The EPA now allows E15 fuel to be sold year-round.

North Dakota is now the nation’s number two oil-producing state.

Understanding the concept of opportunity cost will be important to farmers in the coming years.

Solid biofuels and their associated environmental policies may have an impact on North Dakota farmers.

What’s most troubling about the price of oil is not where it is, but where it might go.

Increased gas use is good news for the American farmer.

A solid economy and good crops yields are among the positives.

Biodiesel use is allowed to increase.

In Langdon and Carrington trials, energy beets produce more sugar than corn.

Regional retail gasoline prices have fallen about 40 cents per gallon since Halloween.

Last November, the EPA proposed slashing mandated volumes of ethanol with the reasoning that the nation does not have the infrastructure or fleet to use such large amounts.

A good number to commit to memory is 14.9 billion gallons. That’s the capacity of the domestic corn ethanol refinery fleet.

The infrastructure to collect natural gas and move it is not fully developed, as evidenced by the continued flaring of gas. However, this is expected to change soon and in a big way.

The NCAA Division I Football Championship series that the NDSU Bison are returning to for the third straight year provides the basis for an analogy with the renewable fuel standard, which is the federal policy that mandates minimum biofuel use.

The EPA’s plan essentially reduces the floor for domestic corn-ethanol use from 14.4 billion gallons to 13 billion gallons.

Continued competitive pricing of higher blends of ethanol would move a lot of fuel.

We still do not produce all of the energy that we consume.

This year or next, more ethanol will be mandated to be used than can be blended into E10. The issue has been dubbed the “blend wall.”

Natural gas is among the biggest issues in renewables because its low cost has disrupted global energy and manufacturing, including biofuels and bioproducts.

The results can vary greatly depending on the data and assumptions used.

The administration’s plans are important to North Dakota, its businesses and residents because of the size of our energy and agricultural sectors and the energy budgets in many businesses and households.

The price of oil is at a level that many biofuels and bioproducts can compete against oil on a purely financial basis without even mentioning the environmental, rural economic development or energy security impacts.

The definition of bioproducts that I use in practice is products made using biomass that have a fossil fuel-based analog.

My job at NDSU is to develop (research) and provide science-based knowledge on the economics of producing, transporting, converting and marketing biomass into bioproducts.