Perhaps the nation's most determined crusader against ethanol subsidies has been Randolph native Nicholas Hollis. Hollis, who is currently director of the Ethanol Transparency Project on behalf of the Agribusiness Council (ABC), has lectured about the dangers of ethanol policy in 38 states and six foreign countries and has authored at least 250 articles about it. Here he helps publicize an ethanol boycott in South Carolina. His objections are similar to those pointed out in the recent report. Hollis grew up on Randolph Avenue, the grandson of legendary Gifford co-founder Dr. Francis Bates Jennings. His sister, Marnie Hollis, still resides in the family homestead. (Provided)

Long heralded as a green alternative to fossil fuel, corn-based ethanol has become a costly distraction, according to a scathing new report by Vermont Law School’s Institute for Energy and the Environment (IEE) and Food & Water Watch, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit.

The wide-scale use of ethanol chiefly benefits, not the environment, small farmers and rural communities, but corporate, lobbying, and political interests, the report says.

The title says it all: “Crystal Eth: America’s Crippling Addiction to Taxpayer-financed Ethanol.”

It concludes that corn-based ethanol is unlikely to significantly reduce America’s dependence on imported oil, has a negligible ability to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, contributes to environmental degradation in coastal waters.

Instead, the report says, the ethanol boom has been an economic boon for agribusiness giants managed in absentia but not for small and medium-size, locally owned farms, farm cooperatives and ethanol refineries.

The report is available on the IEE website at www.vermontlaw .edu/energy/publications.

Randolph native Nicholas Hollis has been a tireless crusader against the ethanol subsidies for years. He currently is director of the Ethanol Transparency Project in Washington, D.C.

“I applaud the Vt. Law School study and hope its finding will be carefully considered in Montpelier and beyond,” he told The Herald. “Ethanol is bad public policy, exemplifying a "Creed of Greed" culture which has quietly supplanted agriculture in recent years and must be reversed.

“Ethanol expansion has sparked a kind of "civil war" in agriculture driving a wedge between dairy, cattle, hog and poultry industries--and the highly subsidized corn and soybean sectors.

The report examines how political contributions and lobbying efforts have resulted in ever-larger subsidies. That has led, it says, to the growth of corporate consolidation in the corn-based ethanol sector. This consolidation has thus been an unintended result of America’s fuel politics and the enormous subsidies that go with them.

The report estimates that ethanol refiners have received at least $22.8 billion in total government financial support between 1999 and 2008.

End the Subsidies

The report recommends that:

• Corn-based ethanol subsidies should be phased out completely over the next few years in favor of subsidies to biofuel alternatives that are more efficient, economically feasible and environmentally friendly, such as cellulosic and algae biofuel refiners.

• Even these subsidies should be closely monitored in respect to the environmental effects and should only receive support if they meet sustainability criteria.

• Farmers who produce and consume their own biofuels on the farm should be rewarded by an energy tax credit for each gallon of ethanol, biodiesel or vegetable oil that they use instead of fossil fuels.

Congress has mandated that biofuel use must reach 36 billion gallons annually by 2022.