A Homegrown Solution to $100 Oil

Bliss Baker, Vice President, GreenField Ethanol

The New Year began with what is both a milestone and, in all likelihood, an omen – on January 2nd, 2008 for the first time ever, the price of oil reached $100 a barrel. If we didn’t know it before, we know it now: the time has truly come to diversify our fuel supply, to move aggressively to wean our society from its longstanding dependency on high-priced oil. Ethanol is the right solution at the right time. Consider just three of the major benefits of increased ethanol production and usage: Ethanol helps reduce our dependency on oil. Oil prices have become increasingly volatile, resulting in higher and less stable gasoline prices at the pump. There are questions about the long-term reliability of oil supply and about the potential for even greater price increases. In the face of such challenges, ethanol is a homegrown solution in which farmers of corn and other crops play a pivotal role. Even as automakers focus on building vehicles capable of running on a higher percentage of ethanol, it is crucial to remember that every car on the road today can use gasoline blended with up to 10% ethanol. As a fuel source, ethanol and other biofuels offer a path to a more sustainable, cost-effective and independent energy future.

Ethanol benefits the environment and helps fight climate change.

Ethanol is a renewable, clean-burning fuel that reduces emissions of the harmful greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming by as much as 40-60% as compared to fossil fuels. In Canada, the government is mandating 5% renewable content in gasoline by 2010 and 2% renewable content in diesel and home heating fuel by 2012. These benchmarks alone will translate into an annual 4.2 megatonne reduction in our national greenhouse gas emissions – the equivalent of removing more than one million cars from Canada’s roads. As the fight against climate change gathers momentum, ethanol and corn producers have a significant role to play in helping to protect our environment and helping to fulfill Canada’s responsibility to combat global warming. Corn farmers are growing not only the foods of the present: they are growing the fuels of the future.

Ethanol provides new markets for farmers and bolsters rural communities.

The growth of a domestic biofuels industry is good news for wheat and canola farmers in the west and corn and soybean farmers in the east. Farmers across our country will see higher prices for their crops and a better reward for their hard work. Moreover, the construction of as many as 20 new worldclass biofuels facilities means more than 14,000 new jobs for people in rural communities and an invigorated local economy in many rural areas.

In many ways, the future is now for ethanol. Demand is rising. Biofuels plants are becoming more efficient, using less energy and water and making ethanol even more economically and environmentally attractive in comparison to the oil generated from Alberta’s oil sands. And the federal government is investing upwards of $2-billion to produce more renewable fuels in Canada, and to help develop and commercialize nextgeneration renewable fuels technologies such
as cellulosic ethanol, which can be made from switchgrass, wood chips and other plant mass. In the coming years, we will produce ethanol fuel from corn, from cellulose and, in all likelihood, from other sources that have yet to be refined at this point.

High oil prices may be here to stay, but we needn’t be forever bound to pay them. Ethanol offers the way to reduced oil reliance, a better environment, a stronger rural Canada and a more sustainable energy future.