Corn Ethanol: The Next New Coke?
May 7th, 2012 by Jonathan Lewis, Senior Counsel - Climate Policy, and Conrad Schneider, Advocacy DirectorThis posting originally appeared in the National Journal’s Energy and Environment Experts blog.
How do you get Americans to pay for something they don’t really want in the first place? Most of the time – as in the case of New Coke, Harley Davidson Perfume, and the U.S. Football League – the answer is simple: you can’t.
But where the Edsel failed, corn ethanol has somehow succeeded. Despite its drawbacks (which are legion – a point we’ll get to later), more than 13 billion gallons of corn ethanol were sold in the United States last year.
How did it happen? Corn ethanol has outlived Pepsi AM and the Betamax because its backers hit upon a three-part recipe for success: a huge dose of federal subsidies mixed with high gas prices and untethered rhetoric.
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Subsidizing conventional biofuels: an idea whose time is over
June 20th, 2011 by Jonathan Lewis, Senior Counsel - Climate Policy, and Conrad Schneider, Advocacy DirectorThis posting originally appeared in the National Journal’s Energy and Environment Experts blog.
Finally, policies that prop up biofuels production are in the crosshairs, and not a moment too soon. Because over the last decade, the biofuels industry has grown accustomed to getting whatever it wants, with no questions asked. Those days, at long last, appear to be over.
Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 283-128 to prohibit the federal government from using taxpayer dollars to pay for the new ethanol pumps, storage tanks, and other infrastructure the industry needs (but would prefer not to pay for). Hours later the Senate voted by nearly a three-to-one margin to pull the plug on a tax credit that benefits ethanol makers. The legislative developments came on the heels of a report by international agencies including the United Nations, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization urging G20 member countries to repeal national-level measures “that subsidize (or mandate) biofuels production or consumption.” In Europe, meanwhile, the European Commission finally acknowledged that research it requested (but then attempted to hide) indicates that an expansion of EU biofuels policy will exacerbate deforestation and other climate-harmful land use practices.
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