Son of Iowa governor says Renewable Fuel Standard is our presidential candidate. Archer Daniels Midland, Poet, and Valero are largest US ethanol producers-AP

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Jan. 2015 article

"(Iowa Gov.) Branstad helped launch a new organization called America's Renewable Future, led by his son Eric Branstad, a GOP political strategist, and Democratic strategist Derek Eadon, who was state director for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign." 

1/22/15, "Iowa ethanol lobby starts 2016 campaign to regain influence," AP via Fuel Fix

"Renewable-fuels advocates are promising to spend millions putting ethanol back in the debate for Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucus next year as cheap oil and setbacks in biofuels policy make the additive less central to voters.

Iowa Governor Terry Branstad, backed by state corn-grower and renewable-fuels associations and the Washington-based biofuels lobby Growth Energy, on Thursday formed America’s Renewable Future, to make the Renewable Fuels Standard an issue in the 2016 race. The Iowa caucus is set for early January.

“We are designing it to look like a presidential campaign, but the RFS is our candidate,” said Eric Branstad, the governor’s son and a group organizer. “We’re going to be talking to people” and making the presidential candidates respond, he said on a conference call.

Ethanol companies are wrestling with prices near a 10-year low as crude oil and gasoline plunge. The need to lobby in the nation’s No. 1 producing state contrasts with a time when support was automatic, said Dee Davis, president of the Center for Rural Strategies in Whitesburg, Kentucky.

“We’re a country awash in cheap energy right now,” Davis said in a telephone interview. “The marketplace is not being kind to them, so they need to increase the drumbeat for their policies at a time when fewer people care as much about them.”

Ethanol was pushed to help farmers cope with low corn prices more than a decade ago. Domestic production has climbed 88 percent since a 2007 law to boost use of renewable fuels, Energy Department data show.

The pace of growth has slowed and Congress has declined to renew the subsidies. Projections for using more so-called cellulosic ethanol never materialized. Gasoline pump prices at the lowest since April 2009 make ethanol less desirable.

Denatured ethanol for February delivery on the Chicago Board of Trade this month fell to the lowest price since June 2005. Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. (ADM), in Chicago, is the largest U.S. ethanol producer, followed by Poet LLC, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp. (VLO)."

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Jan. 2015 article

1/22/15, "Two Branstads vow to 'educate' presidential hopefuls on RFS," Des Moines Register, Jennifer Jacobs

"Iowa leaders on Thursday threw down a warning to presidential candidates about the renewable fuel standard.

"We're not going to prejudge any of the candidates from either party," Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad said at a news conference at the Iowa Capitol. "We want to educate them. We want them to support this because it's important for Iowa. It's important for America. It's important for jobs."...

Iowa advocates say the need for the mandate boils down to a matter of market access. Biofuels and gasoline compete for a place in cars' gas tanks. Without the RFS, which specifies how much ethanol and biodiesel must be mixed into the country's motor fuel supply, the petroleum industry would lock renewable fuels out of the market, they argue. The issue is important in Iowa, the nation's leader in corn and soybean production, because ethanol is made primarily from corn, and biodiesel is made from soybeans and other feedstocks.

On Thursday, Branstad helped launch a new organization called America's Renewable Future, led by his son Eric Branstad, a GOP political strategist, and Democratic strategist Derek Eadon, who was state director for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign. They're pulling together Democratic and Republican influencers who will use their clout in Iowa, home of the first-in-the-nation vote in the presidential nomination process, to secure a safe future for the federal mandate."...

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Ben Carson in Iowa says he favors the ethanol industry: 

5/10/15, Ben Carson: Let’s slash Big Oil to pay for ethanol

5/6/15, Carson in Iowa: Use oil subsidies for ethanol
 
Al Gore admitted in 2010 he knew ethanol was a terrible idea, but pretended to favor it to get the Iowa vote:

11/22/2010, "US corn ethanol "was not a good policy-Gore," Reuters. Al Gore: ""First generation ethanol I think was a mistake....It's hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going....One of the reasons I made that mistake is that...I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.""...




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