The EPA proposal to relax the ethanol mandate could pinch the market for biofuels made from crop debris, grass and wood, says a front-page story in the Des Moines Register. The cellulosic fuels are the next-generation fuels intended to dampen the food-vs-fuel argument over corn ethanol. Iowa, the No 1 corn state, is the top producer of corn ethanol and is home to two of the three large-scale cellulosic plants scheduled to go into production this year.
From the Register story: “There will be a Plant Two for us. What we can’t say is whether that plant will be in the U.S. or Iowa or some other country,” said Steve Hartig, general manager of Poet-DSM Advanced Biofuels, a joint venture between Poet, a Sioux Falls, S.D., maker of ethanol, and DSM Royal, a Dutch maker of enzymes.