Ethanol Producer magazine this week lays out the tension between the EPA’s plan to regulate greenhouse gasses and the effort by state and federal governments to push ethanol on all of us:
On Dec. 23, Growth Energy submitted a comment to the EPA on behalf of its ethanol producer members, requesting that ethanol be exempted from participating in the proposed regulation program based on the industry’s existing environmentally beneficial practices.
Additionally, Growth Energy states in its comment that if the rule is finalized as proposed, nearly every ethanol facility would be required to participate in the program, resulting in added operating costs that many producers cannot afford.
This tension is illustrative in a few ways. First, it shows the dangers of politicians’ hyperbole. If you listen to our political class, we MUST get off of foreign oil, we MUST reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we MUST help the farmers, or dire consequences — increased terrorism, 20-foot sea-level rises, Heartland devastation — will ensue.
Some politicians and activists believe the hype about climate and oil-dependence, others consider some exaggeration to be a noble lie — it spurs us to action. But the ethanol-vs-greenhouse constraints battle shows us how, even without considering questions of liberty or the economy, there are always costs to these world-saving actions. In this case, reducing CO2 hurts our ability to make domestic renewable fuel, and making domestic renewable fuel adds to CO2 concentrations.
