Congress Should Revisit Ethanol Mandate -- Poll

E&E News, Allison Winter
Published June 10, 2008

Most Americans think Congress should eliminate or reduce the corn ethanol mandate, according to a new poll that comes as ethanol's critics ramp up their efforts to force Congress to revisit U.S. biofuels policy. The survey of 802 likely voters found that 76 percent of respondents want the ethanol law changed and 41 percent would like to see the mandate repealed. Wilson Research Strategies conducted the survey for the the National Center for Public Policy Research, a nonprofit conservative think tank that receives almost all of its funding from individual donors. The poll has a margin of error of 3.46 percent. The survey comes as 20 other groups launched the "Food Before Fuel Campaign," a cooperative effort to urge Congress to revisit biofuels policy. The campaign is intended to ramp up what has already been an active effort by some groups to criticize ethanol in the face of rising food prices. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), one of the Senate's defenders of ethanol, said its critics have already gained some traction. But he expects support to swing back toward ethanol and renewable fuels as consumers face increasing gasoline prices. "I do think they have successfully shaped, to some degree, the public opinion, so it doesn't surprise me that the polls would reflect that," Thune said. "But I think the dynamic is going to shift back the other way because of $4 per gallon gasoline." Thune said ethanol is getting too much of the blame for rising food costs. "It has become kind of the shiny object for people who were opposed to renewable fuels from the start," he said. Some House and Senate lawmakers have introduced legislation to freeze the mandate or scale down the tariff on imported ethanol. But the Bush administration, Thune and other representatives from ethanol-producing states have defended the mandates. They say ethanol is playing a relatively small part in global food prices but taking almost 50 cents off the price of each gallon of gasoline. The 20 groups that signed onto the new campaign include environmental, hunger, retail, food industry and conservative groups -- such as the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the National Council of Chain Restaurants, the Environmental Working Group, Popeye's Chicken and Biscuits, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the American Meat Institute. According to the campaign's statement of principles, members will encourage lawmakers to "revisit and restructure policies that have increased our reliance on food as an energy source, and to carefully address how to develop alternative fuels that do not pit our energy needs against affordable food and environmental sustainability." "It is past time to acknowledge the reality of this problem and begin a serious, bipartisan effort to fix it," said Cal Dooley, chief executive of the Grocery Manufacturers Association. "This effort is designed to show that voices from around the nation and across the political spectrum are speaking together to call for change." The Grocery Manufacturers Association and other groups have been strident in their calls for Congress to revisit the biofuels mandate included in the 2007 energy bill. The bill expands the overall biofuels mandate to 36 billion gallons annually by 2022, with corn ethanol peaking at 15 billion gallons and the rest coming from "advanced" biofuels like cellulosic ethanol that do not come directly from food crops.