The issue of green jobs and clean energy solutions is likely to feature prominently throughout Congressman Jay Inslee’s campaign for Washington State governor. But what is Inslee’s real track record on picking the winning and losing fuel sources for America’s future. Not good, according to environmental policy guru Todd Myers.

Myers writes at Red County:

Inslee has long been an advocate of government regulations and subsidies that favor biofuels. As part of his announcement, when asked about potential future tax increases, Inslee would only say “We don’t know what the future brings.” By way of comparison, Inslee has been quite bold about his predictions regarding the future of biofuel technology. In 2008, when his book was published, he and his co-author confidently wrote:

It would be comforting to avoid the prospect of being proven wrong by the passage of time. But your authors are built of sterner stock. We refuse to take refuge in the privilege of punditry to cloak our comments in vague surmises. … About 2011, plug-in hybrids will start to hit the roads just at the same time that meaningful amounts of cellulosic ethanol are becoming available at service stations across the country.

Here in 2011, cellulosic ethanol has not emerged as a significant alternative. One reason is that he believed that by 2011 “Congress will have done its job and mandated production of flex-fuel vehicles and a certain percentage of service stations to offer biofuel pumps.” The fact that this did not occur can be laid, ironically, at the feet of Inslee and the members of his Congressional majority. They did not pass the legislation to make this happen, nor did they even pass a budget in 2010 to extend the biofuel credit, amounting to $1.00 a gallon for cellulosic biofuel.

This isn’t the only time Jay Inslee has been wrong about biofuels. Inslee’s faith in biofuels as an alternative energy and job-creator has repeatedly missed the mark.

You can read the entire piece about Inslee’s poor track record for predicting biofuels at Red County.

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[photo credit: flickr]