Senate Energy Committee Approves Cantwell's Plan to Expand U.S. Biofuels Production & Lower Cost
New Market Incentives, Aggressive Technology Demonstration and Loan Guarantees Mean Washington State “Fuel Farmers” Could Add Hundreds of Millions of Gallons to U.S. Alternative Fuels Production
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Senate Energy Committee on Wednesday passed U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell's plan to dramatically expand biofuels production in Washington state and around the nation. Added to the Senate's new energy bill, Cantwell's measures support the production of biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel from new crops in more diverse regions of the country.
"America's overdependence on foreign Middle East oil comes from the fact that it is much cheaper than the alternative biofuels," said Cantwell, a member of the Senate's Energy and Commerce Committees. "With the market incentives and federal support for new technologies that we passed today, we can one day have affordable, homegrown alternatives to our foreign oil addiction. And we can put a new generation of fuel farmers in business in Washington state."
Cantwell's amendment will expand the use of cellulosic biomass, basically any part of a plant or tree. Currently, 90 percent of our nation's biofuels come from corn. Cantwell's plan will promote the development of ethanol and biodiesel from a wider variety of crops, agricultural waste or even algae to produce alternative biofuels. A study by Washington State University's Energy Extension Program has estimated that Washington state has enough wheat straw to produce about 200 million gallons of ethanol—and 1.2 billion gallons with technology improvements.
"By lowering the costs of products like ethanol and biodiesel and providing economic security for agricultural producers in more regions of our country, we ensure our supply of domestic biofuels is more stable, and resistant to factors like fluctuations in world commodity prices and acts of nature, like regional droughts," Cantwell added.
"Without my amendments, I believe we will miss out on emerging opportunities in global markets for energy technology," Cantwell said. "Already, Brazil is reaping the benefits of their national investment in sugar cane based ethanol which they can produce 50 percent cheaper than we can here in the U.S."
Senator Cantwell's conclusions are in line with findings from the federal Energy Information Administration (EIA) and others. An EIA report found that "the ability to produce ethanol from low-cost biomass will be key to making it competitive as a gasoline additive." The EIA also found that the cost of producing ethanol from cellulose-based feedstocks could be reduced by as much as 60 cents per gallon with technology improvements.
In addition, a recently completed study by researchers at the Energy Department's Oakridge National Lab concluded that fuels produced from biomass could someday displace up to 30 percent of the United States' current petroleum use.
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