End the Renewable Fuel Standard

The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) requires renewable fuels to be blended into gasoline in a manner that increases the costs of foods and doesn’t necessarily reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Every year, EPA releases new and increasingly more untenable requirements for refiners.

Like other government policies that attempt to pick winners and losers, the RFS creates many of the latter and very few of the former. It’s a prime example of the economic phenomenon of concentrated benefits — for corn states in this case — and dispersed costs — thrust upon the millions of other Americans who pay more at the pump without any meaningful benefits for doing so.

At the time of its initial passage — several years before the first iPhone was launched — America’s energy outlook was much different, with higher prices at the pump, limited access to domestic supplies, and a deepening reliance on foreign energy sources to meet our increasing demands. Given the perceived domestic energy scarcity and rising consumer costs, politicians of both parties cast their vote to “grow” more of our energy from corn in our nation’s heartland.

Today, America is a global energy player, poised to become a net exporter. And this has all happened in spite of the RFS, not because of it. With the United States awash in oil and natural gas, the ethanol mandate is a fundamentally unnecessary policy of yesterday. Yet, Congress has continued to prop up the mandate when they should be finding ways to end it.

It is a rule that must be repealed before any more damage is done.