The White House is threatening to put the brakes on the Environmental Protection Agency's 7-year old green energy mandate, Renewable Fuel Standard, causing several politicians and environmentalists to be concerned.
One of those who personally appealed to the administration to drop the rollback plan of the Renewable Fuel Standard is Calif. Governor Jerry Brown. And Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), saying that the plan does not go with the country's efforts to fight against climate change and "creates loopholes for oil companies" to avoid reducing pollution.
The Renewable Fuel Standard is a program made by the Environmental Protection Agency requiring transportation fuel sold in the U.S. to contain a minimum amount of renewable fuel including biofuels and ethanol.
The EPA aims to supplement the country's oil production, or at least compete with corn ethanol that takes a lot of energy to grow and process and its potential to compete with the nation's supply of corn, driving food prices up.
Meanwhile, environmentalists argue that stopping the program would also stop the government's efforts to combat climate change. They want the EPA to use the program to improve the auto and gasoline industry by allowing more biofuel at gasoline filling stations.
"It is disheartening to see how much potential to slow climate change we are missing out on by not doing this," said Ryan Fitzpatrick, a clean energy advisor at Third Way, a Washington group that seeks bipartisan policy solutions.
On the other hand, the government is said to be trying to strike a balance in its agenda to fight climate change while the messy politics of ethanol continue to complicate its plans.
"This policy is flawed and broken," said Bob Greco, an executive at the American Petroleum Institute, an industry lobbying group. "The advanced fuels that Congress intended to be made under it just don't exist yet."
