The Trouble with Biofuels

by Clair L. Jarvis: ... Perhaps the most interesting thing about the expansion of the biofuels industry — as a share of the fuel market and a lobbying power — is that the general public hasn’t really noticed. Compared with fracking or coal, biofuels aren’t the subject of many policy reports or New York Times op-eds. Media coverage of the biofuels package has been limited.

But as President Donald Trump continues to make promises about the future of biofuels, two important questions loom: Should the rest of the country care about what’s going on in Iowa and other corn-belt states? And is biofuel expansion something we should welcome or oppose?

In 2018 several biofuel interest groups each spent more than $1 million to lobby the government over the Renewable Fuel Standard, an average increase from 2017 of around $200,000. This is obviously small change compared with what the fossil-fuel industry spends — the biggest oil companies each spend $40-50 million every year — but the biofuel groups’ efforts have paid off to some degree. Although the ethanol lobby has not made headway reducing the number of small refinery waivers issued by the government, they’re getting other desired results: The Trump administration favors raising the minimum ethanol volume in gasoline, something the oil and gas lobby opposes.

Outside of trade group polls, though, there isn’t a lot of academic research on public attitudes to biofuels and biodiesel. Gallup and Pew Research opinion polls don’t ask about them, so we don’t know the true national consensus on biofuels, or whether biofuels are more popular than other nontraditional sources of energy such as fracking, solar or nuclear power.

Bret Shaw, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has researched public attitudes within his state. His papers from 2011 and 2012 (based on research conducted in 2009) are some of the most recent to document American opinion.

However, Shaw’s studies suggested that public opinion may be more malleable and precarious than those robust approval ratings imply. In his surveys he found that renaming “biofuels” as “ethanol” negatively affected the opinion of Democrats but didn’t sway Republicans. Public opinion on both sides dipped when the surveys stated that adding biofuel blends could lower a car’s gas mileage.

When asked about ethanol’s impact on the environment, 41 percent believed it causes less damage than gasoline, 44 percent believed it was about the same and only 15 percent thought ethanol caused more environmental damage. READ MORE