Heady days for the ethanol industry

The Renewable Fuels Association, the ethanol industry’s major lobbyist, works out of cramped offices that it shares with a lawyer near Capitol Hill. Pictures of ethanol-manufacturing plants from its 61 board members hang everywhere. “We’re about to run out of wall space,” said Bob Dinneen, the association’s president.

The association may have only six staff members, but it is now bursting with energy, a far cry from the early days when its founder, a South Dakota farm boy who was convinced that America needed to break the stranglehold of foreign oil, quit in frustration after four years.
Today, to keep the ethanol train moving, ethanol makers are cozying up to the oil industry, forming political alliances and enlisting executives from companies like Chevron as they race to make a quicker transition to cellulosic ethanol made from nonfood crops, like switchgrass.

Otherwise, public support could turn against the fuel, which yields a third less energy than petroleum-based gasoline and still relies on a federal subsidy of 51 cents a gallon to remain competitive.

“We are no longer debating whether this makes sense, if this public policy should be pursued,” Dinneen said. “The discourse now is how much ethanol can we produce, how quickly can we produce it and what is the pathway for greater production of domestic renewables.”

International Herald Tribune