Posted on 05/21/2010 11:39:32 AM PDT by Willie Green
The Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) is discounting gasoline by 54 cents per gallon on the Tuesday before Memorial Day at two Capitol Hill gas stations to draw attention to a 54 cents per gallon tariff on imported ethanol.
“The one-day discount will provide Washington area residents with a preview of how Americans across the country could save money at the pump if Congress ends this unfair import tax later this year,” reads the UNICA release on the promotion.
Growth EnergyThe promotion is not sitting well with ethanol organization Growth Energy. “The only thing we should be importing from Brazil is their resolve to become energy independent,” said CEO Tom Buis. “Domestic ethanol is cheaper than imported ethanol, and it is far cheaper than gasoline refined from imported oil. The truth is that we have to end our reliance on foreign energy – period. Domestic ethanol helps create U.S. jobs, and helps the U.S. economy, and strengthens our national security by reducing our dependence on foreign energy.”
The 54 cent per gallon secondary tariff on ethanol is tied to the 45-cent blender’s credit to encourage blenders to use domestically produced ethanol. The secondary tariff on ethanol imports ensures that the tax credit is not given to the ethanol produced in another country. All ethanol blended with gasoline in the U.S. qualifies for the blenders’ credit, no matter the country of origin of the fuel ethanol. To avoid the use of taxpayer dollars to support foreign ethanol production, U.S. ethanol imports from non-Caribbean Basin countries are subject to the secondary tariff.
Funny, I never heard any more about the ‘Splash and Dash’ subsidy we give to Brazille.
I can think of some other uses for corn. . . .
Sour mash corn whiskey comes to mind. . . (evil grin)
Besides, the Brazilians use sugarcane. . .
Ethanol bad, butanol good
we’re always squawking about having to “import oil from countries that hate us”. Can’t see the harm in importing an alternate fuel from an erstwhile ally.
The domestic ethanol industry produces enough distiller's grains to feed all the feed lot cattle in the US every year. So, that bushel of #2 corn which is not suitable for human consumption is used to produce energy and human food.
As a side not, Dr. Houx who pioneered the large scale ethanol process in the US originally envisioned making a kind of power bar type food with the DDGS which could be used to feed the starving people of the world. Since DDGS typically have >25% protein, >6% fat, and >8% fiber they would have been very nutritious. They don't taste all that wonderful, though, and would need to have a lot of flavoring additives added to them.
This country is so screwed up. All Buis is doing is defending corn growers. Has nothing to do with dependency.
The domestic ethanol industry has been having a rough go of it the past couple of years since about mid-2008. The bottom fell out of the industry and MANY plants went belly up. Many that were under construction (144 in January 2008) shut down and never completed construction. Many of those that did finish went bankrupt and were sold at auction for a song. The ethanol industry is just now starting to bounce back in the US.
Brazillian ethanol is made using sugar cane which gives a much higher yield at a much lower cost. They would undersell the domestic ethanol market and put every plant in the country out of business. I’d have to check the stoicheomety but I believe there is a 6-to-1 efficiency making sugar cane ethanol vs. corn based. Plants here use corn but that corn must be cracked, made into a mush, then two types of enzymes added to break the starch into glucose for the yeast to ferment into ethanol. Sugar cane already has glucose bypassing the liquefaction and slurry phases of prodution and saving a fortune on production, raw material, and energy costs. The ethanol industry employs millions of people in the US, both directly and indirectly through support of agriculture, feed elevators, etc. Foreign imports would put even more people out of work in an already hurting economy.
If this is such a good idea, why not let the free market decide? Remove the Federal subsidies, and change the law to allow service stations to sell gasoline with or without ethanol.
If I'm given the choice, I'll never buy gasoline with ethanol in it. You lose gas mileage, you lose horsepower, and if you leave it in the fuel system of seasonal use engines (boats, rototillers, weed eaters, hedge trimmers, lawn mowers, etc) the fuel breaks down and seriously gums up the fuel system.
Big brother strikes again.
Actually our first goal should be to become independent of Middle Eastern and Venezuelan oil, so I would be FOR eliminating these tariffs on ethanol. I would eliminate the subsidies to Iowa corn farmers too.
Who would you rather buy from, the people who invented the suicide bomber belt, or those who gave us the thong bikini?
Get rid of sugar tariffs.
Why don’t we take half of the people put out of work and hire them to break windows? We can hire the other half to fix them.
What does that have to do with the ethanol industry or anything that I posted?
Of course we could always stop mandating we use gasoline with ethanol in it..... and drill our own oil.
You are arguing that our inefficient, unnecessary, and protected ethanol industry should continue to be protected because of jobs.
Arguments about the cost of prodcution of ethanol, subsidies, etc. never take into account the value of the distiller’s grains. Ethanol production only converts the starch in the corn leaving all the protein, fat, fiber, and other valuable nutrients which are passed through the process to become high quality animal feed on the back end.
When you consider the value of the DDGS ethanol is a much more sustainable process since the #2 corn used to produce it is unfit for human consumption and would have been fed to animals anyway.
Your average 60 million gallon per year dry-grand ETOH plant (most of the Katzen, POET, ICM and other dry-grind corn-based plants are about this size) will produce 364 million pounds of DDGS animal feed per year. That’s a fact you won’t see reported in the media but is a considerable benefit to the entire country.
Sounds like he was saying the E industry is make beleive work. If it didn’t have fat GOV $ subsidizing no one would buy it.
Can’t tell me that there isn’t a better use for corn, #2 or otherwise.
For motor fuel, the way to go is CNG, which would make us energy independent.
Actually there isn’t a better use for #2 corn since the starch would just be extra roughage and of little value to the animal given that the fiber, seed coat and germ already provide more than enough roughage.
There may be better uses for the farm land, though. During the runup in the price of corn up until a couple of years ago many farmers were switching over to growing corn. It was a big-money crop. If the ethanol industry tanks again they may go back to growing other products that humans would get more use out of. The massive amount of animal feed that the industry produces would have to be made up somwhere else out of some other markets, though.
YES!
And think of all the wasted ethanol subsidy money that we could then waste to subsidize trains!
You have a source for this claim?
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