Iowa Governor Asks EPA To Ignore Perry’s Request For Renewable Fuel Standards Waiver
Iowa Governor Chet Culver has asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ignore Texas Governor Rick Perry’s request for a waiver from renewable fuel standards.
In a letter to the EPA, Culver noted:
As the Governor of Iowa, I stand in opposition to the State of Texas’ request for a waiver of the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS). Although this position was expressed earlier in a letter I supported with a bi-partisan group of my colleagues from the Midwestern Governor’s Association (MGA), I write today to underscore the importance of this issue. A waiver of the RFS would not cause an immediate or near-term reduction in corn prices or food prices, but it could have a very negative effect on the development of advanced biofuels and on future national energy security.
Critics have been blaming ethanol for the recent rise in food prices, but in fact a complex set of factors have contributed to those increases in the U.S. and around the world. The primary factors contributing to rising food prices include: oil hovering around $140 a barrel; increasing global demand for grain and meat in nations like China and India; adverse weather events including consecutive drought years in Australia; a weak U.S. dollar encouraging exports; and agricultural policies around the world that have limited the productivity of farmers from Europe to Asia.
A recent study from Texas A&M University concluded, “The underlying force driving changes in the agricultural industry, along with the economy as a whole, is overall higher energy costs, evidenced by $100 per barrel oil.” The fact is that ethanol is helping to reduce gasoline prices at the pump. A recent report from Iowa State University’s Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD) estimates that the growth in ethanol production and use has caused gasoline prices to be $0.29 to $0.40 per gallon lower than they might otherwise have been.
A variety of causes determine consumer food prices which cannot be easily explained by singling out one specific factor. Responsibly increasing the domestic production of ethanol, and promoting the development and commercialization of advanced biofuels as the RFS does, are critical to controlling consumer energy costs and assuring our national energy security.
I urge you to deny the waiver requested by Texas.
The Associated Press has also picked up on this story.
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