Lankford Says Ethanol ‘Upgrade’ Will Hurt Economy

U.S. Senator James contends the Environmental Protection Agency will hurt the national economy if it proceeds with a mandated upgrade from E-10 to E-15 ethanol.

Speaking in Washington, D.C. at the CQ Roll Call policy forum “The future of Advanced Biofuels and the Renewable Fuel Standard,” he argued, ‘We have a mandate and there’s a perpetual push to say let’s use more gallons—it’ll be fine. It won’t be fine according to the manufacturers. We have a problem.”

The freshman Republican Senator told the crowd gathered at the National Press Club the average car in the U.S. is nearly eleven years old for the vast majority of Americans. “If you put E-15 into their cars, all of those manufacturers will tell you, the warranty is toast.” He said if you ask a manufacturer about using E-15, they will tell you it will void your warranty on an eleven-year old car.

“I have to tell you, I’m not opposed to ethanol,” continued the Senator. “I get it all the time, people always say ‘you’re opposed to ethanol.’ I’m not! I Just think the mandate is anachronistic for us. Let’s give Americans the choice. Let’s give them the option.”

Lankford said the nation wants fuel diversity. ‘But we don’t need a set of mandates that will actually drive us into doing strange things that only the government would do—when it’s trying to catch up with a policy that did not work.”

His remarks were the keynote speech at the forum which focused on the record of biodiesel and other advanced biofuels under the Renewable Fuel Standard as the energy industry expects the Environmental Protection Agency’s announcement of new volume requirements. Lankford already feels the EPA has a poor performance in announcing standards in a timely manner since the renewable fuel standards were created in 2005. The EPA has been consistently behind schedule for the announcements and has not met the deadline since 2009.