Biofuels-Snake Oil for the Twenty-First Century

Congress should slash its subsidies for corn-based ethanol and focus its efforts on research and development efforts to advance the technologies needed to reduce our need for foreign petroleum. We should be working to lower the costs of cellulosic ethanol production as well as working on promising alternative transportation energy sources including plug-in electric vehicles powered by electricity from wind or solar technologies. Energy derived from microbial energy conversion is another promising technology for the longer term that deserves more research and development effort.460 Second, if we are to use ethanol, barriers to its importation of ethanol should be abolished in order to enhance the nation's fuel diversity, although policies concerning ethanol from all sources need to give serious scrutiny to its impact on the environment and food prices. Third, the government should not be working to build an ethanol infrastructure whose economic viability depends on government subsidies. We do not need another economic meltdown because massive amounts of capital were used to develop an industry that is not sustainable. Fourth, the EPA, DOE, DOT, and other relevant executive agencies should be tasked with developing a national fuel policy using a process that is open and transparent. This would include measures to reduce the distortion of the economic system caused by subsidies to the energy industry that would help place the alternative energy industry on a level playing field. A renewable fuels program should be an important part of a national energy policy, but it must be sustainable, and it should not be based on long-term government subsidies.