Policy Institute Study on Biofuels Funded by Big Oil

A new policy paper by Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy released this week and getting quite a bit of press finds that “the current U.S. biofuels program that promotes corn-based ethanol is far from environmental sustainability and should be dramatically revamped.”

The Wall Street Journal article on the report duly noted that the study was funded by Chevron Technology Ventures, an affiliate of major oil company Chevron Corp., which kind of taints its findings and recommendations that are clearly biased in favor the oil industry.

The institute does not attempt to hide the fact that the study was funded with oil money. It is clearly stated in the acknowledgments at the end of the report which thank Chevron Technology Ventures alone for “their generous support of this project.” When asked about it by the WSJ, Institute energy expert and one of the report’s authors Amy Myers Jaffe responded that “the Baker Institute and Rice University receive funding from a wide variety of sources and has a reputation for independence analysis.”

There is quite a bit of information contained in this report that deals directly with corn production and corn ethanol compared to other crops, which includes fertilizer runoff into the Gulf of Mexico and indirect land use change. The major recommendations made by the institute are to revise the Renewable Fuel Standard to make it “more achievable,” eliminate the tariff on imported ethanol, get rid of the blender’s tax credit and “avoid defining corn-based ethanol as a “low-carbon fuel,” a move that would be based only on political expediency and not on scientific analysis.”

All of that sounds like exactly a Big Oil wish list for making biofuels just go away.

Read the Policy Report here and the more detailed Biofuels White Paper here.