EPA Recommends Reducing Ethanol Demands

Earlier this week Ron
Bailey made note of the excellent investigation by the Associated
Press about the amount of environmental harm caused by the federal
government’s insistence on pushing forward with mandated
ethanol in gasoline.

Today, the Environmental Protection Agency announced it wants to

scale back the mandate that determines how much ethanol fuel
producers will be required to add to gasoline. Back to the
Associated Press:

The Obama administration on Friday proposed to reduce the amount
of ethanol in the nation’s fuel supply for the first time,
acknowledging that the biofuel law championed by both parties in
2007 is not working as well as expected.

While the proposal highlights the government’s struggle to ramp
up production of homegrown biofuels that are cleaner-burning than
gasoline, it is unlikely to mean much for consumers at the
pump.

The change would reduce by almost 3 billion gallons the amounts
of ethanol and other biofuels blended into gasoline in 2014 than
the law requires.

Ethanol representatives are threatening to sue, of course. The
cynic in me theorizes some backdoor federal subsidy will reimburse
them of any losses should corn prices drop due to oversupply.

Read the whole story
here.

Follow this story and more at Reason
24/7.

Spice up your blog or Website with Reason 24/7 news and
Reason articles. You can get the widgets
here. If you have a story that would be of
interest to Reason’s readers please let us know by emailing the
24/7 crew at 24_7@reason.com, or tweet us stories
at @reason247.