The Obama administration’s push for more ethanol in the nation’s fuel supply is running into resistance from . . . the Obama administration.
The president this week renewed Washington’s commitment (first mandated by President Bush and Congress in 2007) to produce 36 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2022 by setting aside $786 million in stimulus funds to subsidize biofuel operations, retail fuel distributors, and the vehicles that burn it. “We must invest in a clean energy economy,” Obama said in a statement. To coordinate these federal programs, the administration has set up a biofuels working group that includes the EPA.
But as my Detroit-based colleague, Shikha Dalmia of the Reason Foundation <a href=" http://www.reason.org/blog/show/1007501.htmlwrites, the very same EPA has just concluded a study that says such subsidies for biofuels are destroying the planet. “Demand for land on which to grow crops for biofuels can lead to deforestation and destruction of grasslands and wetlands,” reads the report, “resulting in substantial global warming pollution.”
“In other words, you, dear taxpayer, will pay higher energy prices to slow down global warming. And you will pay higher taxes to speed up global warming,” writes Dalima. “Either way, you will be doing something for global warming.”
Finally, a coherent national energy policy.