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EPA Increases Amount of Renewable Fuel To Be Blended Into Gasoline (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Last week the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its final renewable fuel standards for 2017, requiring that fuel suppliers blend an additional 1.2 billion gallons of renewable fuel into U.S. gas and diesel from 2016 levels. The rule breaks down the requirements to include quotas for cellulosic biofuels, biomass-based diesel, advanced biofuel, and traditional renewable fuel. Reuters points out that the aggressive new biofuel standards will create a dilemma for an incoming Trump administration, given that his campaign courted both the gas and corn industries. While the EPA under the Obama administration has continually increased so-called renewable fuel standards (RFS), the standards were first adopted by a majority-Republican Congress in 2005 and then bolstered in 2007 with a requirement to incorporate 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel into the fuel supply by 2022, barring "a determination that implementation of the program is causing severe economic or environmental harm," as the EPA writes. Some biofuels are controversial not just for oil and gas suppliers but for some wildlife advocates as well. Collin O'Mara, CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, said in a statement that the corn ethanol industry that most stands to benefit from the EPA's expansion of the renewable fuel standards "is responsible for the destruction of millions of acres of wildlife habitat and degradation of water quality." Still, the EPA contends that biofuels made from corn and other regenerating plants offer reductions in overall fuel emissions, if the processes used to make and transport the fuels are included. "Advanced biofuels" will offer "50 percent lifecycle carbon emissions reductions," and their share of the new standards will grow by 700 million gallons in 2017 from 2016 requirements, the EPA says. Cellulosic biofuel will be increased by 81 million gallons and biomass-based diesel will be increased by 100 million gallons. "Non-advanced or 'conventional' renewable fuel" will be increased to 19.28 billion gallons from 18.11 billion gallons in 2016. Conventional renewable fuel "typically refers to ethanol derived from corn starch and must meet a 20 percent lifecycle GHG [greenhouse gas] reduction threshold," according to EPA guidelines. Other kinds of renewable fuels include sugarcane-based ethanol, cellulosic ethanol derived from the stalks, leaves, and cobs leftover from a corn harvest, and compressed natural gas gleaned from wastewater facilities.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/re...
Increasing corn subsidies to red state farmers is a progressive cause? I mean, it could well be. I'm no expert. Still, it sounds like yet another transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich.
Ethanol costs more gasoline to make than energy it produces. It decays small engines and breaks things like weedwhackers. It lowers your gas milage. There is no positives at all in ethanol in our gasoline. It should have been banned a long time ago.
It gets really funny when you take into account the impact has been made by clearing forest to make up for lost production capacity of food stuffs now when we produce all this bio gasoline. It may just be that indeed the Chinese were right all along - the only way to limit damage is contraception. The other population control measures are all human but usually in conflict with valid laws.
Didn't we try that already? Didn't it just make it harder for the poor to keep a car because it took millions of cars off the road that otherwise would have been useable on the cheap for another couple of years?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Most big progressive programs transfer money from the poor to the rich. Social Security and Medicare are funded with regressive payroll taxes, and most of the benefits go to old people who tend to be richer than average. A poor black man has a life expectancy of about 69 years, so will typically benefit from SS and Medicare for 4 years. A rich white woman will live to be 82, collecting benefits for 17 years. So she gets more than four times the benefits, despite paying in a far smaller portion of her income.
... and the Democrats can't figure out why working class people don't vote for them anymore.
Damn skippy. If they are going to do this, they need to start -- start -- 3 to 5 years ahead by requiring ALL small motors to be built so that they can run on ethanol. And bear in mind that there are other problems with ethanol-laced fuel, the biggest one to my own experience being that it sucks water right out of the air and into your fuel tank. Alcohol is hydrophilic. Gasoline is hydrophobic. Put them together and you get the worst of both worlds -- a gas tank that builds up water in the bottom just sitting there in normally humid air.
Then there are the various parts in small motors that dissolve in ethanol.
Could this all be fixed? Sure, I imagine so. Not so sure about how the water issue can be fixed, but at least the engines can be designed not to break if you use ethanol either for timing reasons or because your fuel system turns into sludge while it operates. But they're not. So I'm left having to pay for no-E gasoline at a premium price from one of the few stations that carry it just to mow the lawn, run my chainsaw, run my boat, etc. This isn't just about cars.
Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken. --- Bertrand Russell.
Actually, it won't ruin many engines. Certainly none built after the late 90's.
Well you can get additives to add to cars for lead-only engines, and cars that can't use ethanol or methanol. There's a few cars that require methanol blends for fuel during the 90's "we're insane, let's screw around with shit" period. But this is great, my Saturn built in the late 90's still gets around 42-50mpg best I ever got was 62.7mpg, and that was when the car was only a few years old. Real world mileage with the SL and SW series was generally nothing short of amazing. Which wasn't uncommon with those cars, but now we get to spend 30% more and get less fuel, which is of course brilliant.
Om, nomnomnom...
Outboard boat motors, Chainsaws, String trimmers, Lawn Mowers, ATVs, Jet Skis, Snowmobiles, Motorcycles, etc.... None of them were designed to run on ethanol.
You can also add storage tanks the list.... like those big underground tanks at your local gas station that can leak gas into soils and groundwater when a seal corrodes from the high ethanol content. To be fair, today's tank systems have leak detection systems that usually identify a leak quickly, so they get fixed/remediated quickly, but since new ethanol [and low-sulfur diesel] requirements the number of incidents with tanks has gone up dramatically nation-wide. Tank owners have been too slow to adapt to the new maintenance requirements, seals, filters, etc. needed to safely hold ethanol blended gas in tanks.
... in response to lobbying by...
Corn subsidies are not a result of lobbying, they are a result of electoral politics. They primarily benefit sparsely populated red states which have disproportionate power in the Senate. No red state senator can possibly get elected by supporting a free market for farm products. Blue state senators are happy to cave in, because it doesn't really cost all that much, and they can horse-trade the subsidies by tacking them on as an amendment to other bills. Also, corn subsidies benefit some blue states too, such as Illinois.
You do have a point. (I found your numbers here.)
However, I would like to see whether the rich recoup their contributions to the program in time-adjusted dollars, even allowing for their longer lifespan. I would guess the answer is no, and I'm fine with that BTW.
Also, the tax is progressive not regressive, because those with larger incomes pay more. And while Social Security benefits are based on contribution amounts, Medicare is not.
But the most important thing to address is why poor black males have such a shorter life expectancy than other groups. I suspect it's because of a disproportionate exposure to societal risks (violence, etc.) and that's disturbing.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.