GoodFuels

UN Hears Ethanol Story

The CEO of the world’s largest ethanol producer gave a forum at the United Nations this week a glimpse into how ethanol can be part of the solution to helping developing nations fight poverty and dependence on foreign oil.

“With a billion acres of idled cropland across the globe and the price of agricultural commodities above the cost of production for the first time in decades there is an unbelievable opportunity for underdeveloped countries to simultaneously lift people out of poverty and solve their crippling addiction to energy imports,” Jeff Broin of POET said Wednesday during a roundtable on energy and biofuels at the forum on UN’s Millennium Development Goals and Food Sustainability.

Jeff talked about the history of POET, how his father saw the potential to grow both food and fuel and built a small ethanol plant on the family farm in South Dakota. Today POET has 24 - soon to be 25 - ethanol plants in operation producing more than 1.4 billion gallons of ethanol annually. “I’m confident that what POET has achieved in rural America can happen all over the world,” Jeff said.

He concluded by saying that ethanol production is still a young industry with incredible potential. “It will continue to spark agricultural development all over the globe, mostly in developing countries, which will help those countries use their own resources to become more self-reliant for food and fuel while reducing global climate change.”

Read Jeff’s entire speech to the UN forum on the POET blog, Rhapsody in Green.