The American Coalition for Ethanol held elections for their board of directors at their meeting yesterday and the new board includes four from POET. Bob Scott of POET Ethanol Products continues as President, while POET CEO Jeff Broin is treasurer. Howard Roe of POET Biorefining - Coon Rapids and Lars Herseth from POET Biorefining - Big Stone also made the list.
On Tuesday, POET CEO Jeff Broin participated in the launch of Growth Energy, a new group of America's ethanol producers dedicated to growing America's economy through cleaner, greener energy. The launch was at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
As proof that the group wants to be an agressive, fresh voice in the energy debate, Growth Energy's first initiative as to challenge the Grocery Manufacturer's Association (GMA) to explain their deceptive attacks on biofuels earlier this year. The GMA had claimed that because ethanol's impact on food prices had caused them to raise their prices to the consumers. But corn has lost more than 50 percent of its value in the past four months and food prices are continuing to rise, proving their claim false.
In a white paper, Growth Energy indicated that the GMA faced a difficult choice: admit they were wrong about ethanol being the leading driver of food costs (and keep today's high prices), or stick to their script (and lower their prices appropriately).
At this point, there hasn't been much from the GMA and they certainly haven't answered that qutesion. A food industry economist said that food prices have an 18-24 month lag, which is a point they conveniently left out when corn prices were on the way up. Here's a video the new organization played during the launch:
Poet has a huge advantage over all the venture-capital-backed startups tweaking biological innovations to be among the first to sell cellulosic ethanol or some form of
biomass-derived gasoline or diesel fuel. In 21 years of producing
ethanol, Poet has continually improved its process; today Broin says
that over that time his company has reduced by half the amount of
energy needed to produce a gallon of ethanol, from 60,000 Btu of
natural gas to 30,000 Btu.
The UN Private Sector Forum recently attended by POET CEO Jeff Broin issued their meeting report and it contains some good information about biofuels. On page 30 of the document (pdf), it says:
Biofuel production can harness agricultural growth for broader rural development, reducing poverty and the drain on government budgets to pay for fossil energy imports, particularly in developing countries where 75% of the world's poor depend on agriculture for their livelihoods, and where many of the 2.5 billion that rely on traditional use of biomass live.
Regarding higher commodity prices, it noted that higher prices may help raise farm incomes in developing countries and encourage farmers to produce more food, which may in turn increase the availability of food over the medium to long term.
That was exactly the message that Broin delivered to the group when it met back in September. As for the role that private companies can play, the document had this as one of their suggested actions: work on new technologies that help increase resource efficiency. That is something POET excels at and is passionate about. We look forward to playing a role in making biofuels an important part of the UN's Millennium Development Goals.
