WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, Growth Energy submitted answers in response to the request from the House Energy and Commerce Committee for stakeholder input on the issue of energy security and the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).
Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy noted, “The Renewable Fuel Standard has been the most successful energy policy enacted in the last 40 years — not only is it benefiting consumers, by providing a choice and savings at the pump, but the RFS has helped created hundreds of thousands of good paying jobs that cannot be outsourced. It has revitalized local communities, leading to a robust farm economy and, most importantly, it has helped significantly reduce our dependence on foreign oil.”
Currently the United States is dangerously addicted to foreign oil and sends roughly a billion dollars a day overseas to meet our growing energy needs to unstable regions, like the Middle East, that have little interest in the United States’ energy security. However, with the RFS and a robust biofuels industry, much of that money is being invested right here at home, improving our economic and energy security, by stimulating our economy and producing home grown, sustainable fuel.
Buis Continued, “the bottom line is that the RFS is doing what it was designed to do — reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and it is doing it well. When the RFS was first enacted into law in 2005, the U.S. was nearly 60 percent dependent on foreign oil — today we stand closer to 45 percent. While we have increased domestic oil production, ethanol has also grown to be 10 percent of America’s fuel supply, and has the ability to displace even more foreign oil. Additionally, several studies have shown that the United States is spending billions of dollars to protect oil supply routes in the Middle East — these costs could be dramatically reduced if we turned to more home-grown renewable ethanol.
“We are taking meaningful steps in reducing our addiction to foreign oil and to fix something that is not broken would be poor policy and put us back in the road to increased imports. Furthermore, without the RFS, there will be no other competitive alternative to imported oil, and American consumers will continue to be held hostage to the supply chain of the oil industry,” Buis concluded.
Read the full comments submitted to the Committee.