (EII). And as some readers may recall, EII on its website dismissed overly mourning the 9/11 tragedies in this fashion: "The majority of the victims were, unfortunately, working for the Pentagon and various elements of multinational financial empires." Bet you never knew those people deserved it.
It is time that legislators and regulators stop adopting fashionable eco-scare campaigns, until they at least learn what interests are actually behind each one. There is a good reason elected citizens, not corporate CEOs, make policy.
Christopher C. Horner is a Senior Fellow at Competitive Enterprise Institute.
http://www.protectruralscotland.com/kyoto1.htm
The $0.51 per gal. corporate welfare to the oil refiners for adding 5.6% ethanol to California gas is about $500,000,000.00 per year.
The ethanol may add over $1.00 per gal. to the gas profit in California.
That may be about $100 billion in oil profit from California motorists.
The science is interesting but so is the money.
A $4 billion Prop. 87 oil tax may add $40 billion in oil profit.
Charlie Peters
(510) 537-1796
Clean Air Performance Professionals
Saturday, July 14, 2007
NO on AB118
* Currently $0.51 per gallon goes to oil refiners for adding 5.6% ethanol to California gasoline. That is about $500,000.00 per year corporate welfare.
* AB118 may add over $1.00 per gallon to additional gasoline profits in California
* The science is interesting but this is about the money from your pocket
* The corn ethanol waiver in the 2005 federal energy bill will lower gasoline prices, improve miles per gallon, lower oil use and improve the air.
* NO on AB118. Contact your elected officials and share your opinion
(make copies and give to your friends)
Clean Air Performance Professionals
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