Co-sponsors of the bill are Richard Burr of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, Bob Corker of Tennessee, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Jeff Flake of Arizona, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jim Risch of Idaho and Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania.
“I am pleased to join Senator Coburn and others on a bill to eliminate the federal corn ethanol mandate from the Renewable Fuel Standard, while maintaining provisions designed to grow the low-carbon biofuel industry,” Feinstein said. “Under the corn ethanol mandate in the RFS, roughly 44 percent of US corn is diverted from food to fuel, pushing up the cost of food and animal feed and damaging the environment. Oil companies are also unable to blend more corn ethanol into gasoline without causing problems for automobiles, boats and other vehicles. I strongly support requiring a shift to low-carbon advanced biofuel, including biodiesel, cellulosic ethanol and other revolutionary fuels. But a corn ethanol mandate is simply bad policy.”
According to the US Department of Agriculture, more than 4.6 billion bushels of corn out of a total US supply of 11.9 billion bushels was used for the production of ethanol and byproducts during the 2012-13 marketing year.
“The time to end the corn ethanol mandate has arrived,” Coburn said. “This misguided policy has cost taxpayers billions of dollars, increased fuel prices and made our food more expensive. Eliminating this mandate will let market forces, rather than political and parochial forces, determine how to diversify fuel supplies in an ever-changing marketplace. I’m grateful my colleagues on both sides on the aisle are prepared to take this long-overdue step to protect consumers and taxpayers from artificially high fuel and food prices.”
The RFS, first enacted in 2005, requires refiners and blenders to use 16.55 billion gallons of renewable fuel in 2013. More than 13 billion gallons of this total will be met by the use of corn ethanol, a level that will increase in subsequent years.
In mid-November, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed 2014 renewable fuel standards that for the first time would reduce the volume of ethanol refiners must add to the fuel supply relative to targets established under the RFS. The EPA proposed that 15 billion to 15.52 billion gallons of ethanol be added to the fuel supply in 2014 compared with 18.15 billion gallons as targeted by current law.
The proposal from Feinstein, Coburn and others drew support from several groups, including the National Chicken Council.
“Congressional action to repeal the corn ethanol mandate remains the most viable pathway to allowing all users of corn to have equal standing in the marketplace, and we thank Senators Feinstein, Coburn and Hagan for leading this effort in the Senate," said Mike Brown, National Chicken Council president. "We know all too well from last year that corn crop projections and inventories can be erased from Mother Nature's wrath. This important legislation will help us ensure this vital resource is appropriately allocated. It is clear that the momentum in Washington is shifting and our elected officials and regulators are realizing that the supplies for our feed, food and fuel must not be pitted against each other.”
