GoodFuels

Obama Appointments Support Ethanol

The newest appointments by President-elect Obama continue to show support for ethanol.

Today, former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack was announced as Obama’s choice for Secretary of Agriculture and Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar for interior secretary.

Vilsack served two terms as governor of Iowa from from 1998 until 2006 and was a short-lived opponent of Obama’s in the presidential race. As governor, Vilsack was a strong supporter of ethanol and other biofuels as a way to help rural economies. In his brief run for the Democratic presidential nomination last year, Vilsack made the focus of his campaign a plan to end U.S dependence on foreign oil by promoting alternative energy sources.

AgWeb quotes Vilsack from an interview:

“Paying lip service to the need for renewable fuels isn’t real change. unless you’re a lifelong apologist for the oil industry. Providing the incentives, leadership, and backbone to actually build production plants when most people say it can’t be done. That’s real change. But that’s what we did in Iowa, and as a result, not only are we number one in ethanol production, which may not seem like a surprise, but we’re also number one in biodiesel production and number three in wind energy.”

As for Salazar, the interior secretary will play a key role in setting the new administration’s environmental, energy and land-use policies.

Salazar has also has been a strong supporter of biofuels, this year co-sponsoring the Open Fuel Standard Act, legislation would require that half of all new automobiles starting in 2012 be flex-fuel vehicles warranted to operate on gasoline, ethanol, and methanol, or be warranted to operate on biodiesel.

American Farm Bureau Federation says Sen. Salazar is “uniquely qualified and experienced to serve as Secretary of the Interior. He serves on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and has been a strong proponent of expanding the development of renewable fuels.”