As America strives for energy independence, Congress is working renewable fuels into its energy legislation.

Last summer, both the House and the Senate passed versions of energy bills and will attempt to send a final version to President Bush's desk later this year. But with Congress focused on the war in Iraq, energy legislation has been pushed further down on the agenda. Meanwhile, those negotiating the final bill will have to strike a balance between competing interest groups, ranging from farmers to ranchers to environmentalists.

Both energy bills include provisions to boost ethanol development and encourage research on cellulosic ethanol. However, they included competing elements on a range of other issues. And even if the differences between the House and Senate bills can be reconciled in committee, the final bill will still face one more hurdle -- President Bush has threatened to veto the House version.

The House and Senate bills
When the Senate passed its energy package by a 65-27 vote in June, a requirement to increase fuel economy standards for cars grabbed most of the headlines. But the bill also included a renewable fuels mandate, saying fuel distributors must produce 8.5 billion gallons of ethanol by 2008 and 36 billion by 2022, a seven-fold increase over 2006.

The bill also would require 3 billion gallons to come from advanced biofuels by 2016, increasing to 21 billion gallons in 2022. Today, almost all ethanol in the United States comes from corn; advanced biofuels would include cellulosic ethanol -- made from fast-growing trees, switch grass, or wood chips -- biobuthanol and other fuels from "unconventional biomass feedstocks." To date, however, cellulosic ethanol is still in the development stages and no large-scale production plants exist.

The Senate bill also included investments in biofuel infrastructure that would make renewable fuels more readily available to consumers at the gas pump, as well as increased funding for bioenergy research and development. Finally, to jumpstart the automobile industry, the bill would require the secretary of transportation to ensure that 50 percent of vehicles sold will run on 85 percent biofuels by 2015.

On the House side, the bill that passed 241-172 in August did not include higher fuel efficiency standards or strict mandates for renewable energy use. It did include incentives for alternative fuel production and grants to study ethanol pipelines, install pumps for E85 fuel and increase cellulosic ethanol production.

Unlike the Senate bill, the House bill contained a contentious renewable energy standard that would force utilities companies to make electricity from sources such as wind, solar, geothermal and other non-fossil fuel sources.

President Bush has threatened to veto the House measure, saying it would lead to less domestic energy production, higher energy costs and higher taxes.

Competing Interests
The renewable fuel components of the energy bills rekindled debate over ethanol's feasibility as a replacement for oil, as well as its impact on other industries. (For more information, see ethanol article.) Congress already subsidizes ethanol in the form of a 51-cent tax credit per gallon for ethanol blenders and imposes a 54-cent tariff on each gallon of imported ethanol.

If Congress mandates increases in ethanol production, the impact will be felt beyond the gas pump. Because of that, lobbyists have lined up to defend their industries. Renewable fuel provisions pit corn growers against livestock owners, the natural gas industry has cautioned against ethanol mandates, and environmentalists debate whether this is the right direction for the future of energy policy.

The farmer vs. livestock owner debate stems from the fact that most of the ethanol currently produced in America comes from corn, but livestock producers also use this corn to feed their cattle, pigs and poultry.

The National Corn Grower's Association maintains that America's corn farmers can grow enough corn to fuel ethanol production without creating a food supply problem. "There simply is no conflict between producing corn food needs and producing corn for biofuels," reads a NCGA release.

On the other side of the debate, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association lobbies against increases in the renewable fuels standard (RFS) included in the Senate bill. Earlier this year, the association passed a resolution urging Congress to let both the blender's tax and the import tariff expire. The National Chicken Council also wants Congress to "take action to restore the balance in the equation between food and fuel" by scaling back the RFS because it drives up the cost of feeding chickens. The turkey and pork industries have lobbied for the same reasons.

Representatives of the ethanol industry certainly are not silent. Many trade organizations, including the American Coalition for Ethanol and the Renewable Fuels Association, have petitioned together to support legislation encouraging ethanol production and research into cellulosic ethanol.

Renewable Fuels Association president Bob Dinneen said the Senate bill "strikes the right balance between building on the progress the U.S. ethanol industry has achieved and providing the incentives necessary to realize the full potential of the industry in the future."

The domino effect of ethanol continues into the natural gas sector, where increased demand for ethanol will also increase demand for natural gas, a commodity that is on the "bleeding edge of a supply imbalance," according to Marc Smith, the executive director of the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States, or IPAMS.

IPAMS fought the House version of the bill because it would roll back some of the provisions in the 2005 Energy Act that helped natural gas producers in the Rocky Mountain region while increasing demand for natural gas.

"Biofuels require natural gas throughout their life cycle. You use fertilizer to grow corn. Fertilizer needs natural gas. We will need more natural gas to meet fertilizer demand," said Smith. "We are for renewable energy but we can't see how reducing the domestic energy supply is going to help us become less reliant on foreign supplies of energy."

Smith found little fault with the Senate bill.

Public Citizen, a national nonprofit public interest organization, however, dislikes the Senate bill, calling it "underwhelming" because it focuses too much on ethanol and not enough on better fuel economy, mass transit and energy efficiency.

"The problem here is that this whole ethanol craze is being driven more by politics than by sound policy analysis," said Tyson Slocum, the director of Public Citizen's energy program. "We are very, very opposed to the government implementing big mandates to use more ethanol when there are other things that we should be paid more attention first."

-- By Anna Shoup, Online NewsHour