Court strikes down EPA
biofuel mandate
The Foundry – Ashe Schow –
2/3/2013
The Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) cannot impose a mandate for a non-existent product and then punish
companies for failing to use said non-existent product, the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled.
That non-existent product?
Cellulosic biofuels, a type of ethanol made from non-food sources such as wood
chips, switchgrass, and non-edible feedstock.
2007, the EPA mandated that
250 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels be produced in 2011 and 500 million
gallons in 2012. The problem was that no company could make the product
commercially viable, so the EPA lowered its 2012 goal to 8.65 million gallons.
Even that didn’t help, because absolutely zero gallons were produced in 2010
and 2011. Companies did manage to produce
22,000 gallons in 2012, but that still meant it was commercially
non-existent.
The lack of a product forced
the oil industry to pay
fines of more than $6 million for failing to use the non-existent biofuels.
As you can imagine, this cost was then passed on to consumers.
The fact that cellulosic
[biofuel] production is nowhere near providing industrial-scale quantities of
fuel demonstrates the government’s inability to determine what is commercially
viable and beneficial for consumers.
It all goes back to the
government thinking that it can pick winners and losers in the energy industry.
It fails
every
time.
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