President Obama Wednesday morning outlined his administration’s domestic energy goals. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told Radio Iowa that the president is pushing for increased production and use of plant-based biofuels so the U.S. can be more “self-reliant.”

“To do that, you’ve got to build an infrastructure, you’ve got to obviously look for more opportunities for oil and gas here in the United States, you have to look at alternative energy sources; renewable energy, wind, solar, hydro, and yes, nuclear if it’s safe,” Vilsack said, during an interview with Radio Iowa. “At the same time you need to create new opportunities for a biofuel industry that really does help provide us less reliance on imported oil.”

President Obama says the country has to find “better and smarter” ways to produce energy and says within the next two years he’d like to see construction begin on four new advanced biofuel plants in the U.S. that would use wood chips, switch grass or plant waste rather than corn to make ethanol. Vilsack says those plants would “no doubt” be located in other parts of the country.

“In order for Iowa to continue to have a thriving ethanol industry, there has to be national support for that industry, and in order for there to be national support, we have to make sure that there are opportunities in other parts of the country to be able to produce ethanol and see the benefits of ethanol,” says Vilsack.

Cellulosic ethanol plants that use corn stalks, switch grass or other plant material can’t match the volume of ethanol that corn-based plants are able to produce, partly because of the vast amount of plant waste that must be used to make a gallon of ethanol, according to Secretary Vilsack. Increasing plant-based ethanol production is not only about reducing dependence on foreign oil, says Vilsack, it’s about creating jobs in rural America.

“The nature of these biorefineries is different from oil refineries where you can have one large structure that basically services several states and only one state gets the benefit,” says the Agriculture Secretary. “Because of the bulk associated with feed stock, biorefineries are smaller in size, but they have to dot the landscape every 150-200 miles, so this is a real opportunity for us, I think, to have a real revitalization and resurgence in rural economies across the country.”

According to a White House fact sheet, President Obama will look for ways to reform biofuels incentives to meet today’s challenges and save taxpayers money.

That, however, does not mean an immediate end to tax breaks for ethanol and biodiesel, according to Vilsack.

“We saw what happens when you abruptly end incentives and support for a fledgling industry with the biodiesel tax credit that was not allowed to continue for a period of time last year and the result was that industry lost half of its production and 12,000 jobs,” said Vilsack. “So I think the president understands and appreciates that instead of a cliff in terms of these incentives, we need to develop a glide path.”

Vilsack says that means phasing-out tax breaks for ethanol and soybean-based biodiesel “over time” and making more federal investments in biofuels infrastructure, like pipelines and blender pumps.

Radio Iowa contributed to this article.