A High Price to Pay: The Hidden Costs of Corn-Ethanol Mandates on New England
(Center for Regulatory Solutions) … How have the RFS and federal corn consumption mandates impacted non-corn states, and the small businesses struggling to stay competitive in the global economy? According to a new study commissioned by the Center for Regulatory Solutions (CRS), a project of the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council (SBE Council), the RFS’s increasingly aggressive ethanol mandates are hurting New England’s economy, particularly small businesses, and driving up transportation costs for millions of people who live in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, Maine and New Hampshire.
To quantify the drag on the New England economy created by the RFS, SBE Council commissioned an analysis of the costs that have already been imposed on New England residents since the RFS mandate began in 2005. It also took a look at what future costs might be over the next decade based on projected ethanol consumption in the six states.
At its core, the analysis finds that New Englanders were shortchanged nearly $ 6.29 billion in GPD opportunity from 2005 to 2014 due to the RFS, and should expect to to be deprived of $13.67 billion in future lost opportunity from 2015 to 2024. In other words, the RFS, by the time it is finally done, will extract almost $20 billion from New England’s economy and transfer that wealth directly back to ethanol producers in the Midwest.
The negative impact on household budgets and businesses that this wealth transfer precipitates will manifest itself in myriad ways – starting with lower demand for labor, costing the New England economy thousands of jobs every year. READ MORE and MORE (New Hampshire Union Leader)
