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In an October 19 letter to corn-belt lawmakers, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt said that he won't seek any rollback to biofuel blending rules, according to Reuters.
The agency had been considering some changes to rules set by the Obama administration that ratchet up the amount of renewable biofuel that refineries must blend into the gas and diesel they sell. According to Bloomberg, the EPA had specifically been considering "a possible reduction in biodiesel requirements" as well as "a proposal to allow exported renewable fuel to count toward domestic quotas." In early October, the EPA asked for public comment on cutting biodiesel quotas.
The Bloomberg story cited unnamed sources who said President Trump personally directed Pruitt to back off any proposals that would relax biofuel quotas after pressure from lawmakers from corn-producing states like Iowa, Nebraska, and Illinois. Trump, who courted both fossil fuel interests and corn-belt states in his campaign, has had pressure from each side on this debate. Uncertainty surrounding the future of biofuel use during Trump's administration has caused volatility in biofuels markets for months, Reuters notes.
(The Bloomberg story also cites one unnamed "top EPA official" who said that Trump's directive to Pruitt didn't matter because Pruitt wasn't going to alter renewable fuel standards anyway.)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday October 25 2017, @08:50PM
Too late. I was looking at windfarm land in Western Nebraska around 2004. At that time, you could get land for about $500 per acre, because wind power is speculative and unproven, and there was no market for the corn or wheat that could be grown on the land. In Western Nebraska, wind power is still speculative and unproven, but as soon as the ethanol in gasoline mandate was passed, all that land I was looking at jumped up to between $2500 and $3000 per acre, because suddenly it could be leased to corn farmers. Millions of acres quintupling in value overnight, Billions in value "created" - with the associated tax revenue streams.
Kill the ethanol subsidy and suddenly, all that land that has been trading hands at $3000 per acre for the past 10+ years will lose its value. People will be sad, people with money, that's bad for politics, and the politicians are the deciderators, that is: they make the decisions, or so said GW Bush back then.
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