Senator Toomey Wants EPA to Ease Up on Renewable Fuel Standard

• Susan Phillips
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  Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

Senator Pat Toomey says drought conditions have driven up the costs of corn, creating a hardship for Pennsylvania dairy and chicken farmers. Toomey, along with six other senators, sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson asking to keep the corn-based ethanol mandates to 2012 levels.
Renewable fuel standards set in 2008, are scheduled to increase from 13.2 billion gallons of ethanol in 2012 to 13.8 gallons in 2013. In the letter, the senators say that as the mandates divert corn from food supplies to fuel, the nation’s drought exacerbates a corn shortage, driving up feed prices.
“Ethanol mandates disproportionately hurt states like Pennsylvania,” said Toomey. “From our dairy and chicken farms to our refineries, this ill-advised policy hurts all Americans every day, costing consumers more at the grocery store and damaging our economy.”
In 2005 a bushel of corn cost an average $2 a bushel. In June of this year, the price had risen to $8.24.

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