Fact:
Corn is only one source of ethanol. As we develop new, cost-effective methods for producing biofuels, a significant amount of ethanol will be made from more abundant cellulosic biomass sources. In the future, ethanol will be increasingly produced from cellulose found in crop residues (e.g, stalks, hulls), forestry residues (e.g., from forest thinning), energy crops (e.g., switchgrass, sorghum), and sorted municipal wastes. Some promising energy crops grow on marginal soils not suited for traditional agriculture.

A high-protein animal feed, known as Distillers Dried Grains with Solubles (DDGS), is produced in the process of making corn ethanol.

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) requires that U.S. transportation fuels contain at least 36 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2022. Of that quantity, 16 billion gallons must be cellulosic biofuels, while ethanol from corn is capped at 15 billion gallons.

The U.S. Departments of Energy and Agriculture's Billion Ton Study found that we can grow adequate biomass feedstocks to displace about 30% of current gasoline use by 2030 on a sustainable basis--with only modest changes in land use. It determined that 1.3 billion tons of U.S. biomass feedstock is potentially available for the production of biofuels-more than enough biomass to meet the new renewable fuel standard mandated by EISA.

Source: U.S. Senator Charles Grassley, Congressional Record