October 23, 2006

In more than a dozen events over the next five days, U.S. Sen. Dick Lugar is praising the embrace by Hoosiers of the “new realism” in American energy security.

“In just a few short months, Hoosier businesses and community leaders have embraced the new energy realism,” Lugar said. “The rapid growth of businesses and interest in developing businesses related to energy has been impressive. Polls show that 90 percent of Hoosiers think that developing alternative energy sources is very important to our national security and they support initiatives to expand the pro-jobs and pro-economic growth alternative energy sectors in Indiana.”

Lugar noted that “Hoosier service stations selling E85 (fuel that is 85 percent ethanol) have gone from one in 2005 to 43 today, with new stations being added all the time. There are still only 91,000 flexible fuel vehicles in the state that can use E85. But car companies and dealers are rapidly adding more flex-fuel vehicles to their product offerings. And polls show that three-fourths of Hoosiers would consider buying a flexible fuel car the next time they are in the market for a new car.

“For a quarter of a century, Indiana has had only one ethanol plant. Now there are more than a dozen under construction and at least that many more in planning phases. Ethanol and biodiesel plants can be a major part of a rural economic revolution in Indiana that would create thousands of jobs and strong economic growth.

“Indiana companies, universities and research consortiums are developing new automobile technologies. Our power companies are lighting the way with new clean coal technology. The state’s first wind farm is being planned for Benton County. And Fair Oaks Dairy is an example of the integration of farming and energy production that is the way of future.

“I am impressed by the number of innovative ways Hoosiers are entering into these exciting energy opportunities,” said Lugar. “I hope that the Lugar-Purdue Energy Summit held in August will stimulate even more opportunities and innovation. (see: “Senator Lugar’s Energy Plan”)”

This week, Lugar will tour the integrated farming and energy production facilities at Fair Oaks Dairy in Jasper County.

He will visit innovators in electricity generation including: Orion, the developers of a wind farm in Benton County; I-Power of Anderson, producers of advanced portable generators; Wabash River Energy, a clean coal power generating facility in Terre Haute; and Midwest ISO, the Carmel based nerve-center of the electrical grid for 15 states.

He will tour Altair Nanotechnologies, the Anderson company that is developing batteries for the next generation of hybrid cars, including plug-in technology.

Lugar will visit the Evergreen Renewables Soy-diesel processing plant in Hammond and the construction site of a new ethanol plant in Marion.

Lugar will also stop at several E-85 pumps to refuel a flex-fuel car, including stations in Lebanon, Reynolds and Noblesville.

More than a decade ago, Lugar began pushing for a national biomass ethanol research program. Witnesses at Agriculture Committee hearings he chaired from 1996 to 1999 said this would be the most efficient method to produce ethanol. In 1999, Lugar co-authored "The New Petroleum," in Foreign Affairs magazine, a seminal article that linked foreign policy and the high cost of securing foreign oil flowing to the United States with the development of homegrown ethanol derived from any form of cellulose. Lugar then authored and passed the Biomass Research and Development Act of 2000, which remains the nation’s premier legislation guiding renewable fuels research.

Lugar has advocated numerous pieces of legislation that would increase incentives for alternative energy. The bills include research on cellulosic ethanol, incentives to build biofuels plants and flex fuel cars, targets for increasing automobile fuel economy, assistance to retool the automobile industry to be produce the next generation vehicles, funding to develop the conversion of coal to liquid transportation fuel, incentives supporting the electric power industry’s development of environmentally friendly low-emission coal plants, and incentives for wind, solar and other alternative energies.

On the web:
The Lugar Energy Initiative http://lugar.senate.gov/energy
The Richard G. Lugar-Purdue University Summit on Energy Security http://lugar.senate.gov/energy/purdue

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