Adjust to ethanol reality

Three years ago, a national consensus deemed that increasing our use of ethanol as a motor fuel was an idea whose time had come. The prevailing theory was that this move would ease our dependence on foreign oil, reduce pollution, and give U.S. farmers a profitable new market. But theories don't always hold up to reality. Federal regulations aimed at implementing the biofuel-promotion language in energy bills passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush in 2005 and 2007 have produced unacceptable side effects.

Twenty-four Republican senators, including many who voted for those bills and both senators from our state (Jim DeMint and Lindsey Graham), cited those side effects in a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson last week, urging him "to respond quickly to the consequences of those mandates." The primary consequence of federal subsidies and EPA regulations designed to deliver a five-fold boost in ethanol production by 2022 has been a steep upward spike in corn prices, fueling corresponding inflation in other food prices. The senators reminded the EPA chief that the law's language was crafted "to provide flexibility and to encourage innovation in advanced and cellulosic fuels" — not just in corn-based ethanol.

That flexibility should be used to counter the regulations' backfiring impact. As Sen. DeMint put it in a release this week: "Federal mandates to burn food for fuel have disrupted the entire agriculture market, making it more expensive to feed animals and causing more farmers to abandon other crops to grow corn."

New research also shows that gasoline-ethanol blends produce significantly lower gas mileage than straight gasoline, partially negating expected fuel-saving benefits of conversion to ethanol. Additional studies indicate that ethanol produces more pollution than expected.

Most members of Congress from Midwestern corn-belt states are predictably opposed to blunting the ethanol-driven corn-price boom. President Bush also sounds reluctant to alter the ethanol rules, pointing out last week that other factors, including rising oil costs, also are playing major roles in food-price inflation.

Yet the significant role played by the ethanol targets is spurring growing political support, in Washington and beyond, for needed adjustments. While all of the senators who signed that letter were Republicans, including presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain, many congressional Democrats, including both of that party's remaining presidential candidates, now support its premise.

The search for alternative energy sources inevitably entails both trial and error. The current overreaching commitment to ethanol is an error. Congress should consider legislation to correct this problem.

But as the senators' letter pointed out, the EPA can take an important first step by "restructuring" those regulations without election-year legislation. Under the circum- stances, the sooner it does so the better.