Biden Mandates Increased Ethanol in Gas – Raises Corn Prices by 30 Percent

Smart. Burning your food to make “renewable” fuels that will raise the price of corn by 30 percent when there is a looming food shortage. Better, it will requirer more fertilizer which is in short supply and that price too is soaring. Best? Probably put smaller refineries out of business. And the coup de grace? Causes engine wear and damages your car. All this to force the issue of EV’s.

It is hard to think all this is not intentional. It’s odd that if EV was so great and everyone should be using them, why is the government so intent on (or even has to) coercing/forcing the public to move to EV by intentional destroying internal combustion any way they can. Meanwhile we sit on a boatload of fossils fuels that the world envies.

A fools game.

On Friday

Biden’s EPA Mandated the Most Ethanol Use Ever.

The EPA, after gathering comments since releasing it proposed blending requirements in December, said Friday it will require refiners to blend 20.77 billion gallons of ethanol, biodiesel and other renewable fuel this year.

Additionally, the oil industry must blend 250 million more gallons of renewable fuel, both this year and next, after a federal court found the Obama administration inappropriately reduced the 2016 blending requirements.

The agency also denied roughly 70 exemptions for small refineries, many of which had been granted under former President Donald Trump.

…..

Refiners Complain

But Chet Thompson, CEO of the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, said the blending requirement for this year is “contrary to the administration’s claims to be doing everything in their power to provide relief to consumers.”

“Unachievable mandates will needlessly raise fuel production costs and further threaten the viability of U.S. small refineries, both at the expense of consumers,” Thompson said.

….

Now we go into the old “market credits.” We wonder why the price of gasoline is so high? Maybe Peter Doocy could ask our White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about this. That would be a hoot.

The Wall Street Journal reported EPA Trims Ethanol Fuel Mandate for 2020-21 But Raises It for 2022

The Biden administration on Friday retroactively reduced the amount of ethanol that must be blended into gasoline for 2020 and 2021 but raised the level for 2022, saying the changes are aimed at helping boost domestic fuel supplies.

The agency can adjust these requirements retroactively, signaling to refiners how much they will have to spend to buy market credits that help them comply with obligations lingering from past years.

Both ethanol and corn prices have risen sharply, and cutting the 2022 mandate potentially could have lowered refiners’ business costs and led to lower prices at the pump, but likely by only a few cents a gallon, said analysts at research and consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group LLC.

Let’s get rid of the smaller refineries. Transportation Secretary Butt Boy complains about the big companies running things:

South Jersey refinery says cost-mandated fuel credits threaten its survival

New Jersey lawmakers waded into a long-running battle by independent oil refiners for reform of a federal mandate that the companies say is costing them millions of dollars and threatening their survival.

Both the Senate and Assembly unanimously passed a resolution urging President Joe Biden and the Environmental Protection Agency to allow waivers to the Renewable Fuels Standard that would ease financial pressure on refiners such as Parsippany-based PBF Energy which employs about 225 people at a facility in Paulsboro.

To comply with the standard, PBF and other refiners who are unable to blend biofuels such as ethanol with gasoline and diesel are required instead to buy credits called Renewable Identification Numbers, or RINs, that have recently surged in price because they are traded on the open market.

Prices for the credits jumped to a record high of almost $2 in June from only 10 cents at the start of 2020, the resolution said. They are now the second-largest expense for refiners like PBF, after crude oil. The document noted that 800 million fewer credits were issued last year than were needed to meet the 2020 standard.

The burden of the credits is worsened, the independent refiners say, by the fact that they buy them from larger competitors who have the technical ability to blend biofuels, and so earn the credits that they can then sell to the smaller companies. That amounts to the smaller companies effectively subsidizing their competitors, they say. Source

And our farmland?

“Millions of acres are being pointlessly sacrificed just to grow corn to fuel gas-guzzling SUVs,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Meanwhile the EPA looks the other way as our ocean dead zones grow, water pollution worsens, and endangered species suffer.”

Expanded ethanol production under federal mandates raised corn prices by 30% and the prices of other crops by 20%, according to a report published earlier this year in the National Academy of Sciences. The report also said growing more corn for ethanol led to increased amounts of water pollutants from U.S. farms and negated ethanol’s climate benefits.

The Biden administration announced it will suspend a federal rule that bars higher levels of ethanol in gasoline during the summertime. The move is intended to lower fuel prices. However, that decision is to authorize year-round use of E15 or 15% ethanol.

Now the best part not to be missed.

EPA to Expand E15 Ethanol Fuel – Is Ethanol Bad For Your Car’s Engine?

A comment left:

My car SPECIFICALLY states NOT to use Ethanol fuel because it will damage the aluminum block. Almost every car’s block is corroded but ethanol and so extensively damaged by E-15 that the life of the vehicle is reduced by 60-75% so, a life of 5-7 years not 15-25 years. I smell a rat.

Read more at Zero Hedge

Bonus time for laughs and giggles: