Energy bill just the start of needed change

August 21, 2005
By Rep. Tim Johnson

On Tuesday, I'll be at the Jiffy Mart in Marshall. Normally, that is not information anybody would find very compelling. But it is relevant today because I'll be there to help promote E-85, the ethanol blend that is 85 percent derived from corn -- our corn, our renewable energy and our deliverance from this self-defeating reliance on foreign oil.

The offering at Jiffy Mart, the first E-85 offering in Clark County , is especially meaningful given that we are all paying around $2.75 a gallon for gasoline. E-85 is typically about 40 cents cheaper a gallon.

The 15th Congressional District is some 380 square miles, from Eldorado on the south to Dwight on the north. I see all of it, all of the time, and it's why I have to change cars every two years. So the high gas prices are not just an abstract problem facing a few of my constituents. Gas prices are a problem for everybody, myself included.

Over the last couple of weeks in particular, calls to my offices have been unrelenting on the subject of higher gasoline prices. I sympathize. I want something done about it, too, and you can bet the other 434 members of Congress are hearing about it, too.

The energy bill we passed last month is a start. It will not change things overnight. And the bill is not everything I wanted in many ways. In fact, if it were voted on today instead of a month ago, when gas prices were closer to $2 a gallon, we may have been able to include higher fuel efficiency standards for vehicles that I argued for, albeit unsuccessfully.

However, for whatever flaws exist, it is an important beginning that over time will loosen the tethers that bind us to Mideast oil.

World events are driving the necessity for alternative answers. And they're coming.

Efficiencies in the production of ethanol have improved to the point where producers are getting around 2.8 gallons of ethanol per bushel compared with 2.3 gallons 10 years ago.

Farmers can get 575 gallons of ethanol an acre per year. That's 14 barrels an acre. And it grows back every year.

Ethanol now accounts for only 3 percent or 4 percent of domestic gasoline consumption. New biofuel technologies, bolstered by tax credits and other incentives installed in the energy bill, could boost that proportion to 25 percent.

Illinois alone now accounts for 28 percent of all U.S. ethanol production, according to the Illinois Corn Growers Association, based in Bloomington .

There are seven plants now producing 800 million gallons a year, and at last count, 13 more plants planned or under construction.

Moreover, six biodiesel plants are being planned in the state, all arising, at least in part, from the incentives created by the energy bill.

Other provisions of the bill address rising gas prices by encouraging more domestic production through a streamlined permit process and encouraging the production of cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

New incentives also exist for clean coal technologies, wind, solar and hydroelectricity.

Our nation will benefit, and Illinois in particular will greatly benefit, from these new policies.

Granted, this legislation is long overdue. In many ways, it does not go far enough. In many ways, it is top-heavy with corporate subsidies.

In the long view, it should be viewed as the genesis of a transformative, consumer-friendly, environmentally friendly turning point in energy policy, one that was reached with bipartisan consensus and that, most importantly, will move us closer to the independence that our nation's prosperity depends upon.