INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — The timing couldn’t have been much more perfect; one day before last week’s Indiana Ethanol Forum, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) approved the first applications for registration of ethanol for use in making an E15 blend of gasoline and ethanol.

More than a year ago, the agency expanded approval for use of E15 in vehicles as old as model year 2001 (excluding off-road vehicles and gas-powered equipment). The EPA’s latest news April 2 came with a stated goal from the Obama administration to help gas station owners install 10,000 blender pumps over the next five years.

The agency has done its part, said Bob Dinneen, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Assoc. (RFA), at the April 3 ethanol forum in Indianapolis. Now, he explained, it’s industry marketers’ job to advance the availability and sale of the 15 percent ethanol-to-gasoline blend to drivers who can legally use it. They’re already fueling with E10 (a 10 percent blend) almost everywhere.

Despite this green-light from the EPA, “it’s not easy being an ethanol advocate in D.C. today,” Dinneen said, adding there are those in federal government who question ethanol’s usefulness despite its manufacturing industry having met all goals the feds set for it, and 400,000 jobs created from it. He lamented he’s “sick and tired” of defending the merits of ethanol to detractors.

Farmers’ gains

For one, Dinneen explained, corn ethanol has improved growers’ lot. The $2 or so they had been getting for each corn bushel for decades was not sustainable nor conducive to keeping young people on the farm; he complained rural areas were “hemorrhaging talent” and jobs to more urban settings.

With the help of ethanol and, subsequently, corn closer to $6, he pointed out U.S. farm income topped $100 billion last year. “We’ve been able to do this without creating havoc for other sectors of the economy,” he said.

In turn, farmers have reinvested the additional income into better growing technology and equipment over several years, boosting ancillary agriculture business economies. “We’ve all benefited,” Dinneen said.

While corn growers are getting a “fair price” and are no longer “subsidizing the meat industry” with $2 corn and livestock producer organizations have expressed opposition to expanded ethanol as driving up feed prices, he said he’s met very few individual livestock farmers who are opposed to the production of ethanol. Dinneen believes much of the opposition in that industry stems from livestock trade associations themselves.

(Incidentally, there appeared to be no press releases issued last week by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Assoc., the National Chicken Council or the National Pork Producers Council on the latest EPA announcement, though all had expressed disappointment with the agency’s expanded approval of E15 usage in January 2011.)

Along the way, Dinneen said farmers and pro-ethanol groups such as the RFA have had to reshape the biofuel’s message to accommodate attacks on the industry, to show ethanol is something in which farmers themselves invest, too, and which benefits them. This included watching the longtime federal blender’s credit expire last year.

“I give our industry great credit,” he said, explaining ethanol players reevaluated this subsidy a year ago, in light of cuts needing to be made in the federal budget, and came to the conclusion “a belt and suspenders” weren’t both needed – meaning, the subsidy as one and the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) as the other – to support the industry.

With the RFS mandate in place, which he calls the single most important economic policy the country has had, Dinneen said ethanol manufacturing could better afford to let the blender credit die. Wryly, he said he wishes the petroleum industry would adopt a similar attitude toward federal tax credits for Big Oil.

Consumers need to be empowered by a choice of fuels at the pump, Dinneen said. That means making more blender pumps available, which gives each gasoline user the choice of everything from E10 to E85, that’s best for their vehicle. It also means, he said, recognizing the “food versus fuel” debate about corn usage has been going on for longer than the last several years – in fact, he can remember it back to 1979.

What drives up food prices, he said, has been established: a combination of increased demand, speculation on commodity prices in the marketplace and higher oil prices for transport. Biofuel usage, he said, is negligible in this respect.

What the ethanol industry should be telling consumers, Dinneen added, is that seven years ago the United States was 60 percent dependent on imported fuel; now, that’s down to 45 percent. Even Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who also spoke at the forum, said energy security like this is the most persuasive case for manufacturing biofuel.

And this lessened dependence to date has not been about hydraulic fracturing or tar-sand or shale oil, or the new ability to tap more petroleum in the Dakotas, said Dinneen; he asserted it’s largely because of ethanol. According to RFA statistics 25 years ago, the United States produced just over 800 million gallons of ethanol annually; last year, that was up to nearly 14 billion.

“You need to drive that home with folks every chance you get,” he told Indiana ethanol and farming representatives at the forum.

“In addition,” the EPA stated last week, “both through the Recovery Act and the 2008 farm bill, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and U.S. Department of Agriculture have provided grants, loans and loan guarantees to spur American ingenuity on the next generation of biofuels.”

This includes cellulosic ethanol, another of RFA’s umbrella interests, whose development has been slower than hoped for the past few years. Dinneen said the 2008 banking and economic collapse made it difficult for regular people to qualify for small auto loans – let alone entrepreneurs wanting to open cellulosic ethanol plants to garner a $400 million loan.