Repeal the Ethanol Mandate
9th July 2016
Congress enacted the ethanol mandate about a decade ago because it feared the United States was too dependent on foreign oil. The lawmakers hoped ethanol, which is mostly made from corn, and other homegrown biofuels, would replace some of the imported oil. But they did not anticipate that drilling companies would solve the problem of extracting oil from shale rock, making the United States the world’s largest oil and natural gas producer.
Now the U.S. is awash in domestic oil and stuck with an ethanol mandate that forces consumers to pour ethanol into their tanks. Not only is the ethanol mandate wasting corn that should be consumed as food, but also it is wasting the money consumers use to purchase fuel.
Ethanol reduces mileage. E10, the common form of gasoline available today, contains up to 10 percent ethanol. But a gallon of ethanol contains only two-thirds of the energy in a gallon of gasoline. In fact, it takes 1.52 gallons of ethanol to replace the energy content of a gallon of gasoline. This means drivers who use E10 must fill up more often.