Corn Ethanol Gets Obama's Support

Forbes.com
Jonathan Fahey, 02.09.10, 06:00 AM EST

EPA mandate for more corn ethanol puts brighter sheen on the biofuel.

Score another one for the corn farmers. Corn ethanol has long been ridiculed as a vote-getting farmer-subsidy program that does little or nothing to help the nation reduce its dependence on foreign oil or cut its greenhouse gas emissions.

But suddenly, corn doesn't look so bad, according to the Obama administration. EPA Chief Lisa Jackson said on Feb. 3 that after considering the latest science on crop yields, land use and ethanol-production efficiency, corn ethanol can be quite a good thing, after all. Those findings were incorporated into a rule implementing a congressional mandate for biofuel use nationwide that will allow at least an extra 2 billion gallons of corn ethanol to be produced and perhaps much, much more.

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