The Golden State has the worst air pollution in the nation, on balance, and the race to cope with life after MTBE has created a rush of proposals from corn growers, refiners, legislators and others. Currently, the state still is required to use gasoline that has a minimum oxygen content established by the federal Clean Air Act. Davis has appealed to the EPA to waive the federal gasoline requirement that California gas contain a prescribed amount of what are called oxygenates, which include ethanol. They also are produced in Brazil, where gasoline is about 25 percent ethanol, as well as some Caribbean nations, which produce ethanol from sugar cane. The positive impacts of ethanol are overwhelming.
Ethanol is good for consumers, farmers, taxpayers, energy security and the environment.
The group says it can more than double its production nationally within two years, boosting its capacity from 1.5 billion gallons to 3.5 billion gallons, creating 47,000 new jobs along the way. The timing of the ethanol industry's pitch came as retail gas prices in California skyrocketed as much as 10 cents a gallon in the last two weeks of February. The state's refining companies say that a mandate to use ethanol alone would give U.S. ethanol providers a monopoly that would hurt the company's bottom line. A group called the Western States Petroleum Association has joined Davis and others in urging that the federal mandate to add oxygenates to gasoline be removed. As did the corn lobby the trade group that represents the state's biggest refining companies framed their argument in terms of consumers.