Corn woes

Grist reports:

Some very respected researchers today have lobbed a real bombshell into the energy public policy world: they have concluded that ethanol produced both by corn and switchgrass could worsen global warming.

In other words, Congress really blew it last year when it mandated a massive increase in biofuels (an action coated with green language but really an effort by both political parties to cater to farm states). This is also a slap at President Bush's effort to paint himself as something other than an oil man.

The new findings, led by separate teams from Princeton University and the University of Minnesota conclude that the land use-based greenhouse gas emissions would overwhelm possible emission reductions.

If we've settled on a cap-and-trade program over a carbon tax, then it's stuff like this that makes the best policy case for a full auction. If the government plans to subsidize clean energy programs and biofuels, fine. But if they're planning to hand out carbon allocations to ethanol producers, then those producers won't have any disincentives to spending that money on dirty biofuels projects. If, by contrast, those producers have to spend all their subsidy money on tons of carbon allocations for their dirty biofuels projects, then those projects probably won't happen.