Dave Walton:
Iowa’s biodiesel industry is beginning to rebound after a difficult winter that forced several plants to idle.
Iowa farmer Dave Walton, who serves as vice president of the American Soybean Association, says the plants are now back online.
“The RVO announcement really helped spur that and then back it up with 45Z. That tax credit has really helped the production.”
Walton says it should benefit Iowa’s rural economy.
“A lot of those biodiesel plants are in those small communities. They are good paying stable jobs for them. It keeps some of those folks right there in those small towns instead of moving to a big city to find a job.”
He tells Brownfield that recent data from Clean Fuels Alliance America reflects an uptick in national production.
“In April, we used 1.45 billion pounds of soybean oil in biodiesel production. I can remember a time when we used about a billion pounds of oil in a year. Our previous high was 1.2 billion pounds in a month.”
Walton says biodiesel demand has been increasing as different parts of the transportation sector have been utilizing higher blends.
