Dlouhy, J. (2020). Trump’s Biofuel Plan Triggers Fallout in U.S. Farm Country.
Bloomberg.com. Retrieved 9 March 2020, from https://www.bloomberg.com
/news/articles/2020-03-06/trump-s-biofuel-plan-triggers-political-fallout-in-farm-country.
President Donald Trump defended the government’s power to exempt oil refineries from blending their oil with biofuel requirements. This triggered massive backlash in Iowa, as the corn-growing state is also a massive producer of ethanol biofuel. The farmers and ethanol producers state that an exemption of biofuel requirements will have a massive negative effect on the rural economy and many agricultural jobs will be lost in the process. On the other hand, the oil lobby stated that thousands of blue-collar oil jobs will be lost and these exemptions need to happen amid the coronavirus-spurred slump in sales of petroleum products in order to preserve the economic health of refineries.
This article relates to environmental science because it covers political, environmental, chemistry, and economic elements on the issue at hand. Ethanol is both cleaner and more sustainable than oil, but economic and political and economic reasons stand in the way of its implementation into gasoline. In my opinion, there should be no exceptions for blending biofuel into gasoline for certain refineries. In our current environmental climate, we need all the help we can get in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, however small they may be. Additionally, many Iowa citizens have stated that Trump’s Iowa campaign rides on his decision on this matter. Iowa voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, so I think Trump may double back on his decision in order to secure the state.
Ethanol is certainly a political and economic issue of huge importance, and could affect peoples’ voting. Remember corn is already heavily subsidized, and it doesn’t give a big return on energy investment. Of course we want to see alternative energies come into play, but if it takes almost as much fossil fuel to make the alt. energy should we still use the biofuel?
Thanks for all your good reporting Elias. I hope you found following this important topic to be intriguing.
Thanks for your comments. I do not think that mass production of biofuel is a very viable way to produce energy. After the presentations that we saw, I think nuclear and solar are going to be the big producers of energy in the future. I do think biofuel production is a great way to use organic waste, but I don’t think many resources should be put into current biofuel methods.