As we prepare for our ACE fly-in to DC happening next week, I crunched a few numbers and found the results interesting:
During March 2009, the time of our first DC fly-in, gas prices were under $2 per gallon. Today, gas prices are averaging above $3.50 per gallon -- which means we're spending a half-billion more dollars per day to fuel our cars. Every day, the U.S. is spending almost $1.5 billion just on gasoline, not including diesel or jet fuel.
Just the increase over March 2009 will be triple what the U.S. spends on the ethanol tax credit (VEETC, the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit) by the time we get to DC next week.
The ethanol tax credits each year costs about what U.S. motorists spend on gasoline in only 4 days.
Does this put a few things in perspective?
Posted by: Ron Lamberty, Vice President / Market Development, American Coalition for Ethanol