Posted December 13, 2013
On Thursday, Senators Diane Feinstein (D-CA), Tom
Coburn (R-OK), and Kay Hagan (D-NC) introduced a bill that would eliminate the
requirement for corn ethanol from the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), according
to an article by Agri-Pulse available here. The text of the bill is available here.
While eliminating corn ethanol from the RFS, cellulosic
and advanced biofuel mandates would remain.
The RFS was created in the Energy Policy Act of 2005
and revised in 2007, creating a target for 36 billion gallons of renewable
fuels blended into gasoline by 2022. The
EPA recently proposed a plan to cut total biofuel blending for 2014. A recent post from this blog on the EPA’s
proposed plan is available here.
Sen. Feinstein said that she introduced the bill
because “too much of the U.S. corn crop – 44 percent – is being diverted from
food to fuel under the RFS.” She said, “I
strongly support requiring a shift to low-carbon advanced biofuel … [b]ut a
corn ethanol mandate is simply bad policy.”
Bob Dineen, CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association
(RFA) called the legislation “oil-centric” and “deeply misguided.” He said, “By removing first generation
ethanol from the RFS, the foundation will be pulled out from underneath
cellulosic ethanol and other advanced biofuels.”
The Jacksonville Daily News reports that Sen. Hagan
said, “By eliminating the corn-ethanol mandate of the RFS, this bill will
provide relief from high corn prices without harming investments in advanced
biofuels.”
For more information on biofuels, please visit the
National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
