Today in Biofuels Opinion: “Congress and state legislatures are exaggerating the potential of renewable energy.”

Merle Anderson, co-founder of the American Coalition for Ethanol:  “I thought it would take one-and-a-half years to get things done but now its been 22 years for me. We’ve been successful in creating production. We haven’t worried enough about selling the product, and we have got to solve this if the industry is going to move forward.”

From the Duluth New Tribune: “Congress and state legislatures, including Minnesota’s, are exaggerating the potential of renewable energy, especially from wind, solar and biofuels. The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 calls for 15 billion gallons of ethanol from corn by 2015. That would require 6 billion bushels of corn — or half of the nation’s annual 12 billion bushel corn crop, which uses about 80 million planted acres. That means the ethanol produced from 40 million of those acres would replace 7.5 percent of our annual gasoline consumption. Dedicating 40 million prime acres of cropland to produce a small percentage of our transportation fuel hurts the environment, and it won’t bring energy independence.”

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