Budget Trimmers Target Ethanol

  • CEO of Growth Energy, Tom Buis argues ... we spend plenty of money for overseas oil ... why not support home-grown ethanol?(Photo courtesy of the NREL)

President Obama’s visit to the Corn Belt is highlighting a tough debate about the future of corn-based ethanol used in our cars.

Transcript

President Obama’s visit to the Corn Belt is highlighting a tough debate about the future of corn-based ethanol used in our cars.

Congress is looking to cut the federal budget and one target is a key ethanol subsidy.

It’s a tax credit of about 4 and a half billion dollars, and it runs out by the end of the year.

Ethanol trade groups are fighting to extend that credit.

Tom Buis is CEO of Growth Energy.

He argues … we spend plenty of money for overseas oil … why not support home-grown ethanol?

“We create jobs, jobs that can’t be outsourced. I don’t know why we want to fund economies of foreign governments. We should be looking at spurring our own economic development here in the United States.”

Last year the Government Accountability Office questioned whether we need this particular ethanol tax credit, since the government requires gasoline refiners to blend-in billions of gallons of ethanol anyway.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Fuel Economy Standards So Unreal

  • CAFÉ standards are based on fuel economy tests from the 1970s. (Photo by Ed Edahl, courtesy of FEMA)

Congress recently increased the Corporate Average

Fuel Economy standards, or CAFÉ standards. The new standard calls

for a car company’s entire fleet to average 35 miles per gallon

by 2020. But Mark Brush reports – there’s a problem with these

standards:

Transcript

Congress recently increased the Corporate Average

Fuel Economy standards, or CAFÉ standards. The new standard calls

for a car company’s entire fleet to average 35 miles per gallon

by 2020. But Mark Brush reports – there’s a problem with these

standards:

CAFÉ standards are based on fuel economy tests from the 1970s.

But the way people drive has changed a lot since then.

Engines are more powerful, people drive faster, and more cars use air conditioning.

That means these old tests don’t reflect the gas mileage we get today.

Experts say car companies are really averaging anywhere from 20 to 30% less than the
standards called for.

Jim Kliesch is with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says the system should
change.

“If your representative is standing on Capitol Hill and telling you that they’ve raised
standards to 35 miles per gallon, you’d like to go out and buy a vehicle that can average
35 miles per gallon. Not one that averages 26, 27, 28 miles per gallon.”

There is a more accurate test available today.

Kliesch says it could be used to set CAFÉ standards if members of Congress require it.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Study: Biofuels Grow Dead Zone

There’s another possible downside to the national
boom in the production of corn-based ethanol. A new
study says increased ethanol production would further
pollute the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico. Chuck
Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

There’s another possible downside to the national
boom in the production of corn-based ethanol. A new
study says increased ethanol production would further
pollute the Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico. Chuck
Quirmbach reports:

Most of the ethanol currently made comes from corn grown in the central part of
the US.

Chris Kucharik is part of a team of researchers that has been studying
what agricultural fertilizers do to the Mississippi River Basin. Kucharik says,
based on his study, ramping up the growing of corn for ethanol would increase
nutrient pollution in the river by 10 to 20%.

“That pretty much will make it impossible for us to reach a goal of reducing
nitrogen export by the Mississippi River.”

Kucharik says nitrogen pollution already contributes to a huge dead zone in the
Gulf of Mexico. The area is depleted of oxygen. He says his prediction of more
problems may not come true if a lot of ethanol production is switched to crops
that don’t need much artificial fertilizer.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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