Governor Jay Nixon (D) has joined other governors and those with ties to the ethanol industry in Kansas, to speaking out against a federal proposal to reduce the country’s ethanol mandate.
The Environmental Protection Agency wants to reduce that mandate for this year and next. Governor Nixon says the government shouldn’t back off of those goals.
“Right now with the price of corn you’re seeing ethanol bring down the price of gasoline, and consumers should be well aware of that and not be fooled by big oil’s attempt to keep prices up high so they can make profits,” said Nixon.
Nixon says what he and others are asking EPA to do is to follow the law.
“Meet those targets,” said Nixon. “We can produce the corn, we can produce the ethanol, and farmers and private sector folks will make the investments, and with the help of USDA which just this week announced some additional dollars, EPA just needs to follow the law.”
Nixon and others spoke at the forum in Kansas against reducing the mandate.
“It’s a good time for everybody to just take a jump-stop here and look back to 2003, 2004 when we had gas prices going up and we had foreign countries dictating to us how much we were paying at the pump. We were forced to have gas prices way too high,” said Nixon. “One of the significant reasons we’ve been able to bring those prices down is that our farmers and our ethanol industry and our biodiesel industry, our biofuels industry, has stepped up. Now is not the time to step away from that commitment.”
Federal law does give EPA power to revise amounts, and the agency says the current mandates can’t be met due to lesser-than-expected production of ethanol from agricultural waste, and use of gasoline.
