Thread: A subservient Trump bows to Iowa's ethanol establishment

So how about we don't eat corn. We just burn it. I'm kidding. I could live without corn, but I love frying fish with cornmeal. And of course corn is used to feed many animals we are dependent on. And corn tortillas are fabulous. Yep, I'm like the Romans. Conquer a culture, take its best and discard the rest. Or should we be tolerant and accept ritual sacrifice of Aztecs pulling out the still beating heart of virgins? Liberals would think so.

There are all types of ethanol, it doesn't have to be made from corn, it can be made from celluoid materials, like corn cobs, the refuse of corn production, in fact there are 3 of these plants in production now, 2 of them in Iowa, 1 in Kansas. The tax credit applies to any type of ethanol plant, whether it's made from food or nonfood sources, whether it's forest debris, corn, corn cobs, algae, or whatever it is. Why discourage that?

Originally Posted by Judy

There are all types of ethanol, it doesn't have to be made from corn, it can be made from celluoid materials, like corn cobs, the refuse of corn production, in fact there are 3 of these plants in production now, 2 of them in Iowa, 1 in Kansas. The tax credit applies to any type of ethanol plant, whether it's made from food or nonfood sources, whether it's forest debris, corn, corn cobs, algae, or whatever it is. Why discourage that?

To my knowledge feed corn is used to make most ethanol in the United States.

From the ALIPAC archives.

Rush to Use Crops as Fuel Raises Food Prices & Hunger Fears

Ethanol raises cost of nutrition programs

Originally Posted by MW

To my knowledge feed corn is used to make most ethanol in the United States.

It may be because there was so much corn grown years ago when ethanol got started, you couldn't give it away. But thanks to Ethanol, corn prices are good, there's plenty of market, and corn farmers are doing very well for a change.

There are many types of ethanol and more technologies being developed all the time. Below is a nice article from 2014 that describes the length and breadth of the ethanol market and different types of feeder stock which can really be any type of biomass, even garbage and waste products.

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Beyond the corn: The new frontier in ethanol is nonfood biofuel

As three cellulosic ethanol plants open in the Midwest, wavering U.S. policy and the oil boom leave a promising technology in limbo.
By and Photos by David Shaffer Star Tribune
October 11, 2014 — 4:57pm

Feed Loader

Corn husks and cobs stripped of their kernels are the raw material for a new cellulosic ethanol plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa. The material is collected in large bales and fed into the first large commercial ethanol plant to rely on nonfood material. Jointly built by ethanol maker Poet Inc. of Sioux Falls, S.D., and Royal DSM of the Netherlands, the plant is expected to produce 25 million gallons of ethanol per year.

EMMETSBURG, Iowa – The first large ethanol plants to produce biofuel from nonfood sources like corn cobs are starting operations in the Midwest amid industry worries that they might also be the last — at least in the United States.

After a decade of research and development, ethanol maker Poet Inc. and its Dutch partner Royal DSM recently produced the first cellulosic ethanol at a $275 million plant next to a cornfield in this northern Iowa town.

Two other companies are completing new cellulosic ethanol plants in Iowa and Kansas. By next year, they expect to be producing millions of gallons of the advanced biofuel.

"It was a big moment when we produced ethanol," said the Emmetsburg plant's general manager, Daron Wilson, who kept a vial from the first batch in August as a memento. "It was jubilation."

Yet the goal of producing ethanol from nonfood sources faces a murky future. Wavering U.S. policy on renewable fuels and the North American oil boom cast a shadow over the commercial triumph.

The next big cellulosic ethanol plants are planned or underway in Brazil, not the United States. Although the U.S. government has spent more than $1 billion to develop cellulosic technology, industry executives recently wrote to President Obama that other countries, including China, could "reap the economic and environmental rewards of technologies pioneered in America."

Ethanol producer Poet-DSM’s new, $275 million cellulosic ethanol plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa, is partly surrounded by thousands of bales of corn cobs, husks and stalks that will feed it. The plant, which opened in September 2014, is the first large commercial ethanol refinery to produce fuel from inedible parts of the corn plant. The new plant is at right, immediately adjacent to an existing corn ethanol plant, left, owned by Poet Inc.

Ethanol producer Poet-DSM’s new, $275 million cellulosic ethanol plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa, is partly surrounded by thousands of bales of corn cobs, husks and stalks that will feed it. The plant, which opened in September 2014, is the first large commercial ethanol refinery to produce fuel from inedible parts of the corn plant. The new plant is at right, immediately adjacent to an existing corn ethanol plant, left, owned by Poet Inc.

Most ethanol is fermented from corn kernels. The fuel made at the new Emmetsburg plant is derived from inedible parts of the corn plant. Straw and grasses also can be used because, like corn residue, they contain sugars that cellulosic technology can extract from the fibers.

Outside the Emmetsburg plant lie 158,000 bales of corn cobs, husks and stalks collected from farmers' fields. The residue is ground up, subjected to acid, water, heat and enzymes to extract hidden sugars. Then they're fermented and distilled. The 200-proof alcohol is the same as that made from corn.

"Cellulosic is kind of like corn ethanol was in the '80s," said Jeff Lautt, CEO of Sioux Falls, S.D.-based Poet, the nation's second-largest ethanol maker operating 27 traditional production plants including four in Minnesota. "It has a lot of promise, it needs some support to allow the innovation and continuous improvement to happen, but long term it can compete on its own just like corn ethanol."

Lautt and other industry officials said cellulosic ethanol can be produced today for $3 per gallon, but costs are sure to drop, making it competitive with corn ethanol, whose U.S. average rack price recently dropped below $2 per gallon.

Besides federal R&D grants, Congress has, at times, offered a $1 per gallon tax credit to promote advanced biofuels like cellulosic ethanol. The credit expired last year. In 2007, Congress enacted the renewable fuel standard that imposed a complex system of mandates to blend more ethanol into the nation's motor fuel. The oil industry has resisted it as onerous, costly and unworkable.

Ethanol makers say that without a blending mandate, it will be difficult if not impossible to raise investment capital for more U.S. cellulosic ethanol plants. The Obama administration, which has signaled it might dramatically alter the mandate, is expected to soon announce its policy.

The new Midwestern cellulosic ethanol plants represent big investments by deep-pocket companies that weathered longer-than-expected paths to commercial scale.

Abengoa Bioenergy, the U.S.-based biofuels arm of a Spanish energy company, says it has just completed and is starting up its $300 million cellulosic ethanol plant in Hugoton, Kan. Like the Poet-DSM plant in Emmetsburg, its output is expected to be 25 million gallons per year.

Daron Wilson, general manager of the Poet-DSM’s cellulosic ethanol plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa, stood in a complex of pipes and tanks. In this key stage of making ethanol from nonedible parts of corn, sugars locked in the fibers of corn cob and stalks are extracted. Once the sugar is free, it goes on to be fermented and distilled into ethanol.

Daron Wilson, general manager of the Poet-DSM’s cellulosic ethanol plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa, stood in a complex of pipes and tanks. In this key stage of making ethanol from nonedible parts of corn, sugars locked in the fibers of corn cob and stalks are extracted. Once the sugar is free, it goes on to be fermented and distilled into ethanol.

DuPont Cellulosic Ethanol, part of the Wilmington, Del.-based industrial giant, expects to complete in a few months its 30 million-gallon-per-year plant in Nevada, Iowa, at a cost of more than $200 million. Last week, DuPont said it will sell more than 500,000 gallons of the output annually to Procter & Gamble for its cold-water Tide laundry detergent. Tide, which has long used ethanol in its formula, will be the first detergent produced with cellulosic ethanol.

Abengoa is upbeat about its new plant's success, but is planning its next project in Brazil. That's already happened with Iogen Corp., an Ottawa-based company with similar cellulosic technology. Iogen is completing a plant in Brazil with ethanol maker Raízen Energia Participacoes. Both plants will make ethanol from bagasse, a fibrous material in sugar cane.

"America remains an exciting and important opportunity," Iogen CEO Brian Foody said in an interview. "It is important that U.S. policy find room for growth of ethanol use beyond the E10 level."

E10 and the 'blend wall'

One problem facing the ethanol industry is that traditional ethanol plants have more than enough capacity to supply 10 percent of the U.S. fuel supply. Almost all gasoline is sold at that blend, E10.

Ethanol makers never planned on cutting back corn ethanol output to make way for the new cellulosic version. At Emmetsburg, the Poet-DSM cellulosic plant called "Project Liberty," stands next to a 9-year-old corn-ethanol plant.

That leaves one choice: higher blends like E15.

"The truth is that there is only so much ethanol being bought in this country," said Paul Niznik, research manager and biofuels expert at Hart Energy Research & Consulting in Houston. "If you are making cellulosic ethanol, you are not competing against petroleum products, you are competing with other ethanol plants."

Once, ethanol marched in the vanguard to reduce U.S. oil imports. Now, the domestic shale oil boom also can claim the energy-independence banner. Oil imports are down to 40 percent of U.S. consumption, the lowest since 1996.

"In 2007 we were talking about peak oil — we don't talk about that anymore," said Jason Hill, assistant professor of bioproducts and biosystems engineering at the University of Minnesota. "The landscape has changed."

What's next?

The game plan for cellulosic pioneers like Poet-DSM is to license their technology to other ethanol companies and earn fees on the intellectual property.

That might be difficult if investment dollars dry up for large, new ethanol plants. Yet there is another, new, low-cost cellulosic option that may appeal to ethanol plants looking to expand.

Quad County Corn Processors, a locally owned ethanol plant in Galva, Iowa, developed technology that extracts trapped sugars from fibrous parts of the corn kernel and ferments them in an ethanol plant's existing equipment. ICM Inc., the Colwich, Kan., company that designed most of the U.S. ethanol plants, offers a competing corn-fiber cellulosic technology.

In September, the Galva cooperative officially flipped the switch on its system — $9 million worth of bolt-on equipment to boost the plant's ethanol output by 6 percent, and, eventually, 11 percent, said CEO Delayne Johnson in an interview.

"Our technology doesn't need any government subsidies to make it profitable," said Johnson, who believes the investment will pay off in three years.

Johnson said the technology also increases the ethanol plant's output of corn oil, and results in a higher ratio of protein in the animal-feed byproduct, making it more valuable. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says corn-fiber ethanol qualifies as an advanced biofuel, which gives it a higher value under the agency's blending requirements.

Some researchers have questioned whether cellulosic ethanol from cornfield residue truly helps reduce greenhouse gases linked to climate change. Hill said long-term studies are needed to resolve those scientific issues. Ethanol makers say cellulosic technology's low-carbon benefits are proved — and could offer business opportunities.

The industry is closely watching states like California that have or are considering low-carbon fuel standards. They could pave the way for cellulosic ethanol expansion beyond the Corn Belt, with production plants fed not by crop residue, but organic waste from garbage. Abengoa is piloting such a plant in Spain.

"We are actively promoting a full-scale project using municipal waste as a feedstock, which will allow us go outside the middle of the United States to the coasts where there are heavily populated areas that produce a lot of trash and use a lot fuel," said Christopher G. Standlee, Abengoa executive vice president for global affairs.

http://www.startribune.com/beyond-th...uel/278834141/

Iowa voters have given up on ethanol; presidential candidates are following suit




Ethanol, the corn-derived fuel that receives major government support, is no longer out of reach for criticism by presidential candidates stumping in Iowa. Here, corn is delivered to an ethanol plant in Shenandoah, Iowa.
(Nati Harnik / Associated Press)


Evan Halper Contact Reporter

The fortunes of the wonder fuel that promised to help clean the environment, secure America and save small family farms have steadily dwindled as environmentalists, food advocates and auto enthusiasts sour on its promise. Now that fuel, corn-based ethanol, finds itself threatened with a defection that was once unthinkable: Iowa voters.

The electorate here in the early voting state often defined by its vast expanses of corn has long demanded that candidates pledge allegiance to government production mandates for millions of gallons of ethanol, the homegrown product. But as the 2016 White House hopefuls traverse the state, they are seeing that Iowans have grown strikingly ambivalent.

“Voters here are just not that interested in ethanol anymore,” said Steffen Schmidt, a professor of political science at Iowa State University. “You don’t even hear the word come out the mouths of candidates much.”

The Republican presidential contender now polling strongest in Iowa, Ted Cruz, is campaigning on an energy platform that would have been a death wish in elections past. Cruz, the U.S. senator from Texas, is an unabashed opponent of giving ethanol any special government help.

He derides it as the worst kind of central planning. He champions legislation to wipe out the decade-old Renewable Fuel Standard, which mandates large amounts of ethanol get blended into the nation’s gas supply.

There are myriad reasons, not the least of which is a modern-day Republican electorate that takes pride in bucking the established order and is increasingly absolute in its disdain for subsidies. But it is also about the shifting politics of renewable fuels in a state where small family farms have given way to much bigger agribusinesses. Only a fraction of the state’s voters work in the corn industry these days. There is as much buzz on the campaign trail in Iowa about wind power as there is about ethanol.

It is all compounded by troubles befalling the decade-old ethanol mandate, signed into law by George W. Bush, that transcend Iowa but now appear to be giving voters pause even there. Cars are more efficient and people are driving fewer miles than the drafters of the law had anticipated, leaving auto manufacturers to warn that engines are at risk of malfunction if the federal government doesn’t ease quotas of ethanol blended into retail gasoline.


GOP candidates squabble as Californians watch from afar

Environmentalists once hopeful the product would help curb global warming now caution that it may be just as harmful to the planet as fossil fuels.

And even as Iowa’s longtime GOP governor, Terry Branstad, warns that candidates who tangle with ethanol could find their presidential aspirations buried by Iowans, a much more influential force in Midwestern politics is sending the opposite signal.

Koch Industries, the behemoth energy firm run by billionaire political donors Charles and David Koch that itself has a major interest in ethanol, despises the mandate. In an April letter to Congress, the company called it “an unqualified failure that should be repealed in full,” reflecting growing disdain among Republican activists for any programs that prop up renewable fuel industries.

Cruz drew from that zeitgeist at an Iowa agriculture summit earlier in the year at which several of the GOP candidates appeared. “I recognize that this is a gathering of a lot of folks who the answer you’d like me to give is ‘I’m for the RFS, darn it.’ That’d be the easy thing to do,” he said at the event. “But I’ll tell you, people are pretty fed up, I think, with politicians that run around and tell one group one thing, tell another group another thing, and then they go to Washington and they don’t do anything that they said they would do.”

“Sen. Cruz and anyone else who wants to say this is not an issue in Iowa is mistaken,” Eric Branstad said. “Iowa voters are only now starting to pay attention to the campaign. And they are beginning to learn where Sen. Cruz is on this.” Branstad says his group has persuaded some 50,000 Iowans to pledge to caucus only for candidates who support the fuel standard.

But ethanol industry leaders in the state say Cruz will pay a heavy price. They have been running radio advertisements for the last couple of weeks that accuse the Texan of hypocrisy, pointing to tax breaks and other government support enjoyed by the oil industry that Cruz favors. Among those targeting Cruz is Branstad’s son, Eric, who formed a pro-ethanol group called America’s Renewable Future.

Branstad predicts Cruz’s star will fall as a result of his anti-ethanol crusading. Donald Trump sought this month to regain ground he lost to Cruz by highlighting the Texan’s obstinance on energy policy.

But while nobody argues that Cruz can't get knocked out of the pole position, many doubt ethanol would be the reason.

“It’s helped him polish his credentials as a tough guy,” said Dennis Goldsford, a professor of political science at Drake University in Des Moines. “Republican voters here are more concerned about ISIS and Obamacare than this.”

Despite a recent industry poll concluding that large majorities of likely caucus goers, “once informed about the Renewable Fuel Standard and biofuels,” would be more likely to vote for candidates who support them, the issue barely registers on independent voter surveys.

When Iowans are asked what their biggest concerns are this election season, ethanol — and agriculture issues in general — don’t even rank.
It was only two presidential election cycles ago that John McCain bypassed campaigning for the nomination in Iowa almost altogether, declaring that his opposition to government support for ethanol made his bid hopeless. Some strategists argue McCain also had other problems, the biggest of which was his inability to break through with the large segment of voters who define themselves as evangelicals, a group that adores Cruz.

Even so, a self-described “coalition of unlikely bedfellows” that opposes corn ethanol — which includes oil companies, environmentalists, anti-hunger activists and car manufacturers — is watching the Iowa race carefully.

“This could be a real turning point to reforming the Renewable Fuel Standard, or possibly repealing it,” said Daniel Simmons, vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, an advocacy group that receives funding from the network of donors anchored by the Kochs. “For a long time it was thought to be untouchable because of these caucuses.”

http://www.latimes.com/nation/politi...217-story.html

The ethanol subsidy isn't for corn farmers. The ethanol tax credit is for ethanol producers who invest in pump blending equipment which is the only reason this is not a high priority for Iowans.

When Ted Cruz tells them he wants to ban actual agricultural corn subsidies, we'll see how that goes in Iowa. Never met an Iowan who didn't want their government check like most Americans these days.