At the heart of the controversy are the actual costs of ethanol on land use and food prices, as well as whether ethanol production saves any energy in total.
Likely 2016 voters have serious concerns about ethanol’s unintended consequences as a fuel, including damage to engines, land conversion and food prices, according to a new national poll.
“Voters across party lines express grave concerns for the impacts of the corn ethanol mandate from the Renewable Fuel Standard – RFS – that touch many parts of their lives from the cars they drive to the food they buy,” said Celinda Lake, president of Lake Research Partners, who worked for the American Motorcyclist Association on the survey.
“They strongly support bi-partisan proposals that would reduce the impact of corn ethanol, and particularly support the Environmental Protection Agency reducing the amount of corn ethanol required by law,” said Lake.
The EPA has now closed the comment period on its proposed ethanol volumes for 2014, 2015 and 2016. The poll also shows that 67%% of people favor the agency setting ethanol volumes below what is required by law, with 68% of Democrats and 71% of Republicans supporting volumes lower than the statute.
Republicans of course pushed the legislation through in 2007 under President Bush with the complicity of farm state Democrats as a giveaway to buy votes. (Energy Independence and Security Act, EISA, Public Law 110-140)
“We commissioned this poll to better quantify and qualify the reactions Americans have toward the U.S. EPA’s continuing effort to mandate more ethanol in our fuel each year,” said Sen. Wayne Allard, vice president for government relations for the American Motorcyclist Association.
“The results prove that, just like our members, rank and file Americans have serious concerns about the damaging and far-reaching effects of excessive ethanol production and that they support efforts to rein in this misdirected federal policy,” said Allard.
Polling results also indicate that majorities across party lines support bi-partisan efforts in Congress to reform the ethanol mandate, with slightly more people backing an outright repeal of the law. Moreover, 44% of voters said they would be less likely to support a presidential candidate who supported the ethanol mandate.
Poll results show that a majority of voters nationwide have serious concerns about the effects of the RFS:
• 78% of those polled had serious concerns that higher blends of ethanol such as E-15 can cause severe damage in cars, motorcycles, boats, lawn equipment and other small engines.
• 73% of polled voters had serious concerns about an EPA analysis showing that emissions that contribute to climate change are 28% higher from corn ethanol than pure gasoline.
• 77% of those polled had serious concerns about corn ethanol production consuming 34 times more water than pure gasoline.
• 80% of polled voters had serious concerns about how diverting corn to produce ethanol could increase food prices.
The poll was conducted with professional interviewers using both landline and cell phones from July 6 through July 10. Interviewers reached 1000 national likely 2016 voters, 40% were reached via cell phone. The partisan breakdown includes 40% self-identified Democrats, 34% self-identified Republicans, and 23% self-identified independents. The margin of error for the survey is +/- 3.1%.
