Ethanol industry seeks pandemic relief, renewable fuel standard update - Entrepreneur Generations

The oil and ethanol industries, long at odds with each other, are both hurting from decreased energy demand during the pandemic, but ethanol producers—and some rural voters in ethanol states—may be feeling left out in the cold by the Trump administration and Senate Republicans.

The Environmental Protection Agency "has surpassed the deadline by one month to release proposed 2021 renewable volume obligations in the Renewable Fuel Standard, an important market driver for biofuels," Todd Neeley reports for DTN/The Progressive Farmer. "And while congressional leaders continue to hammer out details on a new round of covid-19 stimulus that may include relief for ethanol producers this time, President Donald Trump was in west Texas on Wednesday touting the oil industry on a fundraising stop."

Though the Senate Republicans' $1 trillion pandemic relief bill provides $20.5 billion in broad funding to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, none of it is specifically earmarked for the ethanol industry. In contrast, the House-passed HEROES Act authorized $33 billion in agricultural spending, and "would establish the Renewable Fuel Reimbursement Program," Neeley reports. "It would provide a 45-cent per-gallon payment for feedstock purchases made by biofuels producers from Jan. 1, 2020, through May 1, 2020."

Trump should worry that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is now trailing him in rural Iowa by only 9 points, when Trump carried that voting bloc by nearly 30 points in 2016, former lieutenant governor Patty Judge, a Democrat, wrote in an op-ed for The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The trade war and biofuel industry dive are a big part of the reason why, she wrote. 

from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/30ZNFkU Ethanol industry seeks pandemic relief, renewable fuel standard update - Entrepreneur Generations

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