The EPA Backing Down on Ethanol Was Inevitable

I'm not sure who all is a big fan of ethanol in the United States, save for the corn farmers benefiting from federal subsidies (about $5 billion a year) and the legislators representing them. Corn subsidies are actually one of a few things that cut across the political spectrum in terms of unpopularity. On the left, it's seen as money going to corporate agriculture to promote a fuel source that's not actually all that green, mostly serving to give conventional automobiles the slimmest illusion of greenness. (Ethanol might even wind up increasing greenhouse gas emmisions actually.) While, on the right, even the illusion of greenness is undesirable and the whole enterprise of ethanol fuel mix requirements (however slim) coupled with the veneer of welfare, corporate or not, is obviously shit.

So, it's not even a surprise that the EPA is promoting a reduction in the amount of ethanol required to be mixed into gasoline. The New York Times calls the move, "the first time it has taken steps to slow down the drive to replace fossil fuels with renewable forms of energy." However true, it should be noted that as an attempt to curb global warming, ethanol requirements were wildly insufficient from the start and what's more, ethanol as an expanding green technology depends on two things happening, neither of which could be considered a move toward overall greenness.

The first is new technology allowing cars to run on an ethanol mixture of greater than 10 percent, the current maximum, and also new gas infrastructure to handle higher percentages. So, new cars and new gas stations in the interests of vehicles that might not even reduce overall emissions and certainly nowhere near that of electric cars or hydrogen fuel cell cars. The second thing that could expand the ethanol market—not involving an increase in the required ethanol-gasoline mixture—is just more cars like we have on the roads today. Get more of that 10 percent just by adding gas tanks. In other words, ethanol is a harm reduction strategy for the absolute worst case.

But, ethanol is also something else pretty important: corn. Corn is a global staple food and the United States happens to be its largest producer. Ethanol subsidies act to keep corn prices high—and farmers happy—and those high prices help keep poorer nations violent, at least according to complex systems theory. Minus a whole lot of ethanol demand, more corn can theoretically go toward food. The frustrating thing about that and nearly everything above is that, no matter what, a decrease in the ethanol fuel requirement is a big win for oil producers: non-renewables, high emissions, the whole lot. Meanwhile, the many clever biofuel research projects currently underway are left in the dark. No one wins.

@everydayelk