Renewable Fuel Standard: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it

Growing up during the Cold War, my friends and I were always conscious of American National security. Sputnik, the Missile Gap and the Berlin Crisis were major news events then - in an era before Twitter, Facebook and the Kardashians. I spent 38 years in uniform working for America's national security.

Today the Cold War is an ancient memory, but our national security problems are even more complicated - Iran, ISIS, a resurgent Russia, and an increasingly assertive China. But at the center of our national security problems is our addiction to foreign oil. Over four decades it has weakened our economy, pumped billions into the coffers of nations that don't align with us, and made the oil-rich Mideast a cockpit of conflict and an obsessive focus of our own national security efforts.

We simply have to find new ways to meet our transportation fuel needs. We need to strengthen our own economy, put our treasuries into efforts that will advance our interests, and reduce the huge influx of dollars fueling conflict and terrorism in the Mideast and enriching troublemakers. We need to end the oil price shocks, fears of shortages and threats of supply disruption as our economy is gouged and buffeted by major oil-exporting countries self-seeking policies. Enough is enough.

This is why in 2005 a strong bipartisan coalition in Congress passed the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and President George W. Bush signed it into law. Congress saw the dangerous path we'd been following and knew we had to alter course. Congress knew it was time to stop sending a billion dollars a day overseas and relying on foreign government to provide foreign oil. It was also time to clean up our environment, create more jobs at home, strengthen rural America and open the way for a new, cleaner transportation fuel. The Renewable Fuel Standard, strengthened again in 2007, has done precisely this.

Now we must follow-through to full implementation of that standard. Spurred by Congressional action, investments in basic and advanced biofuels have borne fruit. Ethanol production has risen fourfold, hundreds of billions of dollars that would have been sent overseas have been retained in the US, hundreds of thousands of new jobs created, and research has pointed the way to more efficient production and better usage of both corn and cellulosic ethanol. Most gasoline now contains 10 percent ethanol and some retailers are now selling the E15 blend, as well as the E85 blend for flex-fuel vehicles.

This hasn't been accomplished without a struggle. Big oil has fought the implementation of the RFS by virtual every means short of open warfare - advertising, legal challenges, lobbying and blandishments. After all, for them, a $600 billion market is at risk.

Some of the scare tactics might have worked, for the RFS is now threatened by a proposed EPA rule that would slow down adoption of increased volumes of ethanol in the fuel system and stifle innovation. In fact, the rate of ethanol adoption - leading up to a legislated 2022 volume of 36 billion gallons - is a function of regulation from the EPA, which must specify yearly volume targets. Though extensive testing has shown that cars from model year 2001 forward run just fine on E15 fuels, behind-the-scenes pressure has stifled efforts to market E15 and fed a story line that the RFS cannot be implemented because the nation can't handle that much ethanol. Nonsense!

If the EPA slows the rate at which increased ethanol volumes are being out into the nation's fuel system, it is not only extending our reliance on imported oil, sending American jobs and dollars overseas, and feeding more petrodollars into the conflicts in the Mideast, it is also rewarding the very same oil industry which is doing its darnedest to block implementation of the law! It makes no sense!

Now some would explain all this resistance by referring to America's revolution in oil production - 'fracking.” It is true we now 'frack” for oil; and we're producing a whole lot more - some 4 million more barrels per day than just 6 or 7 years ago. But the point is, we aren't energy independent and we never will be if we just rely on oil. We're still exporting jobs - and national security - just so we can drive our cars on an old style fuel that gives the oil companies a little more money in their treasuries.

Fortunately, the EPA's proposed ruling isn't yet cast in stone; we can change it, if enough of us speak up. Tell the EPA that RFS is working exactly as it was intended. Tell the EPA we need to be energy independent and can only do that by increasing the volumes of ethanol in our fuels. Tell the EPA that investors need predictability in markets to justify investing in new technologies and new equipment - stop the political jiggering.

And when the boys on the other side say they believe in free markets, ask them why, then, they won't let consumers have free choice about the fuel in their automobile? Why must oil demand a 90 percent mandate for petroleum in our liquid fuel? Why can't we use a higher octane, more environmentally-friendly fuel - like E15, or higher blends - if we choose?

There is an old saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Well, the RFS isn't broken. Now's the time to stand up and tell ‘em so!

I fought for freedom and democracy. Choice. That's what this is all about. Please raise your voices, and help EPA make the right decision for America: Support the RFS!

' Wesley Clark is a retired four-star general in the U.S. Army and former Supreme Allied Commander for NATO in Europe. He is the founder of the Wesley K. Clark and Associates consulting firm and co-chair of Growth Energy and chair of VoteVets.org Advisory Board. Comments: PO Box 3276, Little Rock, AR, 72203