Ethanol is Fueling America’s Quest for Energy Independence

April 9, 2007

Congresswoman Deborah Pryce (R-Columbus) submitted the following editorial:

The need for energy independence is no longer a lofty and noble calling – it is an economic and national security imperative, as new dangers posed by our over-reliance upon fossil fuels avail themselves every day. The vast majority of the world’s oil supplies comes from the most unstable, unpredictable, and antagonistic location on Earth. Fossil fuels are finite in quantity and often environmentally harmful in quality. America no longer has the bargaining power it once did as OPEC’s top customer; today we are competing for these precious drops of oil with the exploding middle class economies in China and India, and their growing appetites for automobiles.

While the threats posed by our overdependence on oil have been widely recognized for years, we have been largely obstinate in altering our energy consumption habits. In 2006, the top two selling cars were, in fact, not cars, but were trucks, both of which average under 20 miles per gallon. For humans to willfully change our ingrained behavior we typically require an epiphany or tipping point – in the past few years, we’ve been handed scores of them: rolling blackouts, volatile gas prices, turmoil in the oil producing nations of the Middle East, and budget busting winter heating bills. America needed to become serious about its pursuit of a renewable energy source, and in its Energy Policy Act of 2005, Congress provided the necessary carrot and stick solution – and today, we are witnessing a renewable energy revolution in ethanol.

For decades, we have heard about the merits of ethanol, and of its potential to fuel America’s quest for energy independence. Yet, for those of us in central Ohio who have lived our lives in close proximity to endless acres of corn fields, we have never sensed that this is somehow the equivalent to discovering that your home is sitting atop an enormous oil well; rather, the promise of ethanol has for too long remained just that – a promise. The Energy Policy Act has changed that.

In the Energy Policy Act, C ongress tripled the amount of ethanol that must be mixed with gasoline sold in the United States –upping the requirement to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012. Expounding upon that bold directive, during his State of the Union address the President proposed cutting our nation’s gas consumption by 20% over the next decade, much of which could be achieved by offering $2 billion in loans for the creation of cellulosic ethanol plants.

Rare is the policy that can be declared win-win for both the environment and the economy, but the new federal ethanol directives deliver for both. Ethanol burns cleaner than gasoline, and therefore reduces smog pollution. It is completely renewable, it’s domestically produced and it degrades quickly in water, therefore posing a much reduced risk to the environment than an oil or gasoline spill. And equally important, every drop of ethanol that is used in vehicles results in a corresponding reduced reliance upon the oil rich nations of the Middle East.

The confluence of these federal directives has been an indisputable boon to Ohio’s corn growers, as rising corn prices have quickly followed the federal carrot placed before farmers. According to the USDA, Ohio farmers will plant 16% more corn this year, and nationally, corn production will be greater than any year since 1944. Locally, the spin-off industrial jobs, created to meet the increased demands for ethanol refinery production, are already afoot. We will soon see ethanol plants – with a combined refining capacity of more than 360 million gallons – in Fayette County, Marion, Newark and Lancaster.

The most important challenge of our generation may be to create a clean-energy economy. I am proud to report that the first affirmative step to this end is already evident. Is ethanol a panacea to America’s energy needs? Of course not. But for the first time in recent history, federal energy policy has significantly impacted America’s energy consumption habits, and has taken us one momentous step toward energy independence.

Back to Deborah's Views 2007