Biden Suspends Summertime Ethanol-Fuel Ban in Desperate Bid to Ease #Bidenflation
All of Biden’s policy choices have led to a cascade of unintended consequences. Clearly, this one is likely to be no different.
Biden has been reeling from one disaster to the next since he took office.
We reported on the historic level of inflation, which is being partially driven by escalating gas prices that are the consequence of Biden’s policies. In a move to try and stem the increases from impacting the summer travel season, the White House announced plans to suspend a federal rule and expand the use of a type of ethanol-blended gasoline.
The announcement comes as Biden tries to solve a major pocketbook issue for Americans ahead of the midterm elections in November. According to AAA on Tuesday, the national average cost of gasoline is $4.10 per gallon.
Biden said the Environmental Protection Agency will allow E15, which uses ethanol, to be sold this summer. A federal ban prevents E15 from being sold from June 1 through Sept. 15 because of air pollution and smog concerns during the summer months.
“E15 is about 10 cents per gallon cheaper than E10,” Biden said during his announcement from Meno, Iowa. “Some gas stations offer an even bigger discount than that.
Biden’s tapping into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve isn’t paying off quite as planned. In fact, it may make oil prices more volatile.
The decision to sell oil from the SPR, instead of working out a loan, also known as an exchange, marked a tradeoff: oil would be released to the market more quickly to lower prices, but it could take longer to replenish the stockpile to its current level, raising longer-term market risks. Some analysts warned it could make oil prices more volatile.
Loans of U.S. oil from the SPR guarantee a return of oil over a set period but can take up to months to finalize as the government lines up buyers and negotiates contracts.
As a bonus, it turns out that corn-based ethanol is a greater emitter of carbon dioxide than gasoline.
Oil refiners are required to blend some ethanol into gasoline under a pair of laws, passed in 2005 and 2007, intended to reduce the use of oil and the creation of greenhouse gases by mandating increased levels of ethanol in the nation’s fuel mix every year. However, since passage of the 2007 law, the mandate has been met with criticism that it has contributed to increased fuel prices and has done little to reduce greenhouse gas pollution.
A study last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences estimated that corn-based ethanol was at least 24 percent more carbon-intensive than gasoline when emissions from land-use changes to grow corn, along with processing and combustion, were included.
“Corn ethanol is a greater emitter of greenhouse gases than gasoline,” said Jason Hill, a professor of bioproducts and biosystems engineering at the University of Minnesota.
“This will actually work in the opposite direction of the administration’s climate goals rather than being a benefit,” Mr. Mills said.
Not to say that more carbon dioxide, a life-essential gas, is bad. However, the hypocrisy reeks…especially as it this the green-justice oriented bureaucrats at the EPA who approved this plan.
The US and China are the largest corn producers. On average, in the U.S., about 45 percent of corn is used for animal feed, 44 percent is turned into ethanol, and 10 percent is used as food (with about 33% of the food corn is converted into high-fructose corn syrup). Therefore, one has to wonder about the potential impact of this decision on the looming global food crisis.
The U.N. food chief warned Tuesday the war in Ukraine has created “a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe” and will have a global impact “beyond anything we’ve seen since World War II” because many of the Ukrainian farmers who produce a significant amount of the world’s wheat are now fighting Russians.
David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, told the U.N. Security Council that already high food prices are skyrocketing.
His agency was feeding 125 million people around the world before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, and Beasley said it has had to start cutting their rations because of rising food, fuel and shipping costs. He pointed to war-torn Yemen where 8 million people just had their food allotment cut 50%, “and now we’re looking at going to zero rations.”
Biden’s policy choices have led to a cascade of unintended consequences. Clearly, this one is likely to be no different.
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
Thank a liberal
Translation: Big Farm wants more subsidy money.
This level of apparent incompetence cannot be accidental (I am assuming Biden is not making the decisions), every move this administration is making, is beginning to seem calculated to introduce further instability into America.
The Birch Society has been saying that that was the game plan all along. To do away with that which make America both great and unique; namely, limiting government so that individuals can have more freedom. The left wants all limitations on government removed. That’s the essence of the NWO,
https://www.gaconstitutionparty.org/overview_of_america_cd2019
Seriously.
I cannot think of a single thing Biden has done that had a positive effect on America.
The man can flip a coin 100 times and get 100 tails.
It’s like the Zener Deck test for ESP — getting the cards wrong 100% of the time shows ESP just as strong as someone who gets them right 100% of the time.
Oh, great. Now I have to remember to check the ethanol content of the fuel before I pay too much to fill up so that it doesn’t damage the engine in my vehicle. Not everyone drives a flex fuel car., Thanks pedophile.
Here’s a great resource if you are looking for ethanol-free gas for your car/lawnmower/boat/whatever: https://www.pure-gas.org/extensions/maps.jsp
It’s usually more expensive, but to many people (including me), it’s worth it to save your engines from crapping out.
I’m quite aware of how to strip the ethanol out of gasoline and I already do it in smaller batches for stuff like the lawnmowers. It literally just takes water and time to separate the alchol from the gasoline, then having a way to either skim the gas off or drain the water/ethanol mix from the bottom of the container. It’s a bit of a pain but it’s a lot cheaper than paying the premium for the pure gasoline.
Hopefully gas stations will properly label their E15. I’d get many won’t.
That would definitely be cause for lawsuits if people end up damaging their car because the e15 was labeled e10.
We are facing a Global Famine. It will be the Largest Starvation Event in Human History. 1 in 4 people on the planet is facing starvation and malnutrition. But, Biden wants to turn more corn into fuel at the same time that US Farmers are actually switching acreage from Corn to Soybeans because of the cost of fertilizer.
This is INSANE.
What will Biden do next? Grind the seed corn too?
They’re using not just corn but sugar. Stock up now, while you can. And start looking into growing sugar beets.
You can’t process sugar beets at home to make white sugar (although you can turn out a product that tastes somewhat like molasses or brown sugar, but it takes an awful lot of beets), although you can feed them to cattle. Look into alternative sweeteners if you don’t live where sugar cane grows
Do your homework that corn was never for human consumption so have ZERO effect on food.
Its special land too. Only designed to grow ethanol corn. Couldn’t possibly grow food on it.
Ah, no. That kind of corn is used to feed the things we do it. Yes, it affects the cost.
*it = eat
/this
Except, of course, your food that eats corn as food.
Because they couldn’t possibly plant crops intended for human consumption or livestock feed on that same land…
It’s true. Corn was never intended for human consumption. It was intended to be used for fuel. And corn cobs were intended to be used for corn cob pipes.
On the other hand, we have been fooled into thinking petroleum was intended to be used for fuel. As a matter of fact liberal scientists are working on a method of converting petroleum into food for human consumption which would eliminate the need for growing plants.
I thought the corn cobs were meant for use in the outhouse…
Recycled corn cobs are best because they are softer.
2smartforlibs was referring to the two most common types of corn grown in the U.S. Sweet corn which is grown for human consumption. When you go and buy ears of corn at the market or canned or frozen corn it’ll be sweet corn. Field corn grown for a variety of uses but primarily as animal feed and ethanol production. But field corn is also milled and then used in human food products like corn oil, corn syrup, corn starch, corn meal, corn flour, corn flakes, etc. But you can cook and eat field corn any way you can cook and eat sweet corn. You have a very narrow window. You have to pay attention to the corn. When you see the silk just start to turn brown wait two or three days and then it’s at it’s best for eating fresh off the cob. You can boil or roast it and slather it with butter and salt. It won’t be as sweet as sweet corn but some people prefer the taste to sweet corn.
You’ll never see field corn sold as corn-on-the-cob in a store; you’ll have to grow it yourself or know someone who does. Commercially grown sweet corn and field corn are harvested at different times and harvested differently. Sweet corn is harvested earlier in the season at the peak of ripeness when it has the highest sugar content. When it’s harvested it’s on the cob to maintain moisture and flavor. Field corn is harvested later in the year when it is hard, dry, and flavorless. When field corn is combined the kernels are stripped from the cob, then the kernels are brought in from the field and stored.
I know gardeners who grow both kinds of corn and enjoy an extended harvest. Sweet corn earlier in the harvest season to eat off the cob (although you can eat field corn the same way). And then later they harvest the field corn to make their own corn starch or corn flour. You can video recipes for homemade corn starch/flour on youtube.
That was very interesting. Thanks for taking the time to write it.
Carbon isotopes can be traced from Corn through cattle to people. 95% of the Carbon in your body is from Corn.
There is a finite limit to how much corn is grown every year; it doesn’t matter whether the end use is ethanol or corn meal. If more acreage is contracted for ethanol, it leaves fewer acres for food corn.
Add to this that fewer acres will be planted this year anyway because of fertilizer and other costs, and the food corn portion of the harvest has to shrink substantially.
What is this sheer idiocy? The Native Americans who developed maize as a crop circa 2500-2100 B.C. used it ONLY for human consumption. What else would they use it for? They had no livestock. Their only domesticated animals were dogs.
In case you haven’t noticed dogs aren’t particularly fond of corn. The ancient (like the ancient Near/Middle Easterners who domesticated wild grasses and developed them into grain crops) domesticated corn from either a single wild annual plant called teosinte or more impressively figured out how to hybridize teosinte with other closely related varieties. And then to develop domestic maize in what we could recognize as its modern form these ancient farmers may have gone through two or more domestications. They went through all that work for one and only reason. To eat the corn themselves. And we only called it corn because that was the generic English word for all kinds of cereal crops be it wheat, barley, rye, even rice. Outside North America, Australia, and New Zealand the word corn is still used that way. When we say corn, we mean this specific crop.
The North Americans who used maize as a grain crop ate it at every meal, and it was easily preserved. Sometimes they dried it, and then soaked it water to make hominy. They’d also grind it and make a kind of corn bread.
Why don’t you do your homework. Then you wouldn’t spout complete nonsense.
And some really sharp ones learned to turn it into corn likker.
Corn squeezin’s!
For the slow that have no idea what Ethanol is. It’s made from ANIMAL FEED going in and the ANIMAL feed is coming out. only the sugar is removed. NONE ZERO NOT A BIT is or ever was for human consumption.
So how do they replace the animal feed?
We don’t. Buckle up and get ready, prep, now.
Your argument ignores the effort, public choice, and tax subsidies involved in growing more animal feed than the national animal stock needs, in preference to food humans could eat.
So the milled, processed products made from the exact same type of corn (field corn/aka yellow dent corn) used to produce animal feed and ethanol never were meant for human consumption?
Who knew corn (cooking) oil, corn starch, corn meal, corn flour, cornflakes, and yellow corn chips were never meant for human consumption! Thanks for the education. Can we sue the grocery stores who sell these products for human consumption? They don’t mark these products “for agricultural use only.”
Speaking of yellow corn chips, do pigs and cattle prefer this “animal feed” with salsa, guacamole, or sour cream each by themselves or in some combination?
Gas was under $2.00 when Biden was installed.
He did a whole bunch of stupid crap that everybody knew would cause prices to go up, but they did it anyways.
The price has more than doubled and now they want me to put that crap in my car’s tank to save 10 cents?
FJB and all his handlers and dominion and every imbecile that voted for him, or in any way helped put Pedo Joe in the White House.
People will have to read their owners’ manuals carefully. Many cars (including mine) state maximum E10. Use of E15 will void the warranty. That much ethanol will corrode many metals, dissolve seals, and enhance the well-known ability of gasahol to suck water out of the air and divide into two layers. Ethanol also air-oxidizes to acetic acid, which esterifies with the remaining ethanol to form ethyl acetate, which gives old gasahol its characteristic odor (and further dissolves fuel handling parts).
Ethanol only appears to be cheaper than gasoline right now because of the huge subsidies enjoyed by the industry. If you take away the subsidies, ethanol is more expensive than gasoline.
Ethanol from corn is particularly problematic. It takes about 1 gallon of diesel fuel and chemicals to grow the corn needed to make 1 gallon of ethanol, which contains less energy than diesel. It you look back at the bills that mandate corn ethanol in gas, they were proposed and passed as a means of supporting corn prices, not anything to do with environment or climate. Right now, the corn would be better used to send to countries that have people starving because Ukraine and Russia are not exporting their usual amounts of food grains.
It’s not even cheaper at the pump when calculating actual energy of ethanol v gasoline. Ethanol at E15 blend has roughly 27% less energy than gasoline so you will be filling up more often.
Right. People don’t realize this. Vehicles that are built to use the high-ethanol gas get crap MPG when they use it. So not only are you not saving money, you’re wasting more time in gas stations.
And, of course, vehicles that aren’t built to use the high-ethanol gas get destroyed if you pump it in by mistake. And it’s going to happen because unlike diesel, which is identified by a distinctive green pane, host, and nozzle, the hi-E fuel is identified by tiny print and (only if you’re paying attention) a low octane rating.
Concur
A) lots of engine damage to engines that arent desinged to handle e85
b) while polution per gallon may be less with ethonal – pollution per mile is higher with ethanol due to the lower mpg. Duh!
Many of us have vehicles that aren’t designed to use anything higher than E10 blend. Using E15 in them may well cause damage to the engine that the manufacturer will not cover under warranty as you used unapproved fuel. Much like using the 85 octane fuel available in high altitude areas.
Damaging the engines is the point. You’ll HAVE to buy electric cars then.
No silver lining there.
Back in the 90’s, my pig farmer college roommate’s Dad was on the board of the Minnesota Corn Producers (or whatever it was called at the time), his figures indicated 1 gallon of diesel yielded 2.5 gallons of ethanol. That was diesel used as fuel (tractors, trucks, etc.) and not accounting for energy input needed for fertilizer or used in processing. So from a liquid fuel in to liquid fuel out perspective there was a roughly 50% gain (2.5 gallons ethanol = ~1.5 Diesel Equivalent Gallons).
I suspect that converting the energy value of the fertilizer and processing into equivalent Diesel would bring it pretty much in line with your 1 gallon of Diesel yields 1 gallon of ethanol statement (a 40% energy loss). It should be noted that the leftover mash was still useful as animal feed, at least pigs would eat it, and there was another byproduct or two with some value, their process was obviously well optimized but still needed subsidies for the economics to work out.
The wisdom of central planning.
“Biden has been
reeling fromlighting the fuses of one disaster to the next since he took office.”FIFY.
given russia and ukraine (big grain exporters) does this move make sense? Our leaders are incompetent. I’m worried about a famine – not in ethopia but here at home. unthinkable 2.5 years ago.
Considering the fact that I live smack dab in the middle of the largest contiguous piece of arable land on the planet (the great plains of North America) that is irrigated by the largest navigable river system in the world (the Mississippi River system), the possibility of famine is not one anyone around here ever considered. Even if other parts of North America suffered some, we literally live where the food is produced and therefore never considered the idea of shortage in our area.
We do, however, import vast quantities of fertilizer, so we can still be impacted.
Stupid. If you don’t have a flexfuel vehicle, you’ll screw up your car. The dummies who buy this fuel will also find that E85 gives them worse mileage, so that dime a gallon they save will be eaten up by filling up more frequently. And more production of ethanol will drive up animal feed prices, which will further drive up the cost of meat. And then there’s the whole pollution thing… but I guess that’s the plan.
“And then there’s the whole pollution thing… but I guess that’s the plan.”
Climate change is America’s most existential threat…
until Dems are in danger of losing an election.
let’s see…
– higher greenhouse gas emissions
– reduced fuel efficiency
– damaging to older and smaller engines
– reduced food output in the face of a global supply chain crisis and war in the breadbasket of Europe.
Sounds like the perfect Biden plan.
Typical Biden “bullfeathers”. Aside from the fact that most cars (other than Flex Fuel vehicles) would be damaged by filling up with E-85, there are just 2,300 stations that sell it. That’s about 1.5% of the 150,000 gas stations in the country. Biden wants to sell this stupidity as a big effin’ deal (to use Slow Joe’s phrase). Biden definitely can’t blind us with the brilliance he so obviously lacks–so he’s going to baffle us with bunkum. What a silly stupid tool.
“Biden wants to sell this stupidity as a big effin’ deal”
Like his release of dribs and drabs from the strategic fuel reserve.
Truth is, Biden doesn’t have any actual big effin’ deals available to pull out of his hat.
He’s personally destroyed every effective one he could have used.
Biden isn’t stumping for E85, he’s stumping for E15 and increasing summer pollution.
It doesn’t matter. For many vehicles more than ten years old, or the ones without the yellow fuel cap, any fuel with more than 10% ethanol is not an approved fuel for use in that engine and they will not cover it under warranty if they can prove you did it.
Now I realize, on a car that is ten years or more of age, there is no warranty. However, you still don’t want to have to replace the engine.
IT is all crap one way or another.
2 dollar rise, 10 cent drop and the gas is not good for your engine (increased carbon buildup).
This is government efficiency at its finest.
Mechanics love this move. Guarantees a steady stream of engine work as ethanol destroys them.
Given the massive food shortages heading our way, shouldn’t we be selling the FOOD instead of converting it to a corrosive and inefficient form of gas
IF I’m not mistaken, they put human sewage effluent on the fields which makes if none eatable for ever. I do know it smells like hell for days.
Just eliminate the caustic ethanol requirement!
The big CORN (hole) lobby would have a hissy and not grease any more pockets
The U.N. food chief warned Tuesday the war in Ukraine has created “a catastrophe on top of a catastrophe” and will have a global impact “beyond anything we’ve seen since World War II” because many of the Ukrainian farmers who produce a significant amount of the world’s wheat are now fighting Russians.
David Beasley, executive director of the U.N. World Food Program, told the U.N. Security Council that already high food prices are skyrocketing.
His agency was feeding 125 million people around the world before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, and Beasley said it has had to start cutting their rations because of rising food, fuel and shipping costs. He pointed to war-torn Yemen where 8 million people just had their food allotment cut 50%, “and now we’re looking at going to zero rations.”
So you could blame Putin for this but Biden’s leadership has been severely lacking and allowed this to occur. It can be traced straight to three things: His weak ass “don’t hack us” list, Botched Afghanistan withdrawal indicating dysfunction in US military, and allowing the Nord Stream 2.
China wanted to bring the West down several notches with the Wuhan Flu outbreak and now Putin can do the same. The response from the West and especially FJoe Biden will magnify the disaster. The NWO/WEF/Davos/Dems prefer famine and starvation.
I would add two more items – Biden’s shocking public comment that the response to an invasion of Ukraine would depend on whether it was a “minor incursion” and his failure to do anything, such as sanctions, as Russia built up its forces on Ukraine’s border for months. I recall Psaki justifying doing nothing by saying Russia had done nothing yet (to attack). Finally, his entire presidency has exhibited extreme weakness. So, even absent any directly related events, how could Putin not conclude that he would never have a better opportunity.
The freaking idiots in charge of this country right now…. hey, let’s make a food shortage even worse by creating more scarcity!
Robinette bidet da DOLT and a THEIF!
THIEF, damnit
Let me see if I have this right.
Mr. Biden says that E15 is cheaper than E10. Well, Joe, since you are a serial liar, I don’t believe you. My car will get about 1-2% fewer mpg on E15 than on E10. E15 also causes more damage to cars. So, sure, I might save 10 cents per gallon, but then that new engine will cost me $5,000. Just like when your pal Buttigieg said I should trade in my car on an expensive electric car to save money.
E15 will also cause food prices to rise more than does E10. That won’t save me money.
I grabbed current prices from my local Casey’s:
ethanol free, 87 octane: $3.819/gal
10% ethanol, 87 octane: $3.369/gal –> $3.48/GGE
15% ethanol, 88 octane: $3.219/gal –> $3.39/GGE
E85 (85% ethanol): $2.869/gal–>$3.99/GGE
So cheapest from a Gallon of Gasoline Equivalent perspective is 15% ethanol. I burn about 600 gallons per year in my car so using 15% ethanol would save me $60 per year over 10% ethanol, running ethanol free would add $200 per year to my fuel bill.
Personally, I am comfortable with 10% ethanol in any daily driven, modern car or truck, the boat gets ethanol free.