Today in Biofuels Opinion: “Should Congress end its subsidies for ethanol?”

Should Congress end its subsidies for ethanol?

Andrew P. Morriss, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: “YES. In 2005, a coalition of Midwestern corn growers, giant agribusinesses, environmental groups and politicians eager to assuage public concern over dependence on foreign oil joined to mandate the addition of ever increasing amounts of ethanol to our gasoline…Only in a good year does corn-based ethanol contain more energy than went into growing and harvesting the corn, transporting it to the ethanol plant, and then moving the ethanol to market. Moreover, ethanol has a lower energy content than gasoline, meaning your car gets fewer miles per gallon the more ethanol is in your tank.”

Don Kusler, director of the Working Families Win project, Americans for Democratic Action: NO. Ten percent of almost every gallon of gasoline you pump into your car is ethanol, reducing our daily consumption of foreign oil by hundreds of thousands of barrels…The Department of Energy reports that for every billion gallons of ethanol produced, 10,000 to 20,000 people are hired right here in America to do the work. At a time when our economy is hemorrhaging jobs, it would be disastrous to end investments in an industry that is growing and produced secure domestic jobs.

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