Newt Gingrich took money from the ethanol lobby ----- Washington Post, National Review, Huffington Post, etc. So much corruption surrounding ethanol! Gore supported ethanol when he was running for president and recently admitted his folly. B.Clinton who had money invested in an ethanol plant in Brazil that engaged in slave labor, recently rejected ethanol. Bush put the high levels of ethanol mandate in place. It goes on and on.
The sad thing is it looks like this problem is going to continue with the new trend in reporting on ethanol. Finally, most news outlets are reporting that corn ethanol has problems— inefficiency, land use issues, waterway pollution, food security/inflation, etc. The new narrative is that cellulosic ethanol is the real answer and corn ethanol has been sucking up all the subsidies. If we just give cellulosic “the capital” we will have cheap “homegrown” energy for all.
Cellulosic ethanol has received subsidies and has been unsuccessful. Look at Vinod khosla’s Range Fuels and Cello Energy. Range Fuels has gotten about 162 million in tax-payer dollars and about the same in private funding, but has not produced the cellulosic ethanol it promised. WSJ reported that the Range Fuels CEO says that no one has figured out how to produce commercially viable portions of cellulosic ethanol. And Cello Energy is bankrupt. (See WSJ 2/10/11 The Range Fuels Fiasco)
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