GoodFuels

CNN Covers Nebraska Ethanol Industry

CNN “State of the Union” host and chief national correspondent John King took a refreshingly in-depth and positive look at the state of the ethanol industry in Nebraska over the weekend.

According to CNN, King “goes outside the Beltway to report on issues affecting communities across the country” and his report about ethanol in the Cornhusker State took him from the combine on a farm in Fort Calhoun, to the Advanced BioEnergy ethanol plant in Fairmont, where he stood on a mound of dried distillers grains with ABE Plant Manager Grant Johanson.

The headline for the story was especially gratifying - “Ethanol keeps Nebraska running in tough financial times.” Here’s a nice quote from the article:

In Washington, ethanol is a source of controversy, with many lawmakers arguing it is an industry unfairly propped up by generous federal subsidies. To Nebraska, however, it is the direct source of roughly 1,000 jobs at ethanol production plants across the state, many of them located in small towns where those 40 to 50 plant jobs are the local gold standard.

Pretty positive piece overall for the corn ethanol industry. Read the whole article here.

RFA Answers Questions About RFS

The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) held a telephone press conference the day before EPA’s public hearing June 9 on the proposed rulemaking for the Renewable Fuels Standard. A number of reporters, ranging from national news services to farm and environmental publications, tuned in and asked some good questions about the impact of EPA’s calculation of indirect land use changes and other aspects of the proposed rule.

In this edition of “The Ethanol Report,” RFA president Bob Dinneen and vice president for research Geoff Cooper answer questions from Martin Ross of Illinois Farm Week, Chuck Abbott of Reuters, Steven Cook with the Daily Environment Report, Ed Felker of the Washington Times and Dan Looker with Successful Farming magazine.

You can listen to “The Ethanol Report” on-line here:

Or you can subscribe to this podcast by following this link.

RFA CEO in NYT blog

Bob Dinneen, CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, talked with Green, Inc, the New York Times’ environmental blog yesterday.

Dinneen focused on land-use changes and EPA’s recent decision to include the carbon emissions from “land-use changes” against biofuels.

He made a good point when he asked why biofuel is the only fuel for which land use changes are applied.

Mr. Dinneen emphasized that his group was perfectly willing to factor in such indirect land-use changes. But he expressed concern that biofuels are the only industry for which this calculation is made. Petroleum, for example, does not factor in land-use changes — and besides, he said, “Where’s the carbon impact associated with development in suburbia?”

“They can’t just do it to us and not to everyone else,” he argued.

Additionally, the science is faulty, Dinneen discussed.

“Right now, I think the model is too uncertain, the assumptions are out of whack and it needs to be promulgated more fairly,” he said.

On the subject of cellulosic ethanol — a fledgling but more climate-friendly type of ethanol made from non-food sources like stalks or switchgrass — Mr. Dinneen expressed doubts that federal requirements for the country to use 100 million gallons of the fuel next year would be met. No commercial-scale plants are currently in operation in this country, though a few are being built, with a Range Fuels plant in Georgia being perhaps the furthest along.

Click here to read the entire interview.

Positives for Ethanol In CBO Report

Don’t let the headlines fool you - there is actually some pretty positive news for ethanol in the Congressional Budget Office report issued yesterday, “The Impact of Ethanol Use on Food Prices and Greenhouse-Gas Emissions.”

Despite the decidedly negative spin in the media, the report actually shows that a) other factors actually had a bigger impact on food prices last year than ethanol did and b) that ethanol is reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The CBO considers the period from from April 2007 to April 2008 and determines that “the rise in the price of corn resulting from expanded production of ethanol contributed between 0.5 and 0.8 percentage points of the 5.1 percent increase in food prices measured by the consumer price index (CPI).”

However, the next sentence in the report summary states that over the same period, “certain other factors—for example, higher energy costs—had a greater effect on food prices than did the use of ethanol as a motor fuel.” But, when talking about how much impact the higher food prices are having on federal food assistance spending, the report only focuses on that portion attributable to ethanol use, which is not really fair. Those “certain other factors” should have taken their share of the blame as well, don’t you think?

In addition, the report notes that ethanol’s effect on future food price inflation is “uncertain because the forces determining that impact move in opposite directions.”

Federal mandates now in place require additional use of ethanol in the future, which would continue to put upward pressure on prices. In contrast, increases in the supply of corn from cultivating more cropland, increasing crop yields, or improving the technology for making ethanol from corn or other feedstocks (raw materials) would tend to lower food prices.

Regarding the emissions side of the equation, the report states that “in the short run, the production, distribution, and consumption of ethanol will create about 20 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions than the equivalent processes for gasoline. For 2008, such a finding translates into a reduction of about 14 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and equivalent gases (a standard measure of greenhouse-gas emissions).”

The report also indicates that could improve substantially if cellulosic ethanol becomes commercially available, although they don’t seem to be very optimistic that will happen. Meanwhile, those of us who believe in good old American know-how and ingenuity believe it will.

RFA President in Huffington Post

The Renewable Fuels Association head Bob Dinneen has once again blogged over at the Huffington Post, this time writing about investment in the ethanol industry.

As part one of a series, Dinneen talks about the challenges facing the ethanol industry in the near future and acknowledges that they must be dealt with swiftly.

Gustafson, however, also took note of the challenges facing the industry — the lack of capital, uncertainty in U.S. financial markets, and overall industry prospects. If these challenges are not met by the industry and the government, Gustafson predicts that “foreign competitors, primarily Brazil and Mexico, appear well positioned to fill U.S. consumer’s demand for advanced biofuels.”

This would be a terrible tragedy. It would not only be a setback for America’s nascent advanced biofuels industry, but would cede the production of ethanol here at home to importing it from our southern neighbors when modest changes in government policy can help the industry meet its congressionally set goals.

Part two of the series is also up at the Huffington Post. In the second column, Dinneen addresses the development of cellulosic ethanol and its importance.

The advantages of moving to the next generation of biofuels are many. Producing ethanol from cellulose can cut carbon dioxide emissions by 86% compared to gasoline according to the US Department of Energy. Because of the many potential cellulosic feedstocks, ethanol can be produced in almost every part of the country.

He also talks about individual efforts to develop cellulosic ethanol from the likes of companies like Iogen, Range Fuels, and Verenium.

For part one of the series, click here. For part two, click here. Feel free to comment!