Bush set to give ethanol industry its biggest boost yet

WASHINGTON: After three decades of surviving mostly on tax subsidies, the ethanol industry is poised on Tuesday to get its biggest endorsement yet as a potential homegrown alternative to gasoline.

In his State of the Union address, President George W. Bush is expected to call for a huge increase in the amount of ethanol that refiners mix with gasoline, perhaps to as much as 60 billion gallons, or 227 million liters, annually by 2030

For an industry once dominated by a single powerful producer, Archer Daniels Midland, ethanol has come a long way, joining the oil industry and producers of major agricultural commodities as an entrenched political force in Washington.

But with dozens of new ethanol plants designed to turn corn into fuel coming online this year, the ethanol lobby is facing a critical point. The political reality is that corn’s days as the chief crop for making the fuel are numbered.

IHT