new+york+times Archives - Smarter Fuel Future

Ethanol Mandates Demolish Habitats

As conservation lands disappear, animal habitats vanish with them. Since the ethanol mandate went into effect, in 2005, the Corn Belt states alone have lost 2.8 million acres from the conservation reserve program. Over the same period, pheasant harvests in those six states dropped by 44 percent.

The RFS has global consequences that can mean life or death for hundreds of thousands of people around the world. Ethanol mandates that divert food into fuel are “a crime against humanity,” as Jean Ziegler, UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food has stated.

The New York Times reported Sunday that traders for large banks and other institutions hoarded the credits as new, stricter federal standards forced refiners to buy more of them. The result: a 20-fold spike in the price of the credits in six months.

Concern over the blend wall has refiners snatching up RINs, ethanol credits available to fuel refiners looking to meet government-mandated biofuel production targets, causing the price spike. It’s not only the refiners that are buying up the credits, Wall Street has also taken an interest.

At the same time, the New York Times is reporting that some believe that large Wall Street firms have profited from trading ethanol credits, driving up their cost. So, we have banks against the oil industry against the farmers, apparently.

Nearly 10 percent of the nation’s ethanol plants have stopped production over the past year, in part because the drought that has ravaged much of the nation’s crops pushed commodity prices so high that ethanol has become too expensive to produce.

In a globalized world, the expansion of the biofuels industry has contributed to spikes in food prices and a shortage of land for food-based agriculture in poor corners of Asia, Africa and Latin America because the raw material is grown wherever it is cheapest.

Hailey, 33, was convicted in federal court on 42 counts of wire fraud, money laundering and Clean Air Act violations. His prosecution highlighted one of several schemes connected to the energy credits known as renewable identification numbers, or R.I.N.’s.

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