The media was very interested in hearing the story that agriculture and the ethanol industry had to tell about food prices during a press conference Wednesday at the National Press Club.
Former Agriculture Secretary John Block, National Corn Growers CEO Rick Tolman, National Farmers Union president Tom Buis and RFA’s own Bob Dinneen gave opening statements about the facts on food price increases and entertained about 40 minutes of questions from reporters present and on the phone. They covered nearly every topic on the ethanol waterfront and gave highly informative answers to probing and intelligent questions from the press. Hopefully this will translate into some balance in reporting about the food versus fuel issue.
It’s a big file and may take a while to load but you can listen to the entire one hour plus press conference here: 
Food Price Press Conference (1 Hour MP3 file)
You can see an online photo album from the press conference here: RFA Press Conference Photo Album
Updated with recorded video
Today at 1pm eastern time, RFA is hosting a press conference at the National Press Club. In attendance will be:
The Honorable John Block, former Secretary of Agriculture
Tom Buis, President, National Farmers Union (NFA)
Bob Dinneen, President of the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA)
Rick Tolman, CEO, National Corn Growers Association (NCGA)
The topic will be: “Farmers and Ethanol Industry to Present the Facts On Food Price Increases.”
We are working to try and stream the press conference live on on UStream.tv using the player below. At the time of the conference, you should be able to click on the player and see the live stream. This is an experiment, so we will see how it works. Regardless, we are recording the conference and will have a full update available here afterward.
Update: The live stream worked! Here is a recording of the first 20 minutes or so:
This was the first time we used this new streaming service. It recorded in segments so here’s another segment which takes you through all the opening statements.
VeraSun Energy broke ground on a new facility last week that will tap into ethanol for oil.
VeraSun’s patent-pending Oil Extraction process is designed to yield 7-8 million gallons of corn oil annually from 390,000 tons of distillers grains currently produced at VeraSun’s ethanol production facility in Aurora, S.D. The corn oil will then be made available for sale into the biodiesel market, thus increasing the renewable fuel supply without an additional feedstock supply. The result of the process also includes enhanced distillers grains through the concentration of protein and the reduction of fat. One gallon of corn oil yields roughly a gallon of biodiesel.
VeraSun expects to start producing the corn oil later this year. The company also plans to use the process at two of its plants in Iowa next year.
Among those giving a hand at the groundbreaking were South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds, Reid Jensen with the South Dakota Corn Utilization Council and Matt Hartwig of the Renewable Fuels Association.
This “Ethanol Report” podcast features comments from RFA President Bob Dinneen on a number of topics coinciding with the annual RFA board of directors meeting in St. Louis this week. He talks about the angst felt by ethanol producers seeing their product maligned in the media and why the Texas governor’s request for a waiver of the Renewable Fuels Standard is misguided. Dinneen also says the industry can support a decrease in the blender’s tax credit being discussed by farm bill negotiators and he points out that transportation costs are driving the food aid crisis.
You can subscribe to “The Ethanol Report” by following this link.
Or you can listen to it on-line here: Ethanol Report 11 (6:45 MP3 file)
Texas governor Rick Perry is asking the federal government to cut “skyrocketing” food prices by waiving half of the renewable fuel standard for ethanol made from grain.
The Renewable Fuels Association criticized the governor’s action, saying that reducing the use of ethanol will not appreciably reduce grain prices for livestock producers and food processors in Texas.
“But eliminating 4.5 billion gallons of fuel from the marketplace as the 50% waiver of the Renewable Fuels Standard sought by Governor Perry would do will increase gasoline and diesel prices even more. While this may benefit Texas oil companies, it will certainly hurt consumers in Texas and the rest of the country.”
RFA says that Governor Perry is ignoring the conclusions of a Texas A&M report he himself requested. According to the findings of that study, “relaxing the RFS does not result in significantly lower corn prices.” The Texas A&M report also stated that, “The underlying force driving changes in the agricultural industry, along with the economy as a whole, is overall higher energy costs, evidenced by $100 per barrel oil.”
Responding to Governor Perry, Renewable Fuels Association President Bob Dinneen issued the following statement:
“Tampering, adjusting or removing the requirements will not have the impact on grain prices that Governor Perry seeks, nor will it bring the food price reductions he claims. The skyrocketing price of oil, surging global demand for grains and meat, poor harvests around the globe, and a weakened US dollar are the real factors determining world grain and food prices. The production and use of ethanol, while increasing demand for corn, is not contributing significantly to food price escalation. It is, however, helping to keep and oil prices lower than they might otherwise be.
“Replacing the 4.5 billion gallons of fuel Governor Perry seeks to remove from the marketplace would come at great expense to Americans from all parts of the country. Given that America’s gasoline refiners continue run their refineries at far below capacity and oil prices show no signs of abating, it rapidly becomes clear that removing this volume of ethanol would send gasoline and diesel prices far higher than we are seeing today. In other words, Governor Perry’s approach is a surefire way to guarantee even higher gasoline prices.
“I strongly encourage Administrator Johnson to recognize that oil dependence and the high prices we see today play a far greater role in the complex issue of food prices than ethanol does and to roundly reject the waiver application by the state of Texas.”
A new poll commissioned by the Renewable Fuels Now Coalition shows that when it comes to energy, Americans are most worried about dependence on foreign oil.
The survey, conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates Inc., polled 1200 voters earlier this year about a number of issues facing Americans.
The top three concerns were the war in Iraq, health insurance and energy. Almost half rated imports one of their two biggest energy concerns. A distant second is the lack of viable alternatives to fossil fuels.
When asked what is the best way to solve America’s energy problems, 51 percent said the answer is to invest in renewable energy sources; 28 percent call for energy efficiency and conservation policies; and only 17 percent favor more drilling and mining for domestic fossil fuels. Eighty percent of the voters in the survey say government should give more incentives to encourage the development of renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. Seventy-six percent want government to require more renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel to be blended into fuel for cars and trucks.
Read the full study results here.
Two reports out this week on ethanol show the economic and environmental benefits of ethanol.
The Missouri Corn Merchandising Council released a study done by John Urbanchuk with the economic consulting service LECG that finds drivers in Missouri can expect to save an average of 9.8 cents per gallon this year due to the 10 percent ethanol standard that went into effect Jan. 1, 2008. That works out to $73 for every motorist in the state.
“With petroleum industry profits of $123 billion and fuel prices spiking 40 percent in the last four months, the pain at the pump is getting intense,” said Jayne Glosemeyer, Missouri Corn Merchandising Council chairwoman and farmer from Marthasville, Mo. “The implementation of the Missouri Renewable Fuel Standard, blending the state’s gasoline with 10 percent ethanol, is the one thing helping to ease the pain. It is keeping money in consumers’ pockets and keeping dollars here at home.”
A pdf file of the study report is available here.
On the environmental side, the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council celebrated Earth Day by informing consumers that if every car in America would use a ten percent blend of ethanol for one week, the amount of greenhouse gases produced in the U.S. would be reduced by nearly 1.3 billion pounds.
According to calculations done by researcher Nathan Danielson, president of BioCognito, filling up with E10 can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 9.5 pounds per tank.
“Ethanol is just a very good fuel for reducing overall carbon foot print,� Danielson said. “The story gets better if we go to E85. If we get to E85, all the sudden you are sitting at about 90 pounds of carbon dioxide that you’ve removed from the atmosphere by using ethanol instead of gasoline.� Everyone filling their tanks with E85, he says, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 12.4 billion pounds in one week.
Better still, Danielson says that the same situation using ethanol derived from cellulose could reduce greenhouse gases by 282 pounds per car per week, or 38.5 billion pounds a week if used by every car on the road.
A new analysis of America’s ethanol industry shows dramatic efficiency gains in ethanol production have been made in the last five years.
According to an analysis conducted by the Argonne National Laboratory, American ethanol facilities are using less energy and water than just five years ago while producing more ethanol. Water consumption is down 26.6 percent, grid electricity use down almost 16 percent and total energy use almost 22 percent lower. (Read the full report from Argonne in pdf form here)
The Argonne analysis compares ethanol industry data from 2001 to 2006. In 2001, U.S. ethanol production was 1.77 billion gallons. In 2006, U.S. ethanol production was 4.9 billion gallons, an increase of 276%.
“This is not your father’s ethanol industry anymore,” said Renewable Fuels Association president Bob Dinneen. “As the industry has grown over the past several years, we have adopted new technologies, we are looking at new feedstocks, we are becoming more efficient every day. The ethanol industry takes its responsibility as stewards of the environment very seriously.”
The Argonne analysis also found key trends that are making ethanol more efficient and environmentally friendly. Nearly 25% of ethanol producers today are capturing their carbon dioxide emissions for use in dry ice production and carbonated beverage bottling. In addition, 37% of distillers grains – the high protein livestock feed co-product of ethanol production – are now sold in the wet form, reducing the energy needed to dry and transport the product.
The improvements being made in ethanol production today signal the greener direction in which this industry is moving. The development and implementation of new technologies that improve efficiencies and expand the basket of feedstocks available for ethanol production is occurring rapidly, as the Argonne analysis indicates.
Conversely, the petroleum industry is moving in the opposite direction. As all of the ‘easy’ reserves of oil have been exploited, oil producers are having to drill deeper and go further into environmentally sensitive lands in pursuit of crude. The environmental impacts of these activities are far greater than even today’s petroleum production.
This “Ethanol Report” podcast features comments from RFA President Bob Dinneen on a new report from Argonne National Laboratory about the increased efficiency of U.S. ethanol plants, as well as how higher oil prices are the real cause of food price inflation.
You can subscribe to “The Ethanol Report” by following this link.
Or you can listen to it on-line here: Ethanol Report 10 (7:00 MP3 file)
In an unpredictable twist, Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources is denouncing ethanol as an alternative to petroleum-based motor fuels.
During an appearance in Paris, Minister Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Naimi said:
“Let’s be realistic, ethanol and biofuels will not contribute to the protection of the global environment by reducing (carbon dioxide) emissions, they will not increase energy security, nor will they reduce dependency on fossil fuels to any appreciable degree.�
All sarcasm aside, Minister Al-Naimi’s dismissal of ethanol is just the latest in a long line of similar remarks by those in control of the world’s oil resources. Clearly, the fact that the Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates that increased ethanol use will help reduce US petroleum consumption 90,000 barrels per day in 2008 is beginning to strike a nerve.
Responding on behalf of the US ethanol industry, Renewable Fuels Association President Bob Dinneen challenged Minister Al-Naimi’s assertions about the energy, economic and environmental impacts of ethanol.
“For the Saudi Oil Minister to assert that biofuels are not an effective energy alternative is no different from the wolf complaining that Little Red Riding Hood was interrupting his dinner plans,” Dinneen wrote. “As a leader of a country that opposes strict limits on carbon emissions and favors continued expansion of petroleum production, it is not surprising that you express opposition to the development of biofuels.â€?
“What is also galling about your statement is the claim that biofuels negatively impact the ‘food market.’ The evidence demonstrates that the number one negative impact on the food market is the high price of your primary export – oil,” he continues. “One hundred dollar per barrel oil has driven up the cost of everything from fertilizer to diesel oil used to transport food, to plastics used in food packaging.â€?
Read Dinneen’s full letter here.
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