“It is a mistake for Republicans to oppose this reflexively. What’s wrong with it? “
Because this whole thing is spending hundreds of billions or trillions to “solve” a problem that DOES NOT EXIST !
“Because this whole thing is spending hundreds of billions or trillions to “solve” a problem that DOES NOT EXIST !”
Pretty stupid, isn’t it?
Think again.
The ethanol plants currently exist. They produce ethanol, for which there is a legitimate market, and DDGS, for which there is a legitimate market. They also produce CO2 as a waste product, for which they face endless harassment from the enviros.
If you believe CO2 emissions are a non-issue, then you should have no beef with the ethanol plants just releasing the CO2 into the atmosphere. As do coal fired and natural gas plants.
But for better or worse, that is not the political and regulatory world in which we live. At the rate we're going, it won't be long before the enviros want to regulate each of us by weight, since CO2 is a byproduct of respiration and fat people emit more CO2 than skinny people. The elites will fly endlessly around the world on their private planes to their conferences in posh resorts, from which they will issue doomsday projections and demands that the rest of us adopt tofu and insect diets to combat global climate change. I exaggerate only slightly. When we consider the technology forcing demands the left wants to impose on all carbon-emitting industries, I'm not sure it is an exaggeration at all.
Anyhow, as I understand it, what we have here is a group of people involved in the ethanol industry who think they have figured out how to beat the enviros' harassment games.
The real reasons the left despises ethanol have nothing to do with CO2, and for good reason. A corn plant captures CO2 from the atmosphere as it grows. The corn plant is harvested and turned into food, feed, ethanol and DDGS. The CO2 captured by the corn plant is released in the process. This is not geologically stored carbon, which is the case with coal. With regard to the corn itself, the CO2 impact is a wash: the CO2 released is the same CO2 captured during the growing process. Any additional CO2 release arises from the fuel and fertilizer used in agricultural production, plus the indirect CO2 load associated with the manufacture of farm equipment, the machinery and buildings involved in ethanol production, the transportation of processed products to market, etc. The enviros are relentless in demanding "complete lifecycle analysis" to calculate these CO2 emissions -- but ONLY of technologies that compete with wind and solar and NEVER of their own pet technologies, which get a free ride. I've not seen the numbers, but I suspect that as very low density energy production systems with very high capital costs and technology intensive manufacturing requirements for the systems themselves, wind and solar would get blown out of the water by complete life cycle analysis. But the left will never insist that this be calculated for wind and solar and will actively oppose any effort to do so. The left has settled on its solution and will rig the game to force the desired outcome.
If someone can figure out how to cost effectively capture, recycle, or sequester carbon -- or even better, turn it into an economically valuable raw material for an industrial process that permanently binds the carbon in a manufactured product -- that would be great. The left opposes this because it would solve a problem that the left wants to exploit to control both production agriculture and the nation's transportation fuel future.
The real reason that the enviros despise ethanol is that ethanol (and DDGS) created an enormous new market for corn that led to a dramatic, technology driven expansion of corn production and precision agriculture. The enviros want land taken out of production, not placed into production. The enviros also want a massive reduction in meat and dairy production, not a technology that produces high quality animal feed. The left therefore especially despises high tech agriculture, not least because one of its pillars has been genetically modified varieties of corn (and a few other crops including soybeans, especially). The left has created a whole superstitious demonology around GMOs, and it hates the fact that Bossie the cow doesn't care if the DDGS she's eating are from GMO corn, and neither does your carburetor care about the ritual purity of the ethanol it is burning. Idiot Karens are easy to scare. Bossie and carburetors can't be scared. So the enviros wage constant guerilla warfare against any and all technologies that provide markets for corn. They really do want us eating tofu and insects, and they will sabotage anything that creates abundance and consumer choice.