Vilsack Touts Ethanol and Wind Power Agreement

Vilsack Touts Ethanol and Wind Power Agreement plus Food Forethought. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Northwest Report.

The Idaho Public Utilities Commission has approved a 20-year sales agreement between an Iowa-based wind-power developer and Idaho Power. The agreement is with High Mesa Energy for a project that is expected to be operating in Bliss by late December.
Under the law, the rate paid to small-power producers cannot exceed what it would cost an electric utility to generate the power itself, because the revenue comes directly from customer rates.

Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack told the National Ethanol Conference in Orlando, Florida, the renewable fuel industry should be proud of its contributions to the nation’s economic, environment and energy security. And he says the past few years haven’t been easy.

VILSACK: You know we’ve had to play defense a bit and it’s been a very concerted and very organized effort here to undermine people’s confidence in this industry. First you weren’t energy efficient and the we said wait a second the new test indicate that our energy efficiency is better than petroleum. Then it was food versus fuel and wait a second, how can that possibly be when farmers only get 16 cents of every food dollar, who gets the other 84 cents? It’s people who package, process, refrigerate, store, transport, all those people use what? Oil. When oil goes up, food prices go up. It’s not us.

Now with today’s Food Forethought, here’s Lacy Gray.

According to a recent Pike Research survey consumer support for clean energy has declined significantly since 2009. Rather an unexpected response with the constant push for discovering and incorporating renewable forms of energy. The energy and environmental concepts addressed in the survey included, but were not limited to, solar energy, wind energy, biofuels, cap and trade, and carbon offsets. Respondents were asked to rate their level of support for each, as well as divulge their level of understanding for each concept. Not surprisingly solar power was viewed quite favorably by eighty percent of those questioned. Seventy-one percent of people were favorable of wind power, although there has been a drop in support for wind power in the last couple of years. Interestingly, on the flip side support for biofuels has fallen from fifty-six percent in 2009 to thirty-nine percent in 2011. Cap and trade, LEED certification, and carbon offsets and carbon credits all carry small numbers on both sides of the scale, leading one to venture a guess that a large majority of the population is still not comfortable enough with their knowledge on these concepts to give a definite yea or nay vote.

Thanks Lacy. That’s today’s Northwest Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.