After the Associated Press’s investigation in November 2013, in which it said the EPA never conducted studies to determine whether air and water quality benefits from adding corn-based ethanol to gasoline, circulating news in the recent days were about Obama’s administration that has failed to study as legally required the impact of requiring ethanol in gasoline.
It has also failed to ensure that new regulations intended to address one problem do not actually make other problems worse. This was announced by the Environmental Protection Agency inspector general on Thursday.
The AP investigation described the ethanol era as far more damaging to the environment than the government predicted. As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, polluted water supplies and destroyed habitat.
However, he EPA agreed with the inspector general’s findings that it had failed to produce studies as legally required, and it said it will produce the first report (on the impacts of bio-fuels) by December 2017. It also added that it will investigate whether ethanol requirements made other environmental problems worse by September 2024.
This is happening 17 years after Congress passed a law requiring oil companies to blend billions of gallons of ethanol into their gasoline. President George W. Bush signed the law, but it fell to President Barack Obama to implement it.
According to the EPA. the 2024 study will require investigations about air quality, emissions and how renewable fuels have and might be produced, distributed and used, which it said will be time-consuming and resource-intensive.
The EPA told the inspector general that it produced one congressional report about the effects of ethanol on the environmental and conservation in December 2011, at a cost of $1.7 million, then ran out of money for future reports. It also said it never received input from Congress on its first report and asserted that three years was too short a period for any significant scientific advances that would have mattered.
Ethanol in the U.S.
- The United States became the world’s largest producer of ethanol fuel in 2005
- The U.S. produced 13.9 billion U.S. liquid gallons (52.6 billion liters) of ethanol fuel in 2011, an increase from 13.2 billion U.S. liquid gallons (49.2 billion liters) in 2010
- Brazil and U.S. production accounted for 87.1% of global production in 2011
- In the U.S, ethanol fuel is mainly used as an oxygenate in gasoline in the form of low-level blends up to 10 percent, and to an increasing extent, as E85 fuel for flex-fuel vehicles.
