Obama’s EPA in Wonderland — Power-Grabbing EPA Can Fine Companies for Not Using Nonexistent Fuels
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on January 11, 2012
A new tell-all book, revealing embarrassing, behind-the-scenes White House info, divulged this week that POTUS Barack and FLOTUS Michelle Obama threw an extravagant Alice in Wonderland-themed party on Halloween at the White House and bent over backwards to keep it a buried secret from the American public. Excellent research and reporting at Verum Serum exposing the flabbergasting deception of Team Obama and the lavish costume party with Tim Burton and a Mad Hatter-costumed Johnny Depp in attendance.
That prevailing Lewis Carroll “Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass” nonsense continues, as it is reported that Obama’s EPA is prepared to fine companies for not using fuels that DON’T EXIST.
Yes. That is correct.
Fuels that don’t exist.
The opening quatrain of Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” poem fits in quite neatly here:
`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
More Wonderland nonsense from Team Obama - EPA can fine companies for not using mandated fuels that don't exist
From Giacomo at Godfather Politics, EPA Fines Companies for Not Using Nonexistent Fuels:
In 2007, the Energy Independence and Security Act was enacted with the goals of reducing America’s dependence on oil from hostile nations, the payment of billions of dollars for the oil to the hostile nations, improve the efficiency of motor vehicles and increase the use of renewable energy resources which includes biofuels.
By 2011, fuel companies were to be blending in 6.6 million gallons of cellulosic biofuel into domestic gasoline and diesel. Cellulosic biofuel is made from wood chips and other plant parts such as corncobs and plant stems that are not edible.
However, there has been one major flaw in the EISA and that is the technology has not caught up to the requirements. Cellulosic biofuels only exist in small amounts as various research companies are desperately trying to come up with a way to produce the biofuel which isn’t cost prohibitive.
One company that was working on finding ways to produce cellulosic biofuels was Range Fuels in Georgia who recently went out of business and whose building was sold for pennies on the dollar. Even with the extensive pine forests of Georgia that have a high resin content, Range Fuels was unsuccessful in finding an affordable process to turn the timber into fuel that would burn in your cars and trucks.
Range Fuels and other companies like them are the ones that received millions of dollars from taxpayers to try to develop these green energies. And like Range Fuels, many have had to shut down or reduce staff because the refining process at the moment appears to be far too expensive to make it worthwhile.
With no real supply of cellulosic biofuel to be had, the fuel companies were unable to comply with the EISA requirements, the Environmental Protection Agency is moving forward with their plans to impose fines on the fuel companies for failing to meet the guidelines. And if the fuel companies are unable to get their hands on 8.65 million gallons of cellulosic biofuel this year to meet the requirements, they’ll face even stiffer fines.
From New York Times, A Fine for Not Using a Biofuel That Doesn’t Exist:
When the companies that supply motor fuel close the books on 2011, they will pay about $6.8 million in penalties to the Treasury because they failed to mix a special type of biofuel into their gasoline and diesel as required by law.
But there was none to be had. Outside a handful of laboratories and workshops, the ingredient, cellulosic biofuel, does not exist.
In 2012, the oil companies expect to pay even higher penalties for failing to blend in the fuel, which is made from wood chips or the inedible parts of plants like corncobs. Refiners were required to blend 6.6 million gallons into gasoline and diesel in 2011 and face a quota of 8.65 million gallons this year.
“It belies logic,” Charles T. Drevna, the president of the National Petrochemicals and Refiners Association, said of the 2011 quota. And raising the quota for 2012 when there is no production makes even less sense, he said.
[...]
Even advocates of renewable fuel acknowledge that the refiners are at least partly correct in complaining about the penalties.
“From a taxpayer/consumer standpoint, it doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense that we would require blenders to pay fines or fees or whatever for stuff that literally isn’t available,” said Dennis V. McGinn, a retired vice admiral who serves on the American Council on Renewable Energy.
The standards for cellulosic fuel are part of an overall goal of having 36 billion gallons of biofuels incorporated annually by 2022. But substantial technical progress would be needed to meet that — and lately it has been hard to come by.
[...]
The underlying problem is that Congress legislated changes that laboratories and factories have not succeeded in producing. This is not for want of trying, and efforts continue.
One possible early source is the energy company Poet, a large producer of ethanol from corn kernels. The company is doing early work now on a site in Emmetsburg, Iowa, that is supposed to produce up to 25 million gallons a year of fuel alcohol beginning in 2013 from corn cobs.
And Mascoma, a company partly owned by General Motors, announced last month that it would get up to $80 million from the Energy Department to help build a plant in Kinross, Mich., that is supposed to make fuel alcohol from wood waste. Valero Energy, the oil company, and the State of Michigan are also providing funds.
Yet other cellulosic fuel efforts have faltered. A year ago, after it was offered more than $150 million in government grants, Range Fuels closed a commercial factory in Soperton, Ga., where pine chips were to be turned into fuel alcohols, because it ran into technological problems.
Airlines have had marginally more success with renewable fuels, but mostly because they have been willing to pay huge sums for sample quantities.
This is the same EPA that wants to use American taxpayers’ stimulus money so that Mexico can upgrade their old trucks so that they won’t pollute American air when they enter our country, while forcing US cross country truck drivers to comply with multiple, new, expensive EPA emsission standards.
It’s the same EPA that bullies, penalizes, and destroys countless US businesses, such as them suing an Oklahoma company for hundreds of millions of dollars (to the point that the company may go bankrupt) over something that a non-related, no-longer-operating company did more than 50 years ago on the land the business now sits on.
The same EPA that tried to ban all traditional ammo/bullets in the country, saying that Mother Earth was at tremendous risk because of lead in the bullets or some other such eco-nutbar poppycock. The agency backed down when asked to produce any kind of PROOF.
The same EPA that has killed American jobs and oil drilling in Alaska, prompting Pres. Obama to beg other oil producers in other countries to increase their production. The list goes on and on… perhaps the EPA will soon make it mandatory for cars to break the sound barrier, or have a cloaking device, or get 300 miles to the gallon, and they can then fine their manufacturers (costs which will be passed on to customers to shoulder) when they aren’t in compliance with the quixotic, lunatic demands of the Brave New World of Obama.
The Wonderland of Obama.
Rousing (and cautionary) second quatrain of “Jabberwocky”:
“Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!”
About the author
Every time I think I’ve finally gotten to the point that my head can no longer explode – something else comes up that lights the fuse. Hand me the duct tape will’ya?