Politicians want to increase ethanol production 10x

The 37 members of the Governors' Ethanol Coalition - a group of assorted U.S. State Governors and leaders from other countries like Brazil, Canada and Mexico - are joining U.S. Senators and the U.S. Congress in efforts to promote biofuel use.

In a position paper issued today, the group says providing 20 percent of the nation's fuel supply from biofuels would save $52 billion a year in oil imports, create $110 billion in direct economic activity each year, 2.4 million new jobs and an overall impact of $368 billion on the nation's economy.

Achieving this would require about 60 billion gallons of biofuel a year, the group says.

By comparison, the U.S. produced only about 5 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel in 2006, though production in 2006 started ramping up an additional few billion gallons a year, according to the U.S. Renewable Fuels Association and U.S. National Biodiesel Board.

Specifically, the Governors' Ethanol Coalition is calling on President Bush and Congress for:

• Expansion of the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) to include a short-term target of 12 billion gallons a year of ethanol and biodiesel utilization by 2010, and longer-term targets of 15 percent of total motor fuels consumption by 2015 and 25 percent by 2025, with equal incremental steps provided for each year in between;
• Changing today's RFS cellulosic ethanol trading credit into a more practical tax credit. It says today's non-financial credit should be converted to a Cellulosic Ethanol Production Tax Credit.
• Establishing a timetable for delivering E85 (85% ethanol/15% gasoline) from metropolitan centers out to entire regions within five years. It says this should coincide with "not less than 70% of new vehicles sold being flex fuel-capable within 10 years"
• Providing adequate funding for the Energy Policy Act of 2005 authorized biofuel research, demonstration and incentive programs.

In a letter to Bush, the coalition suggested supporting these programs "would cost less than one half of what America spends in one day for oil."

The group has published its recommendations in a document called Ethanol from Biomass: How to Get to a Biofuels Future, available here.

Late last week, several U.S. Senators, including high profile Democrat Barack Obama of Illinois, introduced The American Fuels Act to increase the production of renewable fuels and make them more widely available to motorists nationwide. Similar legislation recently introduced calls for 60 billion gallons of ethanol and biodiesel in the U.S. by the year 2030, the same order of magnitude requested by the Governors.

The call for more biofuel is at odds with concerns from some about the world's short term ability to produce ethanol. Until cellulosic breakthroughs allow ethanol to be made in quantity from non-food sources, the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute warns the world could be heading for a crisis in corn supply, with repercussions in the world's food supply and economies (see Ethanol's corn appetite disastrous, says watchdog and Ethanol concerns from the American corn heartland.)

"It's quite worrisome. We looked at what would happen if you converted the entire U.S. grain crop to ethanol production - not just corn, but wheat, rice and the other grains we currently produce - and found we'd only meet 16% of our auto fuel requirements," Earth Policy Institute Director of Research Janet Larsen told the Cleantech Group today. [ed.: doing so would also create a lot of hungry people worldwide.]

"I don't see how it can be done with today's technology."

"We hear from ethanol proponents that 'well, we'll just plant more land'. The problem is that there just isn't much land left. Just adjusting crop rotations isn't the answer, either."

"We don't yet have a golden solution," she said.