ACE Gives Sen. Nelson Highest Honor
During its 25th annual conference in Omaha Friday, the American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) presented U.S. Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) with the Merle Anderson Award for his leadership in supporting the renewable fuels industry while serving as Governor and Senator of Nebraska.
Nelson established the Governors’ Ethanol Coalition in 1991, helped create the first energy title in a farm bill, and played a key role in passing the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) in 2005, and the expanded RFS in 2007.
The Merle Anderson Award is named in honor of the founder and first president of ACE who serves as Chairman Emeritus of the ACE board of directors.
The senator, who is retiring this year after serving in the Senate since 2001, was honored by the award named after Anderson. “It’s very heartwarming to be considered in his company,” he said. “I’m just very proud.”
Nelson commented on work not done in Congress on a farm bill, which would include livestock assistance for livestock producers affected by the drought, and why that would help more than waiving the Renewable Fuel Standard. “We don’t want to go backwards trying to go forwards. There are other ways of dealing with this, we don’t have to start changing the RFS,” he said.
Listen to my interview with Sen. Nelson at ACE: Sen. Ben Nelson
2012 ACE Conference Photo Album
1 Comment
Alex Henry
Another practical alternative to a waiver would be to simply allow oil companies to use more D6 (corn ethanol) RINs from 2011 to meet their 2012 RFS obligations.
Extra corn ethanol gallons from last year’s record production levels would then offset this year’s shortfall.
Oil companies can already use prior-year RINs for up to 20% of their current year obligations for each RIN category. Right now 2011 D6s are trading for about 1/10th the price of 2012 D6s ($0.0050/gallon vs. $0.0460/gallon), which suggests that most major refiners have already exhausted their 20% carry-over.
If the D6 carry-over for 2012 were increased to, say, 40%, these prices would converge and this year’s corn ethanol mandate would, in effect, be reduced by over 2 billion gallons.
The mandated volume itself, however, would not have to be altered.
The corn ethanol industry would have less reason to worry because even if this interim measure somehow survived into next year, 2012′s lower production levels mean there simply won’t be enough excess credits to carry-over and displace 2013′s gallons. And though the EPA never does anything quickly, the administrative turnaround on this type of short term, indirect fix would hopefully be much faster than the typical 90-day waiting period.
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