General Motors

In class, we discussed about regulation, and what we think of regulation personally. I raised my hand answering that regulation is an obstacle to economic growth.
An instance where companies fail to include the right mix into their gasoline which doesn’t even exist is unfair and unjust. However, it’s understandable that the government really wants these companies to come up with alternatives, especially with oil insecurity and climate change related to greenhouse gas emissions which are worrisome as ever, but there are definitely other methods to warn these companies and give them certain deadlines to come up with alternatives.
It mentions in the article that Environmental Protection Agency is being lenient by the standards of the law, but as “lenient” as this may appear, it is still too harsh in light of the fact that not even a single company to this date has been able to produce cellulosic ethanol that qualifies by EPA’s definition. It’s been five years, no improvement, and yet the EPA has not lowered the cellulosic ethanol ‘mandate’ to zero gallons. This is a clear and transparent problem, and a threat to the country’s GDP as it could be a threat to new entrants trying to enter the oil industry, and unjustly fining these oil companies would definitely steer away a lot of potential entrants. It could also steer away a lot of existing companies who are already contributing to the country’s GDP. Furthermore, after doing more research, renewable fuel standard may be an ineffective policy for reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, since the full life cycle of the fuel, including its transport, could lead to higher emissions than conventional petroleum.
On the bright side, it’s good to see that Mascoma, a company partly owned by General Motors, that it would help to build a plant in Kinross, Mich., that is supposed to make fuel alcohol from wood