Daily Policy Digest
Environment Issues
| A Fine for Not Using a Biofuel that Doesn't Exist Companies that supply motor fuel will have to pay substantial penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix into their gasoline and diesel a special type of biofuel that has not been produced in large enough quantities... |
| Ethanol Subsidies Are Gone, but Not Forgotten Under the Renewable Fuel Standard, 15.2 billion gallons of renewable fuel must be blended into transportation fuel in 2012; this figure will eventually be 36 billion gallons by 2022... |
| The Renewable Fuels Disaster In the 2005-2006 crop year, 1.6 billion bushels of corn were used to produce ethanol; in 2010-2011 5.0 billion bushels were used, suggesting that 3.4 billion bushels were diverted to ethanol by the Renewable Fuel Standard... |
| A Shale Gas Revolution? Shale gas input could reduce electricity price growth by 5 percent in 2030 and 10 percent in 2045, compared to a scenario without shale gas... |
| U.S. Oil Dependency and the Middle East Dependence on overseas oil has decreased from 60 percent of U.S. consumption in 2005 to a little less than half now... |
| The EPA's Compliance Order Regime Creates a Hobson's Choice The Environmental Protection Agency's "compliance orders" force property owners to face down one of the federal government's most notorious agencies at the risk of ruinous fines... |
| After Three Decades, Tax Credit for Ethanol Expires The tax credit that helped subsidize ethanol production cost the government nearly $6 billion in 2011 and has cost an aggregate $20 billion over its lifetime... |
| Plug-In Electric Vehicles Get Off to a Slow Start While General Motors had hoped to sell 10,000 Volts by the end of the year, it seems it will fall short with just 6,142 Volts having been sold through November... |
| Evidence on the Value of Air Quality Improvements Air quality improvement in terms of willingness-to-pay has a weak yet important correlation with income -- in developed countries, higher income is associated with higher willingness to pay... |
| The EPA's Fracking Scare The U.S. Geological Survey has detected organic chemicals in the well water in Pavillion, Wyoming, for at least 50 years -- long before fracking was employed... |
