Domestic Fuel

Earlier this week, National Wind CEO Leon Steinberg, challenged President Obama to take a stand by insisting that legislators pass an energy bill establishing a federal oversight committee to implement an interstate transmission highway. Steinberg likens the challenge as similar to President “Ike” Eisenhower’s initiative of creating a federal interstate system. The only difference is that while the nation’s interstate system is for cars, the transmission highway is for electricity.

The Midwest is prime real estate for wind energy, especially Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa enabling the states to produce more energy than the people need. However, today, it is nearly impossible to capture and transfer the excess energy from wind turbines for use in overpopulated areas like California. The next logical step is to design a way to do just this all while providing lower cost energy to consumers.

Just like the biofuels industry is struggling to increase the blend wall (if not the country can’t meet the 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022), the electrical industry cannot meet President Obama’s goal of 25 percent of electricity from renewable sources by 2025 if the grid is not overhauled and upgraded.

Steinberg writes in an op-ed piece, “President Obama’s goal of securing 25 percent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2025 is restricted by state regulators who act only in the interests of their state and disregard the potential benefits of new, high capacity, interstate transmission line.” If the country is serious about energy security, he continues, then the President should emulate Eisenhower’s approach and, “demand action by Congress to bring our energy infrastructure into the 21st century.”

As many have said and will continue to say, including Steinberg, our government needs to get out of its own way in order to usher in new environmental and economic security for generations now and to come.

This is the car you will drive if the Climate Bill passes the Senate.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 42 percent of Americans oppose the climate bill that passed the House last week because respondents believe the bill will hurt the economy. Well, the more I dig into the nuances of the proposed climate bill, the more I realize that this bill will do more damage than good.

Here are five reasons why the climate bill will ruin your life:

1) You won’t be able to sell your house if it doesn’t pass an energy audit. If your house fails, you’ll have to reduce the price of the house or update the house until you can pass the audit. Here’s an incentive that’s sure to rejuvenate the housing market.

2) The bill would require that all buildings built in the U.S. conform to meet California Building Code Standards. Who needs an affordable house anyway?

3) Your energy bills and other expenses will be higher. The republicans are complaining that the bill would raise yearly electricity bills $175 per year by 2020 but some experts say that an average family’s expenses will go up between $1,200 to $3,000 per year. Break out the summer fans and winter sweaters and blankets.

4) CRAP and RAID – also known as cap and trade.  The legislation mandates a 17 percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and an 83 percent cut by 2050. These cuts will be “enforced” in part through a cap and trade system which puts a price on CO2 emissions. With a program this well thought out, how could it not work?

5) The government will tell you what kind of car you can drive. No more gas guzzling SUVs people. Start peddling – you need the exercise anyway.

Now, I could be wrong. The Republican filibuster on CSPAN last Friday nearly put me in a coma, but seriously people, this bill needs an overhaul.

In a speech on Wednesday not far from the corn fields of proud Missouri farmers, Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain blamed subsidies for higher food prices.

“My administration will reduce the price of food by eliminating the subsidies for ethanol and agricultural goods,” McCain told an invitation-only group at the Harry Truman Library in Independence, Missouri. “These subsidies inflate the price of food, not only for Americans but for people in poverty across the world, and I propose to abolish them.”

The senator has previously said that he was opposed to the 2008 Farm Bill calling it “a bloated piece of legislation that will do more harm than good for most farmers and consumers.”

McCain has been in the Senate for almost 20 years. Surely he knows that of the $307 billion in spending authorized by the bill through 2012, $209 billion is for nutrition programs and $25 billion is for conservation. Only about $35 billion goes to agricultural commodity programs, including research and market promotion, with just a portion going in direct payments to farmers.

“Agricultural goods” for the most part are food. America has the safest, most affordable and most abundant food supply in the world – and that is due largely to our farm programs. Like any government program, they can certainly stand improvement. But to make a blanket statement that subsidies for agricultural goods are inflating food prices is just unfair. Congress is on the brink of providing $700 billion in “subsidies” for financial institutions that have made bad investments in order to keep them solvent. A few billion to support our nation’s food supply and the development of alternative energy sources to wean us off foreign oil pales in comparison.

The Ethanol Promotion and Information Council (EPIC) has responded to last week’s Time Magazine cover story “The Clean Energy Scam.” Executive director Toni Nuernberg sent the following letter to the editor of Time in response to the article:

In Michael Grunwald’s March 27 article “The Clean Energy Scam,” corn-based ethanol is the scapegoat of the week. Though Grunwald draws attention to the vitally important need for evaluation of global land-use changes, the environmental finger pointing at corn-based ethanol by his sources has come to the point of ridiculous.

The fuel behind this latest fiery round of environmental blame game is two studies posted mid-February in Science Express. The papers, authored by Timothy Searchinger and Joseph Fargione, reach conclusions regarding the greenhouse gas emissions associated with potential global land-use changes caused by increasing biofuels demand — specifically for corn-based ethanol. Their conclusions are considered debatable by others in the scientific community.
Read the rest of this post…

This post was on Corn Commentary yesterday:

The price of a barrel of crude shot up to $110.10 today before closing at $100.01, driven by fear despite evidence of good supplies and falling demand, illustrates the tightrope the United States walks in terms of energy security.

A refinery explosion in Texas over the weekend and fear that OPEC will decide to cut back production next month drove prices higher.

Here is a contributing blog entry from Beth Calabotta, who is oilseeds-biodiesel technology manager with Monsanto, on this week’s conference in St. Louis.
Besides spending hours in the exhibit hall at the Monsanto booth, Beth had a front row seat for the president’s address and got pretty close when he hit the floor to meet and greet right after his speech.

There were several really exciting things about the recent Advancing Renewable Energy Conference in St. Louis. I have to admit I have never attended a conference of any sort where the President of the United States stopped by to offer words of encouragement. But George W wasn’t the only speaker with an impressive resume on the agenda, there were opportunities to hear two cabinet members, a US senator, CEOs from the agriculture and bioenergy sector, and leading venture capitalists, just to name a few of the many extraordinary speakers.

On a more personal note, it was a lot of fun to explain to people who stopped by the Monsanto booth the benefits that molecular breeding and biotechnology can play to help make renewable energy happen. I don’t remember a time in my career when so many diverse people where interested in understanding more about agricultural yields, and it was fun to talk about all the hard work and excellent results people engaged across all sectors of agriculture have delivered and will continue to deliver. Corn yields have roughly doubled every generation, and the people working on livestock productivity have also make great strides. Dr. Fraley, in his talk, told us that this amazing trend will continue. It is possible to develop both food, feed, fiber and fuel on the same acre. To put this in perspective, in 1940, the year before my parents were born, an acre of my grandfather’s farm in Johnson County Iowa produced enough corn to feed 200 chickens.
Today, that same acre produces enough corn to feed over 1200 chickens. It has always felt great to work in agriculture and to help feed people, but if feels even better to know that what we are working on helps to feed, clothe and fuel the next generation.

Thanks for those observations, Beth. I would certainly love to hear from anyone else who attended the conference to provide their thoughts and comments – and pictures, too.

We really try to stay away from politics here on Domestic Fuel but sometimes you just have to say something. Actually this picture which I found on GOP and the City kind of says it all for me.

What kind of a lunatic would come into our country and proceed to call our President “the devil?” This chunky little dictator I guess. I don’t care if you like President Bush or not Mr. Hugo. Don’t come into our country and make your outlandish statements and expect that it’s going to have a positive impact on your image. As the news outlets all over the country are reminding people over and over, Citgo is owned by the Venezuelen government and we do have fuel choices.

You can find more stories about this here, here and here.

While domestic fuels have the possibility to stem our dependence on foreign oil, most would agree that it would not be possible to completely supply our need for fuel. Based on our current consumption of oil, more than 90% of the arable land in the US would be required to produce enough ethanol. A large part of the corn and soybeans needed for fuel is being grown in the Midwest.
The effects of climate change bear bad news for farmers in this region. NBC News reported recently that new calculations indicate a shift in the jet stream. The result could mean less perciptitation and an expansion of deserts in areas where they currently exist. People in Oklahoma and Texas are accutely aware of this development following the wildfires earlier this year, and any farmer in the Midwest can probably attest to the lack of rain so far this season. If predictions regarding climate change hold true, it could make it even more difficult to grow our way out of our dependence on oil. However, the competition between using foodstock for fuel and supplying the nation with nutrition could benefit famers able to produce in the new climate.

JW
www.mocommonsense.com