corn ethanol

The largest of the ethanol trade groups, the Renewable Fuels Association, is out in the cold for supporting a change in the program that gives biofuels a share of the U.S. gasoline market. Fuels America, an agribusiness coalition "committed to protecting America's Renewable Fuels Standard," severed ties with RFA, while the second-largest ethanol group, Growth Energy, said the RFA was doing the dirty work of the oil industry.

As a candidate, Donald Trump supported corn ethanol and, one month after taking office, he reiterated his view, telling the National Ethanol Conference, "renewable fuels are essential to America's energy strategy." The industry is under perennial attack by the oil industry and by some environmental groups, that want to reduce or eliminate the federal mandate to use biofuels.

The fuel industry will be obliged to use 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol in 2017, said the EPA. It was the first time the agency has set the target for the biofuel at the maximum allowed by the 2007 energy law. The 500-million-gallon increase in the ethanol mandate comes at a time when U.S. gasoline consumption is rising and making it easier to consume larger volumes of biofuels.

The government of Mexico published a regulation that requires a 5.8-percent blend of ethanol into gasoline sold in the country, with the exception of three major metropolitan areas of Mexico City, Guadalajara and Monterrey, reports the Washington Examiner. U.S. ethanol groups said the mandate represented an expansion of the market for renewable fuels in North America.

A controversial new study, funded by the American Petroleum Institute, found that, over an eight-year period, cars fueled by corn ethanol would have caused more carbon pollution than using gasoline, reports Climate Central.

Rep. Eric Swalwell led five additional California House members urging the EPA to put the Renewable Fuel Standard program "back on track by finalizing blending targets that are in line with Congress’ original intent." In a letter to the EPA, the lawmakers said the tepid rise in the RFS announced earlier this year falls short of the statutory volumes set by Congress and "sends a chilling signal to biofuels investors."

Advisers for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton sought advice from California regulators on ways to revamp U.S. biofuel mandates, said Reuters. Corn-based ethanol is popular in the Midwest so the possibility of change in the so-called Renewable Fuel Standard could hurt her in corn states "like Iowa, where she faces a tough battle against Republican rival Donald Trump in the Nov. 8 election."

Fertilizer runoff could be reduced significantly if row crops such as corn and soybeans are replaced with perennial grasses harvested for biofuel production, say researchers from four Midwestern universities. Nitrogen runoff in the Mississippi River basin, blamed for creation of a "dead zone" each summer in the Gulf of Mexico, could drop 15-20 percent if switchgrass or miscanthus were planted on a quarter of the land now devoted to row crops, according to computer simulations.

DuPont says in a court filing that EPA's decision to lower the targets for the Renewable Fuels Standard puts at risk its investment in a 30-million-gallon-a-year cellulosic plant in central Iowa, reports DTN.

Thanks to the prolonged decline of petroleum prices, gasoline costs less than ethanol nowadays. But the upside-down situation is not likely to impair exports, says Good in an article at farmdoc daily.

Spanish energy company Abengoa, caught in a financial crisis, has shut down its cellulosic ethanol plant in Hugoton, Kansas, after little more than a year of operation, reports Kansas Agland.

Second-generation biofuels produced from switchgrass or corn stover have a lower carbon footprint than corn-based ethanol, said the Environmental Working Group in advocating a wholesale overhaul of federal biofuel policy.

Quad County Corn Processors in northwestern Iowa beat two larger rivals to produce the first cellulosic ethanol from a commercial-size plant in Iowa, the No 1 corn-growing and ethanol-making state, says the Des Moines Register. The farmer-owned plant at Galva produced its first gallon on Monday and plans to quickly ramp up to 2 million gallons a year.

The think tank World Resources Institute says the world food gap could be narrowed greatly if crop-based biofuels - made from corn, sugarcane or vegetable oils - are eliminated. In a working paper, WRI points to estimates that food production must rise by 70 percent by 2050 to feed the growing world population. "If crop-based biofuels were phased out, the 2050 crop calorie gap would decrease from 70 percent to about 60 percent, a significant step toward a sustainable food future," says the report by Tim Searchinger and Ralph Heimlich.