Special Report: Ethanol Plants Pollute More Than Oil Refineries

The plan for moving the U.S. from oil to corn-based ethanol was to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but it turns out that ethanol pollutes more than twice as much as regular gas refineries.

“Congress mandated the blending of biofuels such as corn-based ethanol into gasoline,” Reuters news service found, “but today, the nation’s ethanol plants produce more than double the climate-damaging pollution, per gallon of fuel production capacity.”

Specifically, an average methanol plant spews 1,187 metric tons of carbon emissions per million gallons of fuel capacity, compared to regular gasoline’s 533 metric tons. The Environmental Protection Agency is supposed to write regulations to meet the greenhouse gas standards, but according to Reuters, the EPA has granted exemptions to more than 95% of U.S. ethanol plants from the regulations.

SOURCES:

Twitter Austin Frerick September 8, 2022

Reuters September 8, 2022