OPINION:
The Obama administration’s mandate that Americans must pour ethanol into their vehicle gas tanks is getting cornier. It’s an example of a policy at war with reality. When government distorts market forces to favor a political outcome, the result is predictable, something between moonshine and nonsense.
The Environmental Protection Agency last week published its long-delayed rules for ethanol use, called the Renewable Fuel Standard, which even includes regulations that govern the use of ethanol in times gone by. Complying with a new rule can be a challenge; honoring one applied retroactively is even harder to do. Even President Obama can’t turn back the calendar.
The EPA’s new standard sets the goal of ethanol production — alcohol made from corn and other agricultural products — at 16.3 billion gallons for 2014, which began nearly two years ago and ended last New Year’s Eve. For fuel refineries attempting to stay on the right side of the law, it’s the equivalent of drivers having to guess the speed limit when none is posted. With only a few weeks left in December, the agency’s mandate of 16.9 billion gallons for 2015 is hardly helpful. The agency managed to get out in front of 2016, ordering the use of 18.1 billion gallons of renewable fuels next year.
To be fair, the EPA is not solely at fault for the lunacy of ethanol mandates. President George W. Bush was smitten with the notion, too, that renewable fuels could wean Americans off oil from hostile nations, and Congress set unrealistic requirements for renewable fuels in 2007. Experience, though rarely honored in Washington, is the best teacher, and the fanatics still have not learned that renewable fuels are not the panacea originally envisioned.
U.S. oil consumption has fallen short of projections, so fossil fuel refiners trying to fill their quotas have been under pressure to throw more corn juice into their gasoline than the 90/10 percent oil/ethanol blend for which most American automobiles are rated. Gasoline spiked with too much ethanol will damage engines. “Obligated parties should not have the responsibility to force consumers to use products they either don’t want or that are incompatible with their cars, boats, and motor equipment,” warns the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers Association.
Big Corn sees things differently: “While we are pleased to see the EPA take a step forward and revise its original proposal, the fact remains that any reduction in the statutory amount will have a negative impact on our economy, our energy security, and the environment,” says the National Corn Growers Association, unhappy that the EPA has dialed down Congress’ original 2016 mandate of 22.3 billion gallons of ethanol.
Mr. Obama is a big fan of moonshine, and boasted of his green commitment at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Paris: “Over the last seven years, we’ve made ambitious investments in clean energy and ambitious reductions in our carbon emissions,” he told the group. He didn’t say anything about the tens of billions of dollars Americans shell out in higher energy costs and lower fuel economy to subsidize his green dream.
It’s rarely smart for government to override consumer markets and issue edicts that industry must meet, or else. Command economies usually run out of gas — think the old Soviet Union — and the EPA mandates are sputtering. Congress should empty the ill-conceived mandates when a more reasonable president enters the White House, and leave a lot of that corn for the makers of moonshine.
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