By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

LEIPSIC, Ohio — The U.S.  Environmen-tal Protection Agency (EPA) announcement allowing E15 – consisting of 15 percent ethanol and 85 percent gasoline – to be used in newer model vehicles is a huge step for the nation, said Mark Borer, POET Biorefining-Leipsic general manager.

Ethanol is a growing industry; increased usage adds economic benefits and provides jobs for U.S. citizens, he said. Ethanol is a clean-burning fuel and has the ability to reduce the United States’ dependence on foreign oil.

The EPA’s ruling Oct. 13 affects 2007 and later model-year (MY) autos, or slightly fewer than 20 percent of the vehicles on the road. The EPA is currently testing MY2001-06 model year cars and a similar ruling affecting those cars is expected in November or December. That would be well in excess of half of the vehicles on the road, and that would affect demand. “What we expect to come out of this is for the market to grow so there will be new investment resulting in new jobs using the increasingly abundant yields that we’re getting from each acre (of corn) every year,” Borer said.
“What we’re going to continue to do is grow the whole industry.”

Borer said POET expects to see E15 at the pumps toward the end of the first quarter of 2011. The tank will be labeled E15, just as diesel pumps are now labeled regular and biodiesel, he said.

“We’re not thinking every station is going to put in a new tank and a new pump,” he said. “If they’ve got six pumps now to distribute the gasoline, they may take one or two of them or all of them and make them E15.”

POET believes there will be enough demand and since distributers and retailers of gasoline are customer-driven, from a business standpoint they will want to use E15.

Once that demand increases, corn ethanol will be the bridge to the cellulosic technology POET is currently advancing, Borer said.
The company has 27 plants producing about 1.7 billion gallons of ethanol every year. It expects to be producing about 3.5 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol in the future.

Although corn yields keep increasing, there is a finite amount of corn, Borer said. Yet the federal government has said this country must be using 36 billion gallons of alternative renewable fuel by 2022 – right now, that usage stands at 10 percent, or E10.

“What we’re going to do is produce a portion of that,” Borer said. “We believe it will be in excess of 15 billion gallons, and then we’re going to start producing ethanol from other sources. Our POET’s chosen feedstock is going to be the corncob and some of the husk that surrounds the corncob.”

Livestock producers are concerned E15 will raise the price of corn, Borer said. Corn yields continue to increase and feed manufacturers say that will continue. The ethanol industry is providing a market for that excess corn.

If nobody were to provide that market, it would continually depress the price of corn, he opined.

“From that perspective, years ago they were paying $2 for a bushel of corn – the farmer was losing money, so the government paid the farmer. That was a better model for them,” he said.

“What we’re doing now is using the corn the farmer is growing so it gives a demand to the supply-demand curve, which raises the price somewhat. Not that anybody is getting rich, but were it depressed, some would be better off.”