Issues With Ethanol

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Congress set out to create an ethanol industry that would produce enough to make up 10 percent of every gallon of gas pumped into a car, but the lawmakers assumed that demand for fuel would grow. Instead, it has shrunk to 8.7 million barrels a day from 9.7 million in 2007, said Larry Goldstein, an economist and a director of the Energy Policy Research Foundation. And with corporate average fuel economy rules now in place todouble the number of miles that the average car gets per gallon by 2025, “you know we’re on a trend,” he added.

So reports the New York Times today. This is the problem with politicians and bureaucrats trying to set energy policy. Science, economic, and technological advances (the natural gas boom and fracking to create more gasoline) occur too quickly -- which is why free enterprise is a better way to handle these issues.

The Times' story mentions the drought in the corn belt. While the Delta's soybean area has received a great deal of rain since mid-December, the corn belt isn't doing quite as well. Precipitation in the corn belt the next seven days is forecast to be light.

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