DailyCaller

Government investigators have begun looking into whether or not the Environmental Protection Agency “complied with the reporting requirements of laws” mandating that refiners blend ethanol into the fuel supply.

The EPA inspector general’s office is asking agency officials for reports to Congress “issued after the EPA’s first report in 2011, and any other reports to Congress on the environmental and resource conservation impacts” of the ethanol mandate, or the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). The IG’s investigation to see if EPA was properly reporting the environmental impacts of the RFS comes right after the American Council for Capital Formation released a study claiming that mandating corn ethanol was damaging the environment and contributing more to global warming than conventional gasoline. “Corn ethanol’s environmental record has failed to meet expectations across a number of metrics that include air pollutants, water contamination, and soil erosion,” reads ACCF’s study — ACCF is part of a coalition opposing the RFS. The IG will be looking at whether the EPA has complied with all the reporting requirements set out by Congress, including if the agency updated its lifecycle analysis of the RFS since a 2011 National Academy of Sciences study on the global warming impacts of biofuels.

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