OUR VIEW: Ethanol Supports May Have Outlived Usefulness

Feedstocks, Field/Orchard/Plantation Crops/Residues, North Dakota, Opinions, Policy

February 29, 2016

Print This Article Share it With Friends

by Tom Dennis (Grand Forks Herald) … What happened is that crude oil production soared in North Dakota and elsewhere around the United States. More domestic oil production means less need to import foreign oil—and it also means less need to boost volume by adding ethanol.

So, an early reason for subsidizing ethanol production now is less compelling than it used to be.

…

Demand for ethanol drives up the Midwestern acreage devoted to producing crops. That’s one reason why fewer acres are being set aside in the Conservation Reserve Program, the area of which has fallen from 32 million acres in 1992 to around 25 million acres in 2016.

More cropland also means more runoff pollution winding up in the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico. It’s one thing when that happens as a result of producing food, but it’s another when the policy goal supposedly is to improve the environment.

…

The feds should consider easing the ethanol-blend mandates for gasoline and seeing whether the industry can stand on its own feet. READ MORE / MORE / MORE / MORE

Excerpt from LETTER: Cleaner, more beneficial ethanol deserves Americans’ support: America still imports nearly half of the oil it consumes, but our country is closer to energy independence thanks to the 527 million barrels of imported oil displaced by ethanol last year.

To put it in perspective, the ethanol industry’s record 14.81 billion gallons in 2015 reduced U.S. gasoline imports from 10 billion gallons in 2005 to nearly nothing.

Furthermore, the ethanol industry is not subsidized. The same cannot be said, however, about the oil industry, which gladly opens its palms to a $9.5 billion annual paycheck courtesy of the American taxpayer.

There should be no doubt that ethanol is a cleaner alternative to petroleum. READ MORE

Advanced BioFuels USA