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Ethanol pump grants encourage growth to ethanol industry

The president of the Indiana Corn Marketing Council (ICMC) says the announcement of the Biofuels Infrastructure Partnership (BIP) grants will help promote and grow the state’s ethanol industry.

Denny Maple says the grants from USDA combined with the investment from the Indiana Corn Marketing Council is an opportunity to further leverage farmer checkoff dollars to get even more ethanol pumps in Indiana.  “The Indiana Corn Marketing Council has had a grant program in place since 2011 to help with the cost of putting pumps in,” he says. “To this date we’ve put in 17 flex-fuel pumps with three more going in.”

Maple says ethanol is vital to the state’s corn growers.  “About 30 percent of the corn grown in Indiana goes to ethanol production here in the state,” he says.  “Having this grant will help make ethanol more available to the consumer.”

He tells Brownfield the lack of availability of ethanol-blended fuels is a major hurdle that needs to be overcome and by investing in infrastructure – access to ethanol-blended fuel increases.