I Heart Joyce Peppin
(in a purely political way).
Ethanol is a bust, and finally the public and the legislature is starting to understand it. In Minnesota, we not only directly subsidize ethanol at the rate of 20 cents per gallon, we also mandate that it constitutes 10% of the fuel that we burn in our car.
Joyce Peppin (R- Rogers) has had enough.
In her guest LTE in the StarTribune, Ms Peppin makes her case.
1. It’s not cost effective
According to a 2005 report issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, corn ethanol costs an average of $2.53 a gallon to produce, or several times what it costs to produce a gallon of gasoline.
2. It doesn’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions
The continued widespread use of ethanol from corn could also result in nearly twice the greenhouse gas emissions as the gas it would replace because of land use changes, according to a report released earlier this year from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.
3. It’s not environmentally sound
Another concern is groundwater use, with plants generally using between three and five gallons of water to make a gallon of ethanol.
4. It endangers the food supply.
In 2006, Joachim Von Braun, the director of the International Food Research Policy Institute, said this about food prices: “I do not just expect somewhat higher food prices, but new instability as well. In the future, instability of energy prices will be translated into instability of food prices.”
Beyond her letter to the editor, Joyce Peppin has introduced HF4175, along with Paymar (DFL-64B), Greiling (DFL-54A), Buesgens (R-35B), and Tschumper (DFL-31B) which will not only end state subsidies for ethanol, but will eliminate the state mandate to use it in our autos. This is a bipartisan effort to end the ethanol boondoggle.
Update:
Representative Torrey Westrom (R-11A) has introduced legislation to make Ethanol the “Official Industry of the State of Minnesota”.