Des Moines Register
10-26-06
To boldly go where no biofuel has gone
Iowa can lead the future of alternative energy, but it will take courage, a top
researcher says.
By ANNE FITZGERALD
Register AGRIBUSINESS Writer
Robert Brown says Iowa can become the envy of an energy-hungry world, but
the state must be bold to do so.
A mechanical engineer and director of the Office of Biorenewables
Programs at Iowa State University, Brown is a beacon in the biorenewable
energy industry. He has helped lead the campaign to put Iowa and its land-grant
university at the center of the national push to produce fuel from crops and other
alternatives to petroleum.
Brown spoke Wednesday in Ames at a symposium focused on the growing
industry's impact on agriculture and the rural economy, co-sponsored by the
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Iowa Bankers Association and the Iowa
Department of Economic Development. The Register interviewed Brown about
the industry's promise and pitfalls.
Q. How would you characterize the state of the biorenewables industry?
A. Right now, it's very healthy. It's growing quickly. I do think we'll see ups and
downs. It's inevitable. They talk about the burst of the dot-com era, but aren't we
better for it?
Q. What's at stake for Iowa?
A. We can do the same thing with renewable fuels that California did with the
Internet boom, but that's not a given. That's a transforming event in the economy
of our state. ... Sometimes, we've got too modest of aspirations, and sometimes
we're too conservative in our investment, in our vision for ourselves.
Q. What are the potential risks and benefits?
A. The benefits are that we become more than an agricultural state. We become
a major energy producer. We become a major political force, other than every
four years with the caucuses. We have the opportunity to become a major force
in academic research. We have the opportunity to have direct flights to every
state in the United States. ... We have the opportunity not just to be the flyover
state.
Q. What can the business community do to help build this industry?
A. I think they're already doing it. They are expanding research and development
to expand into cellulosic renewable fuels. They're talking to our political leaders
about how to make a climate that's conducive to expansion, and they appear to
be exploring every opportunity to build new plants in this state.
Q. What can state government do?
A. We are going to have to do things that make us competitive. We are holding
this summit on Nov. 28 to try to delineate what the state needs to do, both in
terms of policy and in terms of investment.
The renewable fuels industry is going to stall out unless we go to E85 vehicles in
a bigger way than we have. This is self-serving, but we have to invest in the
research infrastructure that we can offer to industry and to federal agencies.
Q. Iowa State has established itself as a leader in this arena, and yet you have
said that no single university, no single company, will have all the answers or all
the resources necessary to build this business. What should Iowa and ISU focus
on?
A. I think that the question is: What are the appropriate strategic partnerships for
Iowa? We are still working through them. There may be different partnerships for
different segments of the industry.
Q. Do falling crude oil prices jeopardize this campaign?
A. Only if they are long term, because we could have a repeat of the 1980s. We
had a run-up in prices during the oil crises, in the 1970s and the 1980s, then a
drop in prices, and people lost interest in energy and alternative energy sources.
If that happens now, it'll come back to haunt us eventually.