Biofuels Industry Seeks Inclusion of Eethanol in Carbon Reduction Plans

Aug 09, 2021

The biofuels industry is casting doubt on the idea liquid fuel will be phased out anytime soon, but it’s also lobbying for ethanol and biodiesel to be included in carbon reduction plans.

President Biden was joined by Ford and GM executives yesterday as he announced a set of fuel efficiency standards, with the goal of having up to half of the vehicles sold in the U.S. be electric by 2030. Iowa Renewable Fuels Association executive director Monte Shaw refers to those kind of goals as aspirational.

“They aren’t all going to be purely EVs — electric vehicles,” Shaw said last weekend on “Iowa Press” on Iowa PBS. “Some of them will be what are called hybrid, where they still do have a liquid-powered engine and no one you talk to thinks it can happen that fast.”

Shaw suggested a vehicle in Iowa that’s burning gas with 85% ethanol today likely has a lower carbon footprint than an electric vehicle, because 25% of the electricity in Iowa is generated from coal.

“The corn plant sucks carbon out of the air,” Shaw said. “An EV doesn’t do that so we actually have a pathway where in the next 10 years we think we can get…actually net negative carbon fuel.”

Kelly Niewenhaus, a farmer from Primghar who is on the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, said the other obstacle is there’s no nationwide grid to support electric vehicles.

“We’ve got the infrastructure today for more biofuels and to clean up our environment today and lower our greenhouse gas emissions and be the solution for climate change, so why not do that?” Niewenhaus asked.

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Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.