Forced Feeding

The push for biofuels continues apace:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Friday raised biofuels targets for 2013 despite an ongoing legal battle with the oil-and-gas industry on the issue.

Refiners will be required to blend 1.28 billion gallons of biodiesel — which EPA includes in its definition of “advanced” biofuels — into traditional transportation fuel in 2013, up from 1 billion gallons this year.
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The advanced biofuels quota is part of the renewable fuel standard (RFS). That rule, which was enacted by law in 2005 and updated to include advanced biofuels in 2007, is credited with jumpstarting the biofuels industry.

But advanced biofuels have struggled to reach commercial-scale production. That has led the American Petroleum Institute (API) to sue EPA over the RFS mandate, claiming the agency pinned advanced biofuels targets on unrealistic market conditions.

“EPA’s mandate will unnecessarily raise the cost of making diesel fuel. This is bad public policy that could burden consumers and businesses already pressed with higher energy costs,” Bob Greco, API's downstream group director, said Friday in a statement. “By picking energy winners and losers, EPA takes away consumer choice and further threatens public acceptance of biofuels.”

It just goes with the Obama administration's lack of understanding of basic economics...