Posted on 03/05/2015 5:44:03 AM PST by Kaslin
Can someone explain why the "party of limited government" continues, with a straight face, to support ethanol? Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa says about the heavily subsided product, "Everything about ethanol is good, good, good."
Really? Really? Really?
Supporters of ethanol -- which we make from corn -- say it reduces our dependence on foreign oil, is cheaper and aids the environment because it burns cleaner than non-blended fossil fuels. In 1996, The New York Times wrote: "At a time when Congress has been overhauling the nation's systems of agricultural subsidies, and public officials across the country have considered huge cuts in benefits to big corporations, ethanol has been untouched. Largely through the efforts of (then soon-to-be 1996 GOP presidential nominee Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas), it has remained one of the most subsidized American industries."
Dole's office said, "As a national leader on agriculture policy, Sen. Dole is a longtime supporter of this clean-burning all-American renewable fuel to promote new markets for American grain, jobs for our nation's farm belt and energy self-sufficiency." The statement noted that Kansas contained 13,500 corn farms and four ethanol plants.
That was nearly 20 years ago. The rip-off continues.
The New York Times recently wrote about the wooing of deep-pocket Republican donors by the 2016 presidential hopefuls: "Some of the gatherings are expressly intended to bring candidates in line with the policy positions of donors on issues like government spending and foreign policy. While Mr. (Bruce) Rastetter's agriculture forum will cover a range of issues, much of the advocacy surrounding the event, including a 'V.I.P. press reception' featuring Iowa's Republican governor, is aimed at pushing the candidates to support the Renewable Fuel Standard, which is coveted by the ethanol industry."
Who is Rastetter? He's a "prominent 'super PAC' donor" who organized the Iowa Agriculture Summit where, per the Times: "Each (Republican presidential hopeful) will submit questions from Mr. Rastetter ... whose business interests range from meat processing to ethanol production."
How do the facts line up with the wondrous claims about ethanol -- clean burning, cheap and decreases our dependency on foreign sources?
Ethanol increases the demand for corn, which means corn prices go up. This causes prices for farmland to rise. It also raises the prices for animal feed, which makes food prices go up. Not just on meat -- prices have gone up on poultry and dairy products, as well as foodstuffs containing cornstarch, cornmeal, corn syrup and other corn products. Meanwhile, the U.S., which as recently as 2007 supplied two-thirds of the world's corn with its exports, now supplies only a little over one-third. And the amount of corn used to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV's gas tank could feed one person for one year.
Today, according to the USDA, ethanol accounts for roughly 6.6 percent of total transport fuel consumption, but consumes about 40 percent of the U.S. corn supply.
In 2007, Rolling Stone's Jeff Goodell wrote in "The Ethanol Scam": "Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption -- yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. And the increasing acreage devoted to corn for ethanol means less land for other staple crops, giving farmers in South America an incentive to carve fields out of tropical forests that help to cool the planet and stave off global warming."
The ethanol-increased demand for corn also entices more farmers to plant more land with corn, instead of balancing their risk by planting other crops. Goodell wrote: "Corn is already the most subsidized crop in America, raking in a total of $51 billion in federal handouts between 1995 and 2005 -- twice as much as wheat subsidies and four times as much as soybeans. Ethanol itself is propped up by hefty subsidies, including a fifty-one-cent-per-gallon tax allowance for refiners. And a study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development found that ethanol subsidies amount to as much as $1.38 per gallon -- about half of ethanol's wholesale market price."
What about the environment?
Goodell writes: "But as a gasoline substitute, ethanol has big problems: Its energy density is one-third less than gasoline, which means you have to burn more of it to get the same amount of power. It also has a nasty tendency to absorb water, so it can't be transported in existing pipelines and must be distributed by truck or rail, which is tremendously inefficient."
Ethanol is a rip-off, pure and simple. Aside from fattening the coffers of ethanol producers like Archer Daniels Midland, it is not justifiable on any basis, not least from a Republican Party that supposedly believes in free, unfettered, non-subsidized markets. Ethanol is an inexcusable theft from taxpayers. That the Republican leadership still supports this undermines the "Republican message" and makes the party look like a band of hypocrites.
Two cheeks on the same ass, IMHO.
Here is the actual study your links reference by Tad Patzek.
His energy inputs include the food the farmer eats and the solar power used to grow the corn. His calculation include the inefficency of the the corn use of solar energy versus solar panels.
http://gaia.pge.utexas.edu/papers/CRPS416-Patzek-Web.pdf
This study is BS and refuted by many differenct sources.
The real problem with the subsidies is that the installed capital base to process that much corn into ethanol is a form of economic heroin. There are whole communities built around it including the investment into careers built around that body of technical knowledge. There really would be withdrawal pains.
Corn used as an ethanol feedstock is also used as animal feed.
Knew that, but that does not a small degree of damage too. We actually need those animals improving the range. Much of what you see in the way of the government shutdown of ranching is to prop up the ethanol game. There really is a problem caused by a lack of animal impact on the range and the recycling of intestinal flora back into soil. The West has taken a terrible hit for this ethanol BS.
To be clear, that is using the solar power used to grow the corn. If you are going use that standard, every form of energy we use containes less power than the power used to form it.
Oil & Gas is ultimately formed from solar power growing of the algea, plankton and the like that was depositied in sea and lake sediment and used heat and pressure from the earth to breakdown into the hydrocarbon molecules we harvest via drilling. If you want to include that junk, it may make for technical paper, but has no meaning in the real world.
Thanks Bob Dole, Senator from ADM (Archer Daniels Midland).
The worst crap one can put into a gas tank.
Likewise, you, as well as most people, are misinformed.
The ideologists have successfully framed this issue/argument around the relative efficiency/cost versus gasoline and the relative emissions versus gasoline.
The use of ethanol as fuel was because of the trade deficit.
A very large portion of our trade deficit is attributable to imported oil and at that time we were importing 70% of our oil and the price of oil was escalating, substantially raising our deficit. When oil went to $60 it doubled that portion of the deficit and at $90 it tripled.
This was exactly the same reason Brazil went the ethanol route decades ago.
The second part of mis-information you are falling for revolves around corn.
The ultimate goal was to produce cellulosic alcohol. The fermenters/distillers were allowed to kick off using corn because they could get quick cash flow and use the profits to pay the R&D cost to develop the enzymes to ferment the cellulose. That would become a problem because it took longer than expected.
Written into the legislation and the regs was the requirement that gasoline producers begin using cellulosic alcohol on a certain date in the future and if they didn't, they would be subject to fines. But because the technology development lagged, they were paying fines for not buying something that wasn't available. So they were given relief.
The third part of the mis-information you are falling for is the value of the corn and how it may affect our food supply. We export huge amounts of corn at a very low price(NAFTA). Any amount corn diverted from export market to alcohol market undergoes a value added process and adds to jobs, corporate profit, and GDP.
For the past year or so one of our chains is selling premium without Ethanol. I have been using it exclusively and am getting almost a full mile per gallon better mileage...plus the snowblower and lawn mower love it.
Ethanol hasn’t been a campaign issue I can think of. Fuel ethanol grew out of the Arab oil boycotts in the ‘70s as a national security issue, with ‘peak oil’ theories to back it up.
It has stuck around partly because fuel ethanol subsidizes cheap pork, chicken and eggs.
Grassley supports ethanol, doesn’t he?
What a ridiculous statement. Somehow I just knew you were an Iowan.
You’d have to point out where it was a hotly contested issue in presidential debates, for example.
It’s always about money pick a party.
Iowa Seeks to Ramp Up Politics of Ethanol
Published in DTN
Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad is lining up farm groups to ensure politicians running for president in the Hawkeye State are willing to defend ethanol and other renewable fuels.
Branstad announced the effort Thursday during a press conference at the Iowa State Capitol. Iowa political strategists and ethanol groups have created “America’s Renewable Future” as a group to lead a campaign targeting presidential candidates coming into the state. As a Bloomberg article stated, “We are designing it to look like a presidential campaign, but the RFS is our candidate,” said Eric Branstad, the governor’s son and a group organizer. “We’re going to be talking to people” and making the presidential candidates respond, he said on a conference call.
Gov. Branstad has pushed back on the EPA effort to roll back parts of the Renewable Fuels Standard. The governor and ethanol groups plan to use Iowa’s status as the first-in-the-nation caucus to re-establish political support for ethanol
Just one example of many.
Well sure, special interests want their projects. Sugar producers, cattle-grazing on public lands; everybody’s got an angle. It’s not a national issue until it gets beyond its proponents.
Where do Walker and Cruz stand on the renewable fuels mandate? Have they even mentioned it on a national stage? Will they?
I’m not all that familiar with the State of Oklahoma, but in the Midwest, the use of corn for ethanol probably increases the time cattle spend on pasture.
No ethanol is not an option in my area. I live near Houston and the EPA requires reformluated gasoline in this area. Last time I looked it was close to 100 miles to the nearest non-ethanol gasoline station.
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