ARE THERE ANY GREEN PROJECTS THAT AREN’T JUST MONEY-SIPHONS FOR CONNECTED CRONIES?

ARE THERE ANY GREEN PROJECTS THAT AREN’T JUST MONEY-SIPHONS FOR CONNECTED CRONIES? America’s Biofuel Boondoggle Rife with Fraud.

To try and artificially grow a domestic biofuels industry, the United States installed the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) in 2007, relying on a system of annually increasing mandates for the quantities of biofuels refiners blend into gasoline. The scheme was created under the Bush administration and dutifully expanded by the Obama administration—and it’s been an unmitigated policy disaster. The RFS has created an arena ripe for hucksters to fraudulently make millions of dollars, and Bloomberg has a long report on some of the most galling examples of these system-cheaters. . . .

It’s worth your time this weekend to go ahead and read the whole thing. It’s a quick overview of what the RFS actually is and how it’s been taken advantage of.

Fraud isn’t the only issue with America’s biofuels problem. The quota system has raised global food prices, starving the world’s poor and potentially inciting riots abroad. It has cost drivers billions of dollars (billions!), and maybe worst of all—it’s actually been bad for the environment.

Our biofuel boondoggle hits one of those rare policy sour spots, making very little sense from every angle and managing to frustrate every relevant stakeholder (excepting the corn industry). If Bloomberg’s story of the brazen fraud this artificial biofuels ecosystem has created makes you angry, well, it should. The sooner we end this farce, the better.

With fracking, we don’t need these scams. In fact, we never actually did.

by Glenn Reynolds

https://pjmedia.com/instapundit/239515/