The U.S. needs a bold fuel policy to help offset foreign oil imports, testified Scott Weishaar, Poet vice president for commercial development, before the House Agriculture Committee recently.
The ethanol industry has become a legitimate threat to “Big Oil,” and Washington deserves credit for its positive policies, such as the Renewable Fuels Standard, said Weishaar.
“With your help, we can continue this progress,” he said. “We have the natural resources, the ingenuity and the technology to reach our nation’s goal of 36 billion gallons of renewable fuel produced per year by the year 2022.”
Four important actions will help achieve this:
1) Increase the base blend allowed in today’s standard vehicles from 10% to 15% ethanol.
2) Mandate that all new vehicles purchased in the U.S. are flex fuel.
3) Provide incentives for installing blender pumps, which can dispense a wide range of ethanol blends and allow greater choice for consumers.
4) Support cellulosic development through loan guarantees, a long-term extension of the cellulosic ethanol tax credit and incentives for farmers to offset risk in providing new biomass feedstock.
These actions will place clean, renewable ethanol in a position to challenge oil as the dominant fuel for America and create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, especially in rural areas, Weishaar said.