EDITORIAL: Ethanol subsidies

The honeymoon could soon be over for producers of corn-based ethanol, who have been benefiting from taxpayer subsidies since 1987.

During those 21-plus years, they have received more than $314 million in payments from Minnesotans’ wallets. That’s an average of more than $15 million for each of our state’s 21 ethanol producers.

Now, the Legislature is considering whether those subsidies should continue through 2012 — at an additional taxpayer expense of $44 million — or if it should spend that money on other efforts to reduce energy use and benefit the environment.

It’s a tough call, but we think it would be in the best interest of our state’s agriculture industry to allow the program to run its cour
se for three more years. After that, the spigot should be turned off.

In 2012, after 25 years of research and subsidies, our state needs to redirect its efforts to cellulosic ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol — made from switchgrass, prairie grasses, willow or poplar trees and the like — has the potential to free our nation from its energy dependence with less harm to the land and air than corn-based ethanol.

Whose studies do you believe?
Ethanol production is a complicated subject. Every side of this issue has done its own studies, and no two studies seem to agree. Some contend that corn-based ethanol produces fewer greenhouse gases than gasoline. Newer studies question this perception because biofuel requires more emissions from land conversion.