Biofuels 14-31 Times More Costly than Raising Gas Tax, Study Finds

January 5th, 2012 by Zachary Shahan

On a large scale, I can say that I’ve never been into biofuels. I’m not really glad my hunch has been vindicated so many times, since we’ve put a lot of money into biofuels, especially of the worst sort.

Making the gas tax comparable to what it was 30 years ago (adjusted for inflation) would be great, though. Gas, quite frankly, is too cheap for our own good, and the gas tax is exceedingly low (even hurting those who drive in some ways — for example, fluctuations in crude oil prices affect us much more than Europeans, and we are all getting screwed by climate change, of course, with rising food prices and ‘natural’ disaster costs). As reported recently, out-of-date gas taxes cost the U.S. $130 billion a year, according to one recent study.

Many in the transportation sector (most in the transportation planning sector, I think) support raising the gas tax. Check out Streetsblog and Infrastructurist articles on the gas tax for more.

But, getting back to what got me started on this topic, below is a post on a new study finding that biofuels, as the title indicates, are 14-31 times more expensive than raising the gas tax. Another notable finding (which has been found before) is that biofuels have a harmful net effect on global warming. Check out the piece from Gas2:

Study: Biofuels 14x to 31x More Costly than Raising the Gas Tax (via Gas 2.0)

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Tags: cost of biofuels, cost of gas tax, gas tax, gas taxes

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.