The discredited agency upholds the biofuel mandate
by Tom Philpott
The environmental value of corn ethanol got a ringing endorsement Thursday from EPA chief Stephen Johnson.
Johnson declined a request to cut the Renewable Fuel Standard embedded in the 2007 Energy Act. The RFS mandates 9 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol be blended into the fuel supply this year, rising steadily to 15 billion gallons by 2015, and then holding steady at 15 billion gallons until 2022.
To produce 9 billion gallons this year, ethanol makers will churn through about a third of the U.S. corn crop. If corn production holds steady through 2015 -- not an unreasonable assumption, considering that it's already pretty much maxed out -- we'll be turning 55 percent of the U.S. corn crop into car fuel within seven years.
Consider that the U.S produces about 40 percent of the world's corn -- more than any other nation by a wide margin. The U.S. mandate has been pretty definitively linked to a rise in global food prices that could push 100 million additional people into poverty conditions.
Consider also that corn is an extremely heavy user of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer, which emits a greenhouse gas called nitrous oxide. The EPA itself terms nitrous oxide a greenhouse gas "about 310 times more powerful than carbon dioxide."
Finally, consider that every gallon of ethanol that gets mixed into the fuel supply costs taxpayers $0.51. Given the mounting challenges of climate change and energy scarcity, do we really have $4.5 billion-$7.5 billion to drop on a program that most serious people consider environmentally worthless, at best?
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/8/7/141938/2550?source=daily
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