Ken G. Glozer - The Great Corn Ethanol Ripoff

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Corn Ethanol

WHO PAYS?

WHO BENEFITS?

Ken G. Glozer

Former Deputy Associate Director,

White House Office of Management & Budget

HOOVER INSTITUTION PRESS

Stanford University

Stanford, California

Hoover Institution Press Publication No. 569

Hoover Institution at Leland Stanford Junior University,

Stanford, California 943056010

Copyright 2011 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission of the publisher and copyright holders.

A report prepared by the International Energy Agency is referred to in the Supporting Documents appendix to this book: IEA Response System for Oil Supply Emergencies, Copyright OECD/IEA, 2010. (The complete report can be found at www.iea.org/publications/free_new_Desc.asp?PUBS_ID=1912).

The following article is reprinted as Supporting Document B in this book: Doug Koplow, BiofuelsAt What Cost? Government Support for Ethanol and Biodiesel in the U.S.: Earth Track, Inc., October 2006, p. 17, available at www.globalsubsidies.org. Prepared for Global Subsidies Initiative, International Institute for Sustainable Development. It is republished with the permission of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

The author would like to acknowledge the Environmental Working Groups website (www.ewg.org) as a valuable database resource on biofuels and farm subsidies.

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-0-8179-4961-7 (cloth)

ISBN 978-0-8179-4963-1 (e-book)

The Hoover Institution gratefully acknowledges the following individuals for their significant support of this publication and the
Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy

THOMAS AND BARBARA STEPHENSON

The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, founded at Stanford University in 1919 by Herbert Hoover, who went on to become the thirty-first president of the United States, is an interdisciplinary research center for advanced study on domestic and international affairs. The views expressed in its publications are entirely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, officers, or Board of Overseers of the Hoover Institution.

www.hoover.org

Dedication

The author grew up in the coal fields of Southwestern Pennsylvania in the 1950s.

He had the extraordinary good fortune to have parents, Margaret and Joseph Glozer , whose lifes goal was for their children to go to college, become professionals, and not enter the coal mines to make a living.

Their foresight, dedication, and sacrifice made it possible for the author to achieve their ambition. And the author is forever grateful and dedicates this book to their memory.

Contents

PART I

A.

B.

C.

D.

E.

PART II

PART III

A

B

C

About the Hoover Institutions Shultz-Stephenson Task Force on Energy Policy

List of Figures

2.1 Crude Oil Prices 1970 to 2008

2.2 U.S. Corn Production and Prices

2.3 Annual U.S. Petroleum Imports Compared to Domestic Ethanol Production

3.1 Ethanol Use Under Current Federal Corn Ethanol Policy Compared to a Competitive-Market Policy

3.2 Estimated Ethanol Imports from Brazil Under a Competitive Market Policy

3.3 2007 U.S. Petroleum Imports by Top Fifteen Countries

3.4 Years that Floods and Droughts Adversely Impact U.S. Corn Production for 1975 through 2007

4.1 Corn Ethanol Lifecycle GHG Emissions over Time and Payback Period

4.2 Fuel GHG Emissions: Gasoline vs. Corn Ethanol

4.3 Bag 1 NMHC Balanced Average by RtOH T

4.4 Composite NO x Balanced Average EtOH T Fleet Average

4.5 Survey of Likely Water Shortages over the Next Decade under Average Conditions

4.6 Water Consumption per MMBTUs of Energy by Technology Type

4.7 Dissolved Oxygen Contours (in Milligrams per Liter) in the Gulf of Mexico, July 2128, 2007

5.1 Estimated U.S. Federal Taxpayer Cost Under the Federal Corn-Ethanol Policy

6.1 Top Ten Corn-, Soybean-, and Ethanol-Producing States

6.2 Harvested Acres of Corn for Grain, by County, 2007

6.3 Acres of Soybeans Harvested, by County, 2007

6.4 Locations of Ethanol Plants

6.5 Estimated Total Number of Corn and Soybean Farms in Top Ten Producing States

6.6 Concentrations of Corn, Ethanol, and Soybean Production in Ten Midwestern States

6.7 Estimated Impact of Federal Corn-Ethanol Policy on Consumer and Federal-Taxpayer Costs, 20082017

6.8 Estimated Federal Subsidies to the Top Ten Corn, Soybean, and Ethanol Producers

6.9 Estimated U.S. Net Farm Income: Ten States with the Highest Corn and Soybean Production

6.10 Estimated Total Federal Benefits Provided to Corn, Soybean, and Ethanol Producers in Ten Midwestern States, 20082017

6.11 Federal Corn, Soybean, and Ethanol Benefits, 20082017

Preface

I n recent years, the powerful U.S. economy has stumbled, and its economic core and wealth have diminished. It is therefore essential that American political leadership recognize the importance of designing and implementing cost-effective and environmentally sound policies and programs that complement and promote the market-based economy that has given Americans a high level of prosperity since the end of World War II. Competitive markets have served this nation well during this period, and competitive market policies should be supplanted only when more effective ones are found and proved.

But in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the George W. Bush administration, the Obama administration, and Congress have become enamored with a federal mandate, subsidy, and trade protection policy for corn ethanol. Federal energy subsidies for petroleum date back to the early 1900s, but as documented by two Department of Energy/Energy Information Administration reports, the rate of growth of federal energy subsidies spending is alarming.

Further, these massive and deep subsidies (grants, spending, tax credits, etc.) have been coupled with quantitative, fuel-specific mandatesthe Renewal Fuels Standard (RFS) for gasolineenacted in 2005, then doubled in 2007. This policy is a major federal-market intervention that seriously compromises and impairs a competitive marketmuch like the ill-fated federal-petroleum allocation and price controls of the 1970s first imposed by the Nixon administration and extended by Presidents Ford and Carter.

The RFS policy is not based on any objective empirical evidence that it works and that it is more effective than a competitive market policy in achieving either energy security or environmental goals.

It is therefore important to have access to the best, most objective information on whether this subsidies/mandate/ trade protection policy works. The RFS has existed for more than three years, and there is now enough information to evaluate whether the policy in fact meets the claims made by its advocates. Part I of this book is a political history of federal ethanol policy. Part II contains the results of an evaluation of the claims the RFS policymakers made when Congress was considering the standard in 2005.

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