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Congressman Roscoe Bartlett Votes No Against Expanding Ethanol Mandate
Press release, Bartlett website
Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-6-MD) supports changes in America’s energy policies to increase CAFÉ mileage standards, encourage conservation of finite fossil fuels, incorporate energy efficiency improvements and promote the development of alternative domestic renewable resources. However, he voted NO on the final version of H.R. 6 because of the Senate’s addition of a Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) to expand the existing ethanol mandate. Congressman Bartlett spoke on the House floor concerning the bill. A link to the video and transcript of his statement follows.
clips.shadowtv.net/media/stv/3343/8/2007/352/12/3343_8_20071218_125641_109.wmv
Congressman Bartlett was an original cosponsor of H.R. 6 when it was introduced in January 2007 and voted to support final passage of the previous comprehensive House energy bill, H.R. 3221. Both excluded expansions in the ethanol mandate.
Floor Statement of Congressman Roscoe Bartlett:
“We have about a trillion barrels of recoverable known reserves. The undiscovered reserves are going to be a relatively small fraction of that. If we could pump those undiscovered reserves tomorrow, what would we do the day after tomorrow? And there will be a day after tomorrow. I have 10 kids, 16 grandkids, and two great grandkids. We are leaving them a horrendous debt, although not with my votes. Wouldn’t it be nice to leave them a little oil? I’m not anxious to find and exploit these undiscovered reserves.
“I really would like to vote for this bill because we desperately need an energy bill. The world and particularly the United States faces a real challenge on energy in the future. But I cannot vote for this bill primarily because of the corn ethanol mandate.
(18 December 2007)
Gristmill picked up on Bartlett’s statement.
Rep. Bartlett’s work on energy issues is a welcome antidote to cynicism about the U.S. political system. He continues to remind me of the 1939 Frank Capra film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, which I saw last week with a cynical college student (my step-grandson). Afterwards, he announced it was the best film he had seen all year. -BA
As Ethanol Takes Its First Steps, Congress Proposes a Giant Leap
Clifford Krauss, New York Times
Congress is on the verge of writing into law one of the most ambitious dictates ever issued to American business: to create, from scratch, a huge new industry capable of converting agricultural wastes and other plant material into automotive fuel.
The potential benefits include reducing the nation’s dependence on oil and the emissions of gases that contribute to global warming. But the goals Congress is considering are so sweeping, analysts say, that it is not clear they can be achieved.
No fuel of the type in question has been produced commercially in the United States. Even in the view of people who back the idea, the technology to do it is immature, the economics are uncertain, and the potential for unintended consequences is high.
Hundreds of new factories will be required, perhaps a billion tons of plant material will need to be hauled around every year, and estimates of the required investment start at tens of billions of dollars.
(18 December 2007)
Food and Fuel Compete for Land
Andrew Martin, New York Times
…For years, cheap food and feed were taken for granted in the United States.
But now the price of some foods is rising sharply, and from the corridors of Washington to the aisles of neighborhood supermarkets, a blame alert is under way.
Among the favorite targets is ethanol, especially for food manufacturers and livestock farmers who seethe at government mandates for ethanol production. The ethanol boom, they contend, is raising corn prices, driving up the cost of producing dairy products and meat, and causing farmers to plant so much corn as to crowd out other crops.
The results are working their way through the marketplace, in this view, with overall consumer grocery costs up roughly 5 percent in a year and feed costs up more than 20 percent.
Now, with Congress poised to adopt a new mandate that would double the volume of ethanol made from corn, ethanol skeptics say a fateful moment has arrived, with the nation about to commit itself to decades of competition between food and fuel for the use of agricultural land.
“This is like a runaway freight train,” said Scott Faber, a lobbyist for the Grocery Manufacturers Association, who complained that ethanol has the same “magical effect” on politicians as the tooth fairy and Santa Claus have on children. “It’s great news for corn farmers, but terrible news for consumers.”
But ethanol critics are not getting much traction with their argument. Last week, the Senate voted 86 to 8 for a new energy bill containing expanded ethanol mandates, and the House is expected to follow suit this week.
(18 December 2007)
Part I: The Price of Biofuels
David Rotman, Technology Review (MIT)
Making ethanol from corn is expensive. Better biofuels are years away from the gas tank. But do we really have any alternative?
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The irrational exuberance over ethanol that swept through the American corn belt over the last few years has given way to a dreary hangover, especially among those who invested heavily in the sprawling production facilities now dotting the rural landscape. It’s the Midwest’s version of the tech bubble, and in some ways, it is remarkably familiar: overeager investors enamored of a technology’s seemingly unlimited potential ignore what, at least in retrospect, are obvious economic realities.
More than a hundred biofuel factories, clustered largely in the corn-growing states of Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, South Dakota, and Nebraska, will produce 6.4 billion gallons of ethanol this year, and another 74 facilities are under construction. Just 18 months ago, they were cash cows, churning out high-priced ethanol from low-priced corn, raising hopes of “energy independence” among politicians, and capturing the attention–and money–of venture capitalists from both the East and West Coasts.
Now ethanol producers are struggling, and many are losing money. The price of a bushel of corn rose to record highs during the year, exceeding $4.00 last winter before falling back to around $3.50 in the summer, then rebounding this fall to near $4.00 again. At the same time, ethanol prices plummeted as the market for the alternative fuel, which is still used mainly as an additive to gasoline, became saturated. In the face of these two trends, profit margins vanished.
The doldrums of the ethanol market reflect the predictable boom-and-bust cycle of any commodity: high prices drive increased production, and soon the market is oversupplied, causing prices to crash. But the large-scale use of corn-derived ethanol as a transportation fuel has economic problems all its own.
(January/February 2008)
UPDATE (Dec 19): Part II is also online.
US corn boom threatens sea life
Fertilizer runoff polluting Gulf
Henry C. Jackson, Associated Press
Because of rising demand for ethanol, American farmers are growing more corn than at any time since the Depression. And sea life in the Gulf of Mexico is paying the price.
more stories like this
The nation’s corn crop is fertilized with millions of pounds of nitrogen-based fertilizer. And when that nitrogen runs off fields in Corn Belt states, it makes its way to the Mississippi River and eventually pours into the Gulf, where it contributes to a growing “dead zone” – a 7,900-square-mile patch so depleted of oxygen that fish, crabs, and shrimp suffocate.
The dead zone was discovered in 1985 and has grown fairly steadily since then, forcing fishermen to venture farther and farther out to sea to find their catch. For decades, fertilizer has been considered the prime cause of the lifeless spot.
With demand for corn booming, some researchers fear the dead zone will expand rapidly, with devastating consequences.
(18 December 2007)
Also at Common Dreams.
Peak Soil + Peak Oil = Peak Spoils
ETC Group
In the name of moving “beyond petroleum,” Big Oil, Gene Giants, governments, start-ups and others are forming partnerships that will extend corporate control over more resources in every part of the globe – while keeping the root causes of climate change intact. With grudging recognition that first-generation agrofuels are neither economical nor ecological, investors turn to other life-based technologies, including synthetic biology, for the next alternative fuel fix.
Issue: In OECD countries, massive government incentives and subsidies – estimated to be as high as US$15 billion/year – are stoking the agrofuels[1] boom and spurring unprecedented alliances that extend corporate power over a larger share of the world’s resources[2]. Big Oil, Big Ag, Big Brains (and more) are teaming up to reap the only certain benefit of agrofuels – increased profits. In this Communiqué, ETC Group maps the new corporate alliances propelled by (and propelling) the scramble for bio-based fuels. We also include a new wave of corporate investors who are betting that synthetic biologists can turn microbes into fuel-producing factories.
Impact: With the agrofuels boom, the South’s land and labor is once again being exploited to perpetuate unjust and unsustainable consumption patterns in the North. Fuel crops are competing with food crops – and small farmers and poor consumers are losing out. …
(November/December 2007)
Long report. Also available as PDF. According to their About Us page:
ETC Group is dedicated to the conservation and sustainable advancement of cultural and ecological diversity and human rights. To this end, ETC Group supports socially responsible developments of technologies useful to the poor and marginalized and it addresses international governance issues and corporate power.
ETC Group works in partnership with civil society organizations (CSOs) for cooperative and sustainable self-reliance within disadvantaged societies, by providing information and analysis of socioeconomic and technological trends and alternatives. This work requires joint actions in community, regional, and global fora.
ETC Group’s strength is in the research and analysis of technological information (particularly but not exclusively plant genetic resources, biotechnologies, and [in general] biological diversity), and in the development of strategic options related to the socioeconomic ramifications of new technologies.
