Defenders of RFS resort to populist smear of ‘Big Oil’

Dec. 6, 2013
You know defenders of the indefensible have nothing left when they resort to populist smear.

You know defenders of the indefensible have nothing left when they resort to populist smear.

By relaxing unachievable requirements of the Renewable Fuel Standard, harrumphed Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad on Dec. 5, the Environmental Protection Agency “is now caving into the demands of Big Oil.”

Branstad, a Republican, was parroting routine twaddle of the ethanol lobby. When EPA in November proposed to lower the requirement for renewable-fuel sales in 2014, Brian Jennings, executive vice-president of the American Coalition for Ethanol, said the move would “increase pump prices, drain billions of dollars from consumer pocketbooks, and transfer billions more to oil company profit statements.”

The assertion that ethanol materially lowers gasoline prices, made in a discredited study that showed scant understanding of the oil market, is laughable. Even loonier is the claim that oil companies will make “billions” from lower ethanol sales.

Scripting Branstad, Jennings added, “EPA’s proposal…caves to Big Oil demands to put a ceiling on ethanol use.” To him, the blend wall is just “an excuse to reduce ethanol use” that “rewards oil companies for doing nothing to comply with the RFS.”

Wrong again. Oil companies can’t comply with an RFS that requires more corn ethanol than the gasoline market can use. That they have to buy credits to make up the difference represents a clear injustice that a democratic government is obliged to correct.

The Jennings rant didn’t end with his denial of blend-wall reality. The EPA proposal, he said, “sets a dangerous precedent by taking the teeth out of the most consequential policy Congress has ever enacted to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of transportation fuel.”

In fact, even environmental groups reject the ethanol lobby’s claims about benefits of the RFS program, the statutory targets of which have proven to be fanciful.

Still, in logic as practiced by Branstad, Jennings, and others profiting from the RFS’s enlargement of the corn market, the mandate must be righteous because unrighteous Big Oil opposes it. That’s the logic of mendacious self-interest.

(This item appeared first online at www.ogj.com on Dec. 6, 2013; author’s e-mail: [email protected])