After Iowa’s Year Of Firsts, What’s Next With Biofuels?

Here in Iowa, corn is king. It’s no secret that Iowa is proud of being the top producer of corn in the United States.

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Such pride can be seen in the push to create cleaner fuels, in which we have seen a lot of progress in the last year. Last May, Iowa was the first state to require the sale of E15 ethanol blends in its gas stations.

Mark Mueller, chair of the Political Action Committee for Iowa Corn Growers reflected on accomplishments made this year with biofuels.

Our biggest accomplishment, which took a few years, actually happened this year with the passage of the Governor’s biofuels bill. We've been working on that one for a few years and did a lot of lobbying. And it finally came through at the federal level. President Biden came to Iowa this year and issued a proclamation allowing E15 (year-round sales in 2022)

So, what’s next for biofuels?

Doug Berven with POET, a global leader in biofuels, says that they still working towards making E15 the national standard in our fuel supply. Today, 10 percent of our gasoline is made up of bioethanol.

POET currently has 12 bioprocessing facilities in Iowa. They have signed a letter of intent to hook 18 of their processing facilities in Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota, up with the Navigator Pipeline system.

We'll be taking grain and we'll be processing that grain into feed into bioethanol and to all the different products that we're making today, and we'll be capturing that Co2. We'll be putting that Co2 in a pipeline that pipeline will run to Illinois, and it'll sequester it forever underground. So that reduces our carbon intensity at the ethanol plants which is going to be a major benefit for agriculture going forward.

Navigator Co2 Ventures is one of three proposed pipelines in Iowa. Earlier this month, the company made headlines after lawsuits were filed against Iowa counties for recent ordinances.