“Ethanol is here to stay,” newly confirmed Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced last weekend, “and we’re going to work for new technologies to be more efficient.”
Perdue said this flanked by two Republican Iowa lawmakers, wearing a pin that should win an award for best or most obscure special-interest lobbying swag. It read, “Don’t mess with the RFS,” referring to the federal requirement that the nation’s gasoline supply be diluted with massive amounts of ethanol — 19.3 billion gallons of the stuff annually.
In an actual market, in which producers and consumers chose for themselves, demand for ethanol would be a tiny fraction of that vast amount, which is why the ethanol industry is so eager to keep the boondoggle in place. It insists that the public be obliged to buy its product. It’s a license to print money at the expense of taxpayers, drivers and citizens.
Perdue was always an ethanol fan. In 2007, as governor of Georgia, he dumped $6 million into a company that claimed it could produce the fuel economically from wood chips. The company guzzled the taxpayers’ money and promptly went out of business in 2011.
Despite his support for the ethanol lobby on the campaign trail, President Trump had shown at least a few signs of willingness to derail the ethanol gravy train. He chose an EPA administrator who had previously sued the agency over the ethanol mandate.
There is no scientific or consumer case for ethanol. It adds a billion dollars a year to consumer costs, which is not nothing for the working-class voters who won Trump the presidency. It also reduces the fuel economy we all get when we drive. It increases smog. Its mass production (40 percent of all corn grown in the U.S. is for ethanol) causes water pollution and increases carbon emissions. Even with modern agricultural methods, corn ethanol produces only 30 percent more energy than is needed to produce it, so it is, on top of everything else, a massive waste of energy and effort.
In short, its benefits are nonexistent.
But, for years, the ethanol lobby has been of immense importance, or has convinced pols that this is so. For a lot of ethanol comes from Iowa, and Iowa has retained its position as the first state in the presidential primary season.This has trumped all evidence and logical argument about ethanol.
But a funny, or illuminating, thing happened last year. The 2016 election should have demonstrated that the ethanol industry is a paper tiger. The industry’s lobbyists set up campaign offices all 99 Iowa counties, yet Sen. Ted Cruz won the Republican caucuses running on an anti-ethanol platform.
This should have been enough to demonstrate that support for the forced use of ethanol is limited to a small number of people. Presidents and would-be presidents don’t have to grovel to these rent seekers. The ethanol mandate is pernicious and should be scrapped.
For all of his willingness to upend other solemn political norms and customs, Trump is following in the bipartisan footsteps of his predecessors. It is a deplorable missed opportunity. But it’s never too late to do the right thing.
