With the Obama administration on the brink of taking the reins, cabinet confirmation hearings have kept the nation's senators hopping. When South Dakota's senators questioned nominees to lead the agriculture and energy departments, talk of renewable energy was the order of the day.
In both cases, our senators wanted to talk about increasing the ethanol blend in gasoline above the current standard of 10 percent.
Agriculture Secretary-designee Tom Vilsack and Energy Secretary-designee Steven Chu had different answers, but neither got out the bullhorns and confetti to cheerlead higher ethanol blends.
Vilsack, the former governor of Iowa, told Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., that ethanol must move beyond its use of corn and into the burgeoning area of cellulosic "feed-stocks" -- such as wood waste and the non-edible parts of crop plants -- if the industry hopes to mature and meet the requirement of 36 billion gallons used each year by 2022.
"To meet that law will be a challenge unless we do a better job of accelerating research and development on a variety of second- and third-generation feed-stocks for biofuels," Vilsack said. "There are issues involving the nature of those feed-stocks, the processing opportunities they present, and challenges, the transportation issues that are involved, the capacity to store. All of those have to be looked at, and in a very accelerated way."
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Vilsack said going beyond what's required in the recently passed energy bill to blending 15 or 20 percent ethanol into each gallon of gasoline might simply be out of reach. He did say that it's up to the federal government to lead the charge so that renewable, American-grown biofuels can be a bigger part of the energy equation.
"USDA has a very, very important role to play to make sure we indeed provide the research, the focus and the direction to meet whatever the requirements are," Vilsack said.
When Sen. Tim Johnson, D-S.D., asked Chu whether a higher ethanol blend might be needed to meet the energy bill's requirement for use of 36 billion gallons of biofuels each year, Chu sidestepped the question and talked about cars.
"This is partly a technical question as to whether the automobile manufactures' engines, without major redesign -- my understanding is when you go up to E10 this is all right. You can replace the fuel lines to make them resistant to this ethanol blend," Chu said. "You can go to E85 and that works. I frankly don't know -- this is one of the things we have to look at regarding the automobile industry as to whether they can safely go to E15 or E20 or higher. This is something that's on the table."
Not all Americans embrace ethanol as heartily as most South Dakotans do. Our state likes ethanol because we're home to the industry's biggest players and we've watched it transform pieces of the rural economy. Others are leery because of a largely unchallenged public relations campaign from ethanol opponents that promoted the notion that using corn for fuel has driven up the prices of all commodities and, therefore, driven up the cost of food around the world.
Vilsack told Thune that he's prepared to respond on behalf of ethanol.
"Whether or not there's a linkage between our efforts to use some of our crops for fuel and rising food costs, we have to take an opportunity to address that, to educate people that there are many, many reasons food costs have gone up that are not necessarily related to biofuels," Vilsack said.
Thune agreed but said moving away from the use of corn is as important as mounting a public relations effort.
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"Frankly, moving toward the next generation of biofuels, cellulosic ethanol, is going be very important in responding to those concerns in a public that wants to see both objectives achieved -- increasing the use of renewables but also keeping food costs at a reasonable level," Thune said.
Denise Ross publishes Hoghouseblog.com and writes from Rapid City. Contact her at denise@hoghouseblog.com
