Governors' Biofuels Coalition

Three more Minnesota ethanol companies reported their quarterly earnings this week. Two of them lost money, and a third barely stayed in the black. Six of Minnesota’s 21 ethanol plants are owned by companies that disclose detailed ethanol-related financial results. With three other companies already having reported, the score for their latest quarter is in: Five of six didn’t turn a profit.

EPA has approved a plan submitted by the industry to address residual fuel that may be left in gas pumps that offer both E15, or gasoline blended with 15 percent ethanol, and other fuels. That step “knocks down the lone, significant regulatory hurdle standing in the way of getting E15 into the marketplace,” trade groups Growth Energy and Renewable Fuels Association said.

A surge in domestic oil and natural gas production and a decline in national political support for grain-fed biofuels threatens to cripple Iowa’s more than $20 billion renewable energy industry just as it has matured into a major force in the state’s economy

Governor Terry Branstad took another shot at the oil industry and what he and biofuel supporters see as a campaign by Big Oil to hold back the development of renewable energy. “The petroleum industry has a lot of resources, and they don’t want to share the market with renewables,” Branstad told a crowd gathered in his conference room at the state Capitol before the governor signed a proclamation designating Friday as “Ethanol Day” in Iowa

Like a proud college graduate, Iowa’s youthful renewable energy industry has set out into the real world just in time to learn how tough the energy business can be.

In dueling economic speeches today from different corners of the key presidential battleground of Ohio, presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney and President Obama agreed that the road back to American prosperity will be built in large part on jobs and growth in the energy industry.

When Feike Sijbesma talks about the reasons his company joined forces with ethanol maker POET, his eyes light up. “What we are doing is transforming a fossil-based economy, going from a fossil age to a bio age,” the CEO of Royal DSM says. And, he doesn’t quit there

U.S. EPA’s forthcoming new standards for the amount of sulfur in gasoline will not boost the price at the pump for consumers as industry has claimed, according to an economic study to be released today. At issue are so-called Tier 3 air pollution standards for tailpipes that the agency is expected to propose this year and finalize in 2013 at the earliest. The agency is expected to lower the sulfur limit in gasoline from 30 parts per million to 10 ppm, a move that will bring it in line with Japan and the European Union and, the agency says, lead to significant health benefits.

The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new national air quality standards that would significantly reduce levels of fine-particle soot. The rule, to be announced on Friday, would reduce the range of fine particulates allowed in the atmosphere by roughly 17 percent, according to an agency official who spoke on condition of anonymity, and Paul G. Billings, a vice president of the American Lung Association, who said he had been briefed on the standard by Obama administration officials.

Ethanol gained for a second day in Chicago on speculation that a sputtering U.S. economy will lead the Federal Reserve to loosen monetary policy.