renewable fuel standard

Post image for EPA Doubles Down on E15 — Literally

The Soviet-style production quota for ethanol, pompously titled the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), is in trouble. The RFS requires more ethanol to be sold than can actually be blended into the nation’s motor fuel supply. This “blend wall” problem will get worse as RFS production quota and federal fuel economy standards ratchet up, forcing refiners to blend more and more ethanol into a shrinking motor fuel market.

Here’s the math. Total domestic U.S. motor fuel sales in 2011 stood at 134 billion gallons. Although the U.S. population is increasing, overall motor gasoline consumption is projected to decline by 14% as fuel economy standards tighten between now and 2025. Already, the 2013 blending target for “conventional” (corn-based) biofuel — 13.8 billion gallons — exceeds the 13.4 billion gallons that can be blended as E10 (a fuel mixture containing 10% ethanol).

By 2022, the RFS requires that 36 billion gallons of biofuel be sold in the domestic market, including 21 billion gallons of “advanced” (low-carbon) biofuel, of which 16 billion gallons are to be “cellulosic” (ethanol derived from non-edible plant material such as corn stover, wood chips, and prairie grasses). Because commercial-scale cellulosic plants still do not exist, the EPA repeatedly has had to dumb down the cellulosic blending targets.

Eventually, though, the EPA will have to mandate the sale of at least a few billion gallons of advanced biofuel, just to keep up the pretense that the RFS is something more than corporate welfare for corn farmers. In any event, by 2015, refiners will have to sell 15 billion gallons of corn-ethanol — roughly 1.6 billion gallons more than can be blended as E10.

A side effect of the blend wall is the recent “RINsanity” of skyrocketing biofuel credit prices. The EPA assigns a unique Renewable Identification Number (RIN) to every gallon of ethanol produced and a credit for each gallon sold as motor fuel. Refiners who cannot blend enough ethanol to meet their quota can use surplus credits accumulated during previous years or purchased from other refiners.

Because the blend wall makes the annually increasing quota more and more difficult to meet, RIN credits are suddenly in high demand. Credits that cost only 2-3 cents a gallon last year now sell for about 70 cents. Consumers ultimately pay the cost — an extra 7 cents for each gallon of E10 sold, or an additional $11.7 billion in motor fuel spending in 2013, according to commodity analysts Bill Lapp and Dave Juday. Ouch! Ethanol was supposed to reduce pain at the pump, not increase it.

The ethanol lobby offers two fixes for the blend wall. Neither is workable. The EPA thinks it has another card up its sleeve. [click to continue…]

Post image for Reps. Upton and Waxman Issue 2nd White Paper on Renewable Fuel Standard

Reps. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) and Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) yesterday issued their second white paper in a series intended as a first step to reviewing the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The first white paper, released March 20, 2013, addresses Blend Wall/Fuel Compatibility Issues. The second white paper, released April 18, 2013, addresses Agricultural Sector Issues. Both white papers are clearly written, carefully documented, and provide excellent overviews of their respective topics.

The second white paper poses nine questions for public comment, and requests that responses be sent to rfs@mail.house.gov by April 29.

Two of the questions deal with the EPA’s denial in 2012 of petitions from ten governors who, seeking to reduce corn prices and alleviate harm to their states’ livestock industries, asked the agency to waive (suspend) RFS blending requirements. I comment on those questions, which are enumerated in the white paper as follows:

3. Was EPA correct to deny the 2012 waiver request? Are there any lessons that can be drawn from the waiver denial?
4. Does the Clean Air Act provide EPA sufficient flexibility to adequately address any effects that the RFS may have on corn price spikes?

My comments develop the following points:

  • The EPA should have granted the waiver but the agency’s strained reading of the Clean Air Act virtually guarantees that petitions will be denied regardless of the RFS’s contribution to severe economic harm.
  • Congress should revise the statute to preclude the EPA’s deck-stacking interpretation and clarify that the threshold issue is whether, in the context of actual market conditions, the RFS makes a non-negligible contribution to severe harm. [click to continue…]
Post image for Renewable Fuel Standard Costs Chain Restaurants $0.5 billion to $3.2 billion annually – Price Waterhouse Cooper

A new study conducted by Price Waterhouse Cooper (PwC) for the National Council of Chain Restaurants (NCCR) estimates the impact of the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) on the chain restaurant industry.

PwC used the following research strategy. First, PwC examined 11 public and private sector studies estimating the extent to which the RFS increases ethanol utilization beyond what would occur in a free market. Estimates range from an additional 1.0 billion gallons per year at the low end to an additional 6.0 billion gallons per year at the high end. Next, PwC estimated the impacts of these RFS-driven increases in ethanol consumption on the demand for and price of corn and other agricultural commodities. Then, PwC combined these price impact estimates with survey information on chain restaurant food commodity purchases.

Here are the results.

If the RFS in 2015 increases annual ethanol consumption by 6 billion gallons (“Scenario I”), quick service restaurants are projected to spend an additional $2.5 billion (10% of major food commodity spending) and full service restaurants an additional $691 million (8.9%). Costs at a typical restaurant increase by $18,190 in quick service restaurants and $17,195 in full service restaurants.

If the RFS in 2015 increases annual ethanol consumption by 1 billion gallons (“Scenario II”), quick service restaurants are projected to spend an additional $393 million per year (1.6% of major food commodity spending) and full service restaurants an additional $110 million (1.4%). Costs at a typical restaurant increase by $2,894 in quick service restaurants and $2,736 in full service restaurants.

Of course, it’s not just the restaurants that will bear those costs. Their customers will pay higher prices too.

Below are some charts and graphs from the study that provide more detail. [click to continue…]

Post image for U.S. Biofuel Expansion Cost Developing Countries $6.6 Billion: Tufts

U.S. biofuel expansion has cost developing countries $6.6 billion in higher food costs, estimates Tufts University economist Timothy A. Wise in Fueling the Food Crisis, a report published by ActionAid. A 10-minute video interview with Wise about his research is available here.

The 2007 Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), established by the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), exerts long-term upward pressure on grain prices by diverting an ever-growing quantity of corn from food and feed to auto fuel. This is great for corn farmers but not good for U.S. consumers and harmful to millions of people in developing countries, many of whom live in extreme poverty.

“Commodity prices are a small percentage of the retail price of food in the US” because “we heavily process our food,” notes Wise. In contrast, in developing countries, “commodity prices are a bigger percentage of the retail price, in part because people buy whole foods more often than processed foods.” Even small commodity price increases “can have a big impact on local market prices in developing countries.”

As it happens, during the same period that U.S. ethanol production and corn prices increased, many developing countries became more dependent on grain imports to feed their people and livestock. The recent drought-induced spike in U.S. corn prices is “just the latest episode in a devastating, protracted global food crisis that has pushed millions into poverty and hunger around the globe over the past 6 years,” argues the ActionAid report.

To assess the impact of biofuel expansion on developing countries, Wise used a conservative estimate of ethanol’s contribution to corn prices and multiplied that by the quantity of U.S. corn imported by those countries. A summary of key findings follows:

  • Net Food Importing Developing Countries, among the most vulnerable to food price increases, incurred ethanol-related costs of $2.1 billion.
  • Thirteen developing countries incurred per-capita impacts greater than Mexico’s (where tortilla prices have risen 69% since 2005), and they include a wide spectrum of large and small countries from all regions of the developing world – Colombia, Malaysia, Botswana, Syria.
  • North African countries saw large impacts, with $1.4 billion in ethanol-related import costs, led by Egypt ($679 million). Other countries experiencing social unrest – Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Iran, Yemen – also suffered high impacts, highlighting the link between rising food prices and political instability.
  • Central American countries felt impacts nearly those of Mexico, scaled to population. The region has seen its dependence on food imports rise over the last 20 years, and corn imports cost an extra $368 million from 2006-11 due to U.S. ethanol expansion. Guatemala saw the largest impacts, with $91 million in related costs. In 2010-11 alone, U.S. biofuel expansion cost Guatemalans $28 million — an amount nearly equivalent to U.S. food aid to Guatemala over the same period.
  • Latin American partners to trade agreements with the United States saw high costs, as import-dependence grows. The six-year ethanol-related cost of corn imports was $2.4 billion for Latin American nations involved in NAFTA, CAFTA-DR, and the bilateral agreements with Panama, Colombia, Peru, and Chile.
Post image for Another Study Debunks RFA/Vilsack Claim Ethanol Reduced Gas Prices by $1.09/Gal

A new study by the Energy Research Policy Foundation, Inc. (EPRINC) further debunks the popular talking point of USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack and the Renewable Fuel Association (RFA) that ethanol reduced gasoline prices by $0.89/gal in 2010 and $1.09/gal in 2011.

As noted previously on this site (here and here), Vilsack and the RFA tout a study by Iowa State University’s Center for Agricultural Research and Development (CARD), which concluded that if ethanol production had remained at year 2000 levels, the U.S. motor fuel supply would have been billions of gallons smaller and, thus, significantly pricier in 2010 and 2011. Subsequent studies by FarmEcon, LLC and MIT/UC Davis spotlighted CARD’s unrealistic assumption that the refining industry would not have increased gasoline production to meet consumer demand in the absence of policies mandating and subsidizing the blending and sale of increasing quantities of ethanol as motor fuel.

The EPRINC study (Ethanol’s Lost Promise: An Assessment of the Economic Consequences of the Renewable Fuel Mandate) shows, in addition, that if ethanol output had remained constant at the year 2000 level, refiners could have made up for the shortfall without importing or even refining “a single additional barrel of crude oil.” The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) has increased ethanol production by about 400,000 barrels per day (bbl/d) since 2000. A “remarkably small operational adjustment” in refineries’ product mix — a 1.8% increase in gasoline production — could have covered an ethanol shortfall of 400,000 bbl/d in 2011.

    [click to continue…]

Yesterday The Hill‘s Energy Blog reported on a brief filed by the EPA in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia:

The documents filed Monday with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reveal the reasoning behind EPA’s move to shoot down the American Petroleum Institute’s (API) challenge of the renewable fuel standard (RFS). EPA determined that enough advanced biofuels — generally understood to be made from non-food products — existed to meet that portion of the RFS for 2012.

“EPA reasonably considered the production capacity likely to be developed throughout the year, while API would have EPA rely narrowly and solely on proven past cellulosic biofuel production,” EPA said in its brief. “EPA reasoned that lowering the advanced biofuel volume in these circumstances would be inconsistent with EISA’s [the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007] energy security and greenhouse gas reduction goals, and decided to leave the statutory advanced biofuel volume unchanged.”

The (main) question here is what the 2012 cellulosic biofuel requirements should be set at. The EPA is arguing that they took a reasonable look at capacity production and put out what they thought could be developed, while the American Petroleum Institute is only looking at historic cellulosic biofuel production. So who is being reasonable? [click to continue…]

Graph courtesy of Roger Pielke Jr.

The EPA announced yesterday that it would open a 30 day commenting period as it weighs requests from multiple state governors to use provisions in the Clean Air Act to temporarily suspend the corn ethanol mandate under the Renewable Fuel Standard:

The EPA asked on Monday for public comment on the need for an ethanol waiver. The 30-day comment period will begin once the notice is published in the Federal Register.

“This notice is in keeping with EPA’s commitment to an open and transparent process to evaluate requests the agency receives under the Clean Air Act, and does not indicate any predisposition to a specific decision,” agency spokeswoman Alisha Johnson said in a statement.

By law the agency has until November 13 to make a decision on the waivers, meaning EPA could act on the requests after national elections on November 6.

Aimed at reducing U.S. reliance on foreign oil, the Renewable Fuels Standard, or RFS, would require 13.2 billion gallons of ethanol to be made from corn this year. [click to continue…]

Post image for When Drought Strikes, Should U.S. Policy Endanger Hungry People?

The question answers itself. Of course not. But that is the effect of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), more commonly known as the ethanol mandate.

Under the RFS (Energy Independence and Security Act, p. 31), refiners must sell specified amounts of biofuel each year. The “volumetric targets” increase from 4.0 billion gallons in 2006 to 36 billion gallons in 2022. The amount of corn ethanol qualifying as “renewable” maxes out at 15 billion gallons in 2015. Already, ethanol production consumes about 40% of the annual U.S. corn crop.

By 2022, 21 billion gallons are to be “advanced” (low-carbon) biofuels, of which 16 billion gallons are to be made from plant cellulose. But with cellulosic ethanol proving to be a complete dud, corn growners and ethanol producers are lobbying to redefine corn ethanol as “advanced.” If they succeed, mandatory sales of corn ethanol could significantly exceed 15 billion gallons annually.

In any event, the RFS sets aside a large and increasing quantity of the U.S. corn crop each year for ethanol production regardless of market demand for competing uses — and heedless of the potential impacts on food prices and world hunger. No matter how much of the U.S. corn crop is ruined by drought, no matter how high corn prices get, no matter how many people in developing countries are imperiled, the RFS requires that billions of bushels of corn be used to fuel cars rather than feed livestock and people. This is crazy. [click to continue…]

Post image for Ethanol Added $14.5 Billion to Consumer Motor Fuel Costs in 2011, Study Finds

Today, FarmEcon LLC released RFS, Fuel and Food Prices, and the Need for Statutory Flexibility, a study of ethanol’s impact on food and fuel prices. FarmEcon prepared the study for the American Meat Institute, California Dairies Inc., Milk Producers Council, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Chicken Council, National Pork Producers Council, and National Turkey Federation.

The study argues that the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), commonly known as the ethanol mandate, is detrimental to both non-ethanol industry corn users and food and fuel consumers. The program should therefore be reformed. The RFS has “destabilized corn and ethanol prices by offering an almost risk-free demand volume guaranty to the corn-based ethanol industry.” Consequently, food producers who use corn as a feedstock “have been forced to bear a disproportionate share of market and price risk” when corn yields fall and prices rise. This has become painfully obvious in recent weeks as drought conditions in the Midwest depress yields and push corn prices to record highs.

Appropriate reform* would assure food producers “automatic market access” to corn stocks “in the event of a natural disaster and a sharp reduction in corn production.” Ethanol producers should “bear the burden of market adjustments, along with domestic food producers and corn export customers.” The study also recommends that the RFS schedule “be revised to reflect the ethanol industry’s inability to produce commercially viable cellulosic fuels.”

Pretty tame stuff. An argument for flexibility to avoid the RFS’s worst market distortions and the cellulosic farce rather than an abolitionist manifesto. Nonetheless, the study paints a fairly damning picture of the RFS as a whole:

  • Increases in ethanol production since 2007 have made little, or no, contribution to U.S. energy supplies, or dependence on foreign crude oil. Rather, those increases have pushed gasoline suplies into the export market.
  • Current ethanol policy has increased and destabilized corn and related commodity prices to the detriment of both food and fuel producers. Corn price volatility has more than doubled since 2007.
  • Following the late 2007 increase in the RFS, food price inflation relative to all other goods and services accelerated sharply to twice its 2005-2007 rate.
  • Post-2007 higher rates of food price inflation are associated with sharp increases in corn, soybean and wheat prices.
  • On an energy basis, ethanol has never been priced competitively with gasoline.
  • Ethanol production costs and prices have ruled out U.S. ethanol use at levels higher than E10. As a result, we exported 1.2 billion gallons of ethanol in 2011.
  • Due to its higher energy cost and negative effect on fuel mileage, ethanol adds to the overall cost of motor fuels. In 2011 the higher cost of ethanol energy compared to gasoline added approximately $14.5 billion, or about 10 cents per gallon, to the cost of U.S. gasoline consumption. Ethanol tax credits (since discontinued) added another 4 cents per gallon. [click to continue…]
Post image for Ethanol Reduced Gas Prices by $1.09/gal. – Or Didn’t You Notice?

Iowa State University’s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) has just updated its 2009 and 2011 studies of ethanol’s impact on gasoline prices. CARD claims that from January 2000 to December 2011, “the growth in ethanol production reduced wholesale gasoline prices by $0.29 per gallon on average across all regions,” and that in 2011 ethanol lowered gasoline prices by a whopping $1.09 per gallon.

I’m no econometrician, but this study does not pass the laugh test. We’re supposed to believe that ethanol has conferred a giant boon on consumers even though gasoline prices have increased as ethanol production has increased, and even though gas prices hit their all-time high when ethanol production hit its all-time high. If that is success, what would failure look like?

CARD’s argument boils down to this. The gasoline sold at the pump today is E-10 — motor fuel blended with 10% ethanol. Ethanol thus makes up 10% of the motor fuel supply for passenger cars. If there were no ethanol, the motor fuel supply would be 10% smaller, and gas prices would be $1.09 per gallon higher (p. 6).

Well, sure, if we assume a drop in supply and no change in demand, prices will rise. But this scenario tells us nothing about what really matters — whether ethanol’s policy privileges, especially the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), a.k.a., the ethanol mandate, benefit or harm consumers.*

Note first that even in the absence of government support, billions of gallons of ethanol would be sold each year anyway as an octane booster. So a scenario in which 10% of the motor fuel supply simply disappears does not correspond to any policy choice Congress is actually debating or considering.

More importantly, CARD assumes that if the motor fuel supply were 10% smaller, refiners would not increase output to sell more of their product at higher prices. In other words, refiners would not engage in the economically-rational, profit-maximizing behavior that would bring supply back into balance with demand, thereby moderating the initial price increase.

Why wouldn’t they? There are only two possible explanations. One is that refiners don’t want to get rich, which is absurd. The other is that refiners operate like a cartel, colluding to restrict output in order to charge monopoly rents. CARD gives no sign of endorsing this view, and repeated investigations of the U.S. refining industry by the Federal Trade Commission repeatedly fail to find evidence of such anti-competitive scheming.

CARD’s analysis also ignores the opportunity costs of ethanol’s policy props. Capital is a finite resource. Every dollar refiners are forced or bribed to spend on ethanol is a dollar they cannot spend to produce gasoline. Government cannot rig the market in favor of ethanol without discouraging gasoline production. It is ridiculous to assume that all of the resources (e.g., refining capacity) commandeered by federal policy over the past decade to boost ethanol’s market share would have been left idle and not used to make gasoline in a free market.

In short, CARD’s analysis abstracts from the most basic economic realities we were all supposed to learn in Econ 101: resources are finite, choices have opportunity costs, and incentives (prices) matter.

I leave it to econometricians to quantify the repercussions, but this much is clear. In a free market, refiners would have blended less ethanol and produced more gasoline than they did in the market rigged by the RFS and other pro-ethanol policies. CARD — or, more precisely, CARD’s sponsors, the Renewable Fuel Association (RFA) — would have us believe that refiners would produce no more gasoline in a free market than they would in a market politicized by mandates and subsidies. That assumption is so unrealistic that any analysis based upon it is inappropriate and even fraudulent if used as a justification for maintaining or expanding government support for ethanol. [click to continue…]