Free Republic

In 2007, the U.S. Congress mandated the blending of biofuels such as corn-based ethanol into gasoline. One of the top goals: reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But today, the nation´s ethanol plants produce more than double the climate-damaging pollution, per gallon of fuel production capacity, than the nation´s oil refineries, according to a Reuters analysis of federal data. The average ethanol plant chuffed out 1,187 metric tons of carbon emissions per million gallons of fuel capacity in 2020, the latest year data is available. The average oil refinery, by contrast, produced 533 metric tons of carbon. The ethanol plants´ high emissions...

Since 1988, Ron Fagen's firm has built about two-thirds of the U.S. capacity. The Minnesotan invested in plants, too, and has a huge stake in the industry. Ron Fagen, CEO of Fagen Inc. Ethanol wasn't on Fagen's radar until 1988, when his firm added ethanol-making equipment to the Minnesota Corn Processors' wet mill in Marshall -- the oldest operating corn ethanol plant in Minnesota. Throughout the 1990s, Minnesota was the cradle of the ethanol industry under a state subsidy program that virtually guaranteed banks wouldn't lose money if they financed an ethanol plant. Still, growth was slow and the plants...