An anti-ethanol group is releasing a new ad in the Washington area ahead of a Wednesday Senate hearing on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Renewable Fuel Standard.
On Wednesday, the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is scheduled to hold a hearing titled “Oversight on the Renewable Fuel Standard.” The standard is the amount of biofuel, mostly corn ethanol, required to be added to the nation’s gasoline supply.
The American Council for Capital Formation, an anti-ethanol group that has run ads nationwide against raising the standard, began running an online ad in the capital area Friday.
The ad tries to ram home the message that Sen. Ted Cruz’s victory in the Iowa caucuses shows that the voters do not care about the Renewable Fuel Standard as much as in past years. Cruz is not a fan of ethanol subsidies and wants to get rid of the Renewable Fuel Standard.
“The emerging consensus, as shown now even in Iowa, is that Washington’s corn ethanol experiment has failed,” said George David Banks, executive vice president of the council. “With the Senate environment committee conducting oversight of the program this week, we hope that Congress has received the message loud and clear and finally put an end to this decade-old political boondoggle.”
The updated Renewable Fuel Standard increases the amount of biofuel, mainly corn ethanol, in the nation’s gasoline supply to 18.1 billion gallons in 2016, up from 16.9 billion in 2015. That has angered oil industry groups and consumers who are concerned about pushing past the “blend wall,” or the point at which a car engine is damaged by burning too much ethanol.
The ad takes news footage from various political networks in the wake of the Iowa caucuses in which pundits argue that corn ethanol was the big loser of the Iowa caucuses, which Cruz won over businessman Donald Trump and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Corn ethanol subsidies were once considered the “third rail of Iowa politics,” but polling ahead of the caucuses showed that voters cared less about ethanol than in previous years.
Among the witnesses to be called at Wednesday’s hearing are Janet McCabe, the acting assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation; Howard Gruenspecht, deputy administrator at the Energy Information Administration; Lucian Pugliaresi, president of the Energy Policy Research Foundation; Ronald Minsk, an energy policy consultant who once advised President Obama on energy policy; and Brooke Coleman, executive director of the Advanced Biofuels Business Association.
The hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Wednesday.
