Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 11/11/2010 6:06:07 PM PST by Kaslin
Energy Policy: If we're serious about cutting wasteful spending and reining in government, the abolition of subsidies for ethanol production and the ending of mandates for its use would be a good place to start.
The Bush tax cuts aren't the only thing that expires at the end of the year. Also set to expire is the mother of all corporate welfare: ethanol subsidies to Big Agriculture coupled with tariffs protecting domestic ethanol production that benefit farm-state senators and congressmen but few others.
Ethanol is the perfect tax-spend-and-elect mechanism. Illinois-based Archer Daniels Midland, the nation's second-largest ethanol producer, has operations in 119 congressional districts. The first presidential contest is in the corn state of Iowa. We have said that if the road to the White House ran through Idaho, we might be making biofuels from potatoes.
Ethanol currently receives a 45-cents-a-gallon tax credit when blended with gasoline and is protected by a 54-cents-a-gallon tariff on ethanol imported from countries like Brazil. If, as politicians and environmentalists claim, ethanol is needed to protect the environment and not just political careers, we should eliminate the foreign tariff. Brazilian ethanol is made from sugar, not corn. Corn is grown in Iowa, and Brazilians can't vote in our elections.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle benefit from the ethanol goodie bag. Republicans have raised more money than Democrats from POET, the nation's largest ethanol producer. Former Iowa Republican Rep. Jim Nussle is now the president of Growth Energy, a leading pro-ethanol lobby
(Excerpt) Read more at investors.com ...
I am all for that. What a boondoggle... ethanol.
Here’s the story where I live: a gasoline/ethanol mix is cheaper than straight gasoline. Gas stations now only offer E10 exclusively and year round. They are only required to sell E10 during the Winter months.
What gives? Something that is more expensive to produce is cheaper.
Answer: government subsidies. Enough to the point where a station that is selling clear gas can’t compete.
Cut the subsidies, and mandate to mix it into gasoline. If it is profitable, they can mix it themselves, if not, they can sell the corn abroad.
I concur-let it compete on its own. Let Brazilian ethanol compete.
I don’t have a problem with ethanol, I’ve run the E-10 in most everything. It does reduce by some small measure hostile imported petroleum.
Same with bio-diesel. It may actually have some lubricity advantages ( and some cold-weather disadvantages, hence the need to blend).
It would be great if switchgrass, corn stover, algae, etc. could replace actual corn and soybeans so as not to detract from crop acres to any great extent.
There is( was- haven’t checked lately) an ethanol plant in KS that takes in corn, makes ethanol, sells DDGs back to local feedlots, and uses manure from the feedlots to generate methane to fire the distilling process, then the spent manure is spread back on the cornfields. Pretty close to a closed-loop, at least in theory!
I’m not a global warming freak by any stretch but recycling, reuse and repair make sense to me.
And we’re going to see sky high food prices even before we start burning more corn for 15% ethanol!!
Corporate welfare has got to stop.
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The program was started when Bush had control of Congress. Lobbying has control of them all.
Not really, and not meaningfully.
I don't think that's true - I think it takes more energy to make a gallon of ethanol than the ethanol has in it. It's even a boondoggle energetically.
I dropped organic chemistry in 1976 or so, but from what I’ve seen people are discounting the feed value of wet or dried distillers grains after ethanol is distilled. If you are close enough to the distillery, wet corn gluten makes sense for feed, otherwise with added drying the DDG’s make outstanding feed for hogs and cattle with other additions.
Think proximity and closing the loop.
That's great, as long as the government gets out of the business.
See my earlier- let the market work its own solutions!
Sure, we should get rid of the the supports for ethanol...preferably phased so as to allow farmers time to adjust...but what's the price tag for this?
We'd be FAR better off eating our corn and cracking our coal.
You might be right, but I’d love to see a proper report that details this. Even if you’re right, it’s close - it’s not the slam dunk energetically that many believe. It’s not like palm oil or the new algae that is 50% lipids by dry weight. Those are a big win, compared to corn. (But, they’re not mandated like corn ethanol is.)
Ethanol does not reduce the need for oil as the lower energy content of ethanol means any gasoline ethanol blend gets significantly lower milage. Without massive government subsidies ethanol makes no economic sense. The State of South Dakota recently stopped using E85 in it’s fleet vehicles because the poor mileage from this 85% blend made it more expensive to run the vehicles despite the heavily subsidized E85 being an average of 23 cents per gallon cheaper than the also subsidized E10.
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Here is a Bush-supported and promoted liberal disastrous program that has turned into another entitlement ( ethanol producers) money-sucking monster that even environmentalists disown now. This totally screwed the consumer.
1) Here is a great example of how Bush was a big business/corporate-big government progressive happy to screw the little guy for short term political gain(this one only lasted a few months, until it caused gasoline shortages and prices to shoot up, 'Thanks George') .
2) This is a great test for our ‘re-born’ conservative Republicans, to see if they have the guts to let it die. (Sarah, time to facebook on this)
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