In the infrastructure and reconciliation debates, lawmakers are yet again set to fall victim to the siren song of soy and corn sourced “sustainable” fuels. For while many are debating the best policies, technologies, and techniques to tackle the effects of climate change, some agribusiness lobbies and farm state lawmakers are peddling a failed solution.

When it comes to federal biofuels subsidies, the federal government is a day late and a dollar short. Well, more like 319 days late and billions of dollars short, but you get the idea.

To start, even existing mandates have failed to yield climate results. Under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), created in 2005 and expanded in 2007, Washington has mandated specific and increasing levels of biofuels be consumed each year. Congress set lofty targets, of which the conventional corn ethanol mandate has largely been fulfilled. But because the actual production of non-food-based advanced biofuels has been insufficient, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has routinely been forced to waive down Congressionally-set biofuels mandates. You can’t blend what you don’t have. In years when the Agency fails to release the adjusted volumes on time, oil companies don’t know how many gallons of biofuels they will be forced to blend with gasoline and diesel. This happened in 2021, and the 2022 volume adjustments will be late as well. EPA was required to finalize the amount for this year by Nov. 30 of last year. But as of this writing, the volumes had yet to be released (and COVID-19 is not entirely to blame).

Adding insult to injury, lawmakers layered subsidies on top of the failed mandate. More than $3 billion is spent just on the biodiesel industry annually through a special interest tax break. Four decades of bioenergy subsidies – plus a duplicative government mandate – were supposed to deliver climate results. But the biofuels gravy train has instead been linked to increased greenhouse gas emissions given most production to date has been food-based corn ethanol and soy biodiesel. As millions of acres of carbon-rich forests, grasslands, and wetlands were lost to corn and soybean production over the last decade, carbon was released into the atmosphere, resulting in first-generation biofuels increasing climate risks.

With Congress negotiating ways to benefit the climate within the budget reconciliation package, taxpayers would expect status quo subsidies for the mature biofuels industry to be off the table. But unfortunately, numerous reconciliation bills currently under consideration would continue decades of wasteful subsidies. Specifically,

• In the House Agriculture Committee bill, the ethanol lobby secured a record $960 million for installing private-sector specialized ethanol blender pumps and other biofuels infrastructure, thanks to the millions the industry spends each year on lobbying and campaign contributions. Similar federal programs have lined the pockets of oil and gas companies like Shell, BP, and Kinder Morgan.
• Continuation of the wasteful $1 per gallon tax credit for blending biodiesel would cost taxpayers a whopping $33 billion over the next decade. The price tag would surpass all other “green energy” tax credits in the House Ways and Means Committee bill except those for renewable electricity. Independent experts – and even EPA itself – say the biodiesel credit distorts markets and picks winners and losers instead of benefiting the climate.

But wait, sadly there’s more – the waste doesn’t stop there. Other committees are proposing new subsidies, programs, and tax credits for so-called “sustainable aviation fuel” (SAF), meant to improve the carbon footprint of air travel. Some new incentives would disallow corn- and soy-based fuels from taking flight because of their larger carbon footprint, but the biofuels industry is lobbying hard to get these mature feedstocks back into the priority boarding group 1 subsidy mix.

Oil companies like Chevron are already partnering with biofuels companies to produce aviation biofuels from corn. And just last month, Chevron announced a joint venture with agribusiness Bunge to help supply soybean oil for renewable diesel and jet fuel. This is despite the fact that next-generation biofuels subsidies were intended to spur the development of non-food-based biofuels, derived instead from perennial grasses, municipal solid waste, and animal fats – not corn and soybeans that require a significant amount of land, fertilizer, and herbicides to produce.

Newly proposed subsidies that could benefit the oil and gas, airline, and biofuels industries include:

• $1 billion in new subsidies for the development and demonstration of low-emission aviation technologies, in addition to the production, transportation, blending, and storage of “sustainable” aviation fuels.
• An aviation biofuels tax credit of $1.25 per gallon (or more). Similar proposals in the President’s FY22 budget were projected to cost up to $1.7 billion per year – a sky-high cost for taxpayers.

If the biofuels lobby gets its way (again), billions more could be wasted each year on special interest subsidies that grow more climate problems than they plant solutions. The federal government already has a history of subsidizing everything from biofuels infrastructure to aviation biofuels, the latter through partnerships across the Departments of Navy, Agriculture, and Energy.

With the impending shift to electric vehicles, taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to spend another day or dollar on bioenergy subsidies – especially those causing more harm than good. When EPA releases its long-overdue RFS volumes, taxpayers will again be reminded why government-set biofuels mandates and subsidies are a dead end. Instead of wasting more time – and money, Congress and the Administration should instead focus on real, lasting climate solutions.