Green Plains Renewable Energy INC. (GPRE)

[AnimalMother]

Setting the record straight: Ethanol is best solution

http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/article/20110519/OPINION03/105190314/Setting-record-straight-Ethanol-best-solution?odyssey=nav|head

May 19, 2011

If Jack Koschnick wants a long-term solution to our energy crisis, then he should embrace the lowest-cost transportation fuel available today: domestic ethanol ("Relying on ethanol creates more problems than it solves," May 10).

Like many of ethanol's critics, Mr. Koschnick has elected, for whatever his reasons, to eliminate critical facts from his equation. More egregious is his elimination of the fact that ethanol plants also produce animal feed products. Importantly, all of corn's high-value components, protein and fat, are returned to the feed supply. Ethanol production only converts the low-value component of corn, starch, into ethanol.

Koschnick's claim that ethanol is driving up food prices has been disproven over and over again. Most recently by the World Bank, which reversed its 2008 stance on ethanol's impact on world food costs. Instead, it showed that the highest impact on rising food prices rests squarely on the shoulders of higher prices for oil, used in processing, packaging and transporting food products.

Why should we invest in ethanol? Because ethanol burns 59 percent cleaner than conventional gasoline. It creates U.S. jobs and keeps American money here, instead of shipping it overseas. Ethanol also reduces our dependence on foreign oil -- often from countries that are hostile to American interests and values.

Ethanol is already available, commercially viable and the technology for producing ethanol and its co-products is rapidly advancing. I agree we need a solution for today's challenges and tomorrow's ... and that solution is ethanol.

Mark Borer

Ottawa

Editor's note: Borer is president of Ohio Ethanol Producers Association and general manager, POET Biorefining, Leipsic.