Statewide Iowa — The renewable fuels industry feels it continues to face an uphill battle in the nation’s capital.
In a recent interview with IARN affiliate KMA, Iowa Renewable Fuels Association executive director Monte Shaw reacted to the passage of a trillion-dollar compromise bill in the U.S. Senate providing funding for road and bridge repairs across the country.
“I’ll tell you this–if the policy that the government wants to address is low carbon,” said Shaw, “then why are they focusing only on EVs (electric vehicles)? This is a big problem that’s going to need a multifaceted solution, and right now, today, biofuels and the cars that are on the road today are just as low carbon in many cases as an EV that’s powered with coal, right? Coal and electricity.”
Shaw explains that allowing sales of higher blends of biofuels benefits the environment in the long run.
“As we look down the road 10 years,” he said, “because that corn plant sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere, we actually think we can get corn ethanol to be carbon negative. That’s something that EVs will never do. It takes energy to produce the EVs will never do. It takes energy to produce the EV, solar panel, windmill, whatever, so it can a have really low carbon footprint. But, it could never go carbon negative, and corn ethanol can.”
Since the Senate bill included $15 billion for electric vehicle charging stations, Shaw says it should have also contained a half-billion dollars for higher-blend ethanol pumps.
“When I come home to Shenandoah,” said Shaw, “it really kind of upsets me, quite frankly, that I can’t find anything higher than E-10–E-15, E-85, which is what I like to use. It’s the cheapest fuel out there per mile. There’s some infrastructure needs there, as well. Why not let all these fuels compete, all these options compete? And, if they want low carbon, track them on low carbon. But, just don’t pick one winner, and say, ‘hey, we’ve got these fancy EV guys that are billionaires, and they donate a lot of money for us, so we’re just going to mandate that you use their product.’”
Shaw noted IRFA is “concerned that coastal policymakers have seemed to gone off of their low carbon focus.”
Story courtesy of the Iowa Agribusiness Radio Network.
Pictured: Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association (Photo by Brent Barnett)
