All presidential candidates who have bothered to campaign in Iowa support increased ethanol mandates and oppose electric vehicle mandates, according to a biofuels advocacy organization.
Biofuels Vision 2024 said the Republican candidates actively campaigning for the GOP presidential nomination in the Hawkeye State support year-round E15 (gasoline with 15 percent ethanol added) and opposed EV mandates pushed by the Biden administration.
Candidates on the list include: Former President Donald Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Vice President Mike Pence, South Carolina U.S. Senator Tim Scott, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, and former Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson.
“All the active candidates in Iowa agree that consumers deserve choices in how the vehicles they drive are powered,” said Biofuels Vision 2024 Executive Director Logan Shine in a press release. “Folks don’t want to be forced into an EV and they want more fuel options like E15 at the pump. Biofuels Vision will continue to engage candidates on additional issues important to biofuels and the over 50,000 Iowa jobs supported by biofuels production.”
Biofuels Vision 2024 is a coalition of Iowa organizations and citizens committed to educating candidates in both parties about the importance of renewable fuels to Iowa and other like-minded states across the Midwest, according to the group’s website.
All but one of the candidates — Ramaswamy — said they envision a growing role for biofuels, according to Biofuels Vision 2024. Burgum and Scott said they want to preserve existing biofuels tax credits. DeSantis said he would support unlocking higher ethanol blends.
Missing from the list is former Governor Chris Christie, who has forsaken the Iowa caucuses to concentrate his efforts on other early-nominating states.
“As Chris Christie is not campaigning in Iowa, we are not tracking him. Therefore, we do not know his stance, good or bad, on this or any biofuels issue,” Shine said.
Christie has in the past been wishy-washy on the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, which requires transportation fuel sold in the United States to contain a minimum volume of renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.
In the current campaign, Christie told a New Hampshire town hall in August that he favors an “all-of-the-above” approach to energy, particularly pointing to New Jersey’s use of clean fuel nuclear power.
“We can’t disarm ourselves economically while we convert to cleaner energy,” the former governor said. “We can’t have our aspirations outstrip our innovation.”
In the 2016 race for the White House, America’s Renewable Future gave Christie favorable ratings on the RFS, noting his consistent support for the standard and Iowa farmers. The group judged Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Rand Paul (R-KY) “bad” for the biofuels industry and Iowa farmers.
“Ted Cruz is dangerous to Iowa and thousands of Iowa jobs,” said Eric Branstad, ARF state director at the time. “Our economy depends on a strong RFS and Iowans count on $5 billion in wages thanks to it, Ted Cruz wants to kill their jobs and we are going to make sure every Iowan knows that.”
Cruz became persona non grata with the renewable fuels industry when he said he supported a total repeal of the RFS. He got back into their better graces when he announced before the 2016 Iowa Caucuses that he would phase out the mandate over five years if elected president. Cruz came out of Iowa with a win, besting Trump. He would ultimately lose the GOP nomination to Trump.
Cruz, like Paul and other free-market critics of renewable fuel mandates, at the time, said that lobbyists were trying to “snooker” Iowans into believing that “a government mandate is the only way for ethanol to survive.”
America’s Renewable Future rated 2016 Democrat presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders “good” for renewable fuels and the farmers who supply the cash crops that go into them.
Biofuels Vision 2024 did not survey President Joe Biden and his rivals — at least for now — for the Democratic Party nomination, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson.
“Biofuels Vision is a non-partisan organization and, for example, a few years ago we tracked Democrats who were active in Iowa,” Shine told The Iowa Star.“This year, they are not actively campaigning in Iowa’s first in the nation caucuses so we have not included them.” RFK Jr. does have campaign staff and volunteers working in Iowa. Biden has all but written off the Hawkeye State, where he finished a dismal fourth in 2020.
After taking bipartisan heat for refusing to remove regulatory barriers for gasoline-ethanol blends, Biden announced in April that his administration would at least lift the summertime ban on E15 gasoline to help ease soaring prices at the pumps. Iowa’s U.S. senators joined 30 of their fellow Senate and House colleagues in the Midwest states, telling the EPA that the current system of relying on annual emergency waivers is not a permanent solution for retailers, consumers, or the environment.
Iowa and Nebraska attorneys general filed a petition in August calling on the EPA to finalize the state opt-out waiver to allow retailers in their states to sell E15 year-round. It’s a work in progress.
Geoff Cooper, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, told the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network he’s hopeful that the EPA will issue a year-round E15 ruling yet this fall.
“We’re still waiting on the final verdict, the final word,” he said.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Ethanol Fuel” by National Renewable Energy Lab. CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.
