02/06/06 A boost to NW ethanol and biodiesel?

One of the most noted segments of President Bush's State of the Union Address last week was the proposed Advanced Energy Initiative. The President spelled out some of the many ways he hopes to reduce our nation's reliance on foreign oil by seventy-five per cent by the year 2025. BUSH: We will also fund additional research in cutting edge methods of producing ethanol not just from corn, but also from wood chips and stalks or switchgrass. Our goal is to make this new kind of ethanol practical and competitive in six years. It is the game plan for increased ethanol and biofuel production that has garnered much of the interest in the Pacific Northwest. For years, there have been many attempts to build plants that would produce cellulosic ethanol and biofuels from non-corn based grains, vegetable matter, and wood products, in our region. And a joint U.S.D.A./Department of Energy study dated April of 2005 tends to show there is enough plant and wood material around to meet the President's target goal. The study projects there would be enough biomass from ag sources alone to sustain 1000 energy plants, producing 75 million gallons of ethanol. The plants combined are estimated to generate $40 billion dollars in additional farm income, and create 600,000 permanent rural jobs. And an additional 1.3 billion tons of forest based biomass would increase that production to 100 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol. The problem has been how to make such facilities, and the energy products they would produce, economically feasible. The government has been laying ground work to improve feasibility, through Congressional approval last year of loans for cellulosic ethanol plants. U.S.D.A. Deputy Secretary Chuck Connor says part of that effort will include assuring federal funding for those loans, and funding in other areas such as research. CONNOR: It challenges us in the next Farm Bill to make sure that in dealing with the future direction of our country on research and development that we have a particular focus upon the need to promote energy independence from America. American agriculture has already played a big role with our tremendous growth we have seen in ethanol production, biofuels, bio-diesel. And where the President has challenged us to not only do what we are doing but to do it even more so. One example of the challenge perhaps being met is the world largest's pre-commeriical celluloisic ethanol facility, Iogen, announcing just after the State of the Union address that it has technology ready to be implemented, and could do so even before the President's target date of 2012.