Domestic Fuel

During a speech at a truck manufacturing plant in Mount Holly, North Carolina this week, President Obama outlined specifics for an energy plan that includes alternative-fueled vehicles and fueling stations.

“We’ve got to develop every source of American energy — not just oil and gas, but wind power and solar power, nuclear power, biofuels,” Obama said, noting that he has directed “every department, every agency in the federal government, to make sure that by 2015, 100 percent of the vehicles we buy run on alternative fuels — 100 percent.”

But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter how much natural gas, or flex-fuel or electric vehicles you have if there’s no place to charge them up or fill them up. So that’s why I’m announcing today a program that will put our communities on the cutting edge of what clean energy can do.

To cities and towns all across the country, what we’re going to say is, if you make a commitment to buy more advanced vehicles for your community — whether they run on electricity or biofuels or natural gas — we’ll help you cut through the red tape and build fueling stations nearby. And we’ll offer tax breaks to families that buy these cars, companies that buy alternative fuel trucks like the ones that are made right here at Mount Holly. So we’re going to give communities across the country more of an incentive to make the shift to more energy-efficient cars.

Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis says ethanol producers embrace the president’s “all of the above” energy policy that focuses on giving consumers greater choice for motor fuel. “With ethanol trading at a buck a gallon less than gasoline, it only makes sense to speed more biofuels like ethanol to the marketplace to help reduce prices at the pump,” said Buis. “We know that there are a lot of developing alternative fuels out there that can help replace foreign oil – someday. But today, ethanol is the only commercially-viable alternative to foreign oil that we have, and we ought to be embracing policies that give consumers greater access, not less.”