GRANITE FALLS -- The telephones at the headquarters for Fagen Inc. in Granite Falls ring with calls from all over the country and increasingly, from overseas.
Ron Fagen, president and founder of one of America's leading construction and design companies for ethanol plants, said he is receiving an increasing number of inquiries from overseas countries interested in building ethanol plants of their own.
Australia, England, Denmark, Switzerland, China and Russia are among the countries where the calls have come.
Fagen said his company is too busy meeting the demand for ethanol plants in the U.S. to take on the foreign projects.
At this time next year, his company will have no fewer than 34 ethanol plants under construction simultaneously in the country, he said.
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The 34th of those plants is planned for Iowa, and its completion will represent a major milestone. Iowa will become a net exporter of energy when the plant goes on line, he said.
The local entrepreneur hosted Sen. Norm Coleman on his visit to Granite Falls on Tuesday. He praised the senator's support for ethanol and said that the corn-based fuel is increasingly finding a supportive audience in Washington thanks to those efforts.
Fagen is confident that the economics created by today's oil prices already assure continued growth for the ethanol industry in the U.S. and around the world. However, he said E-85 needs to keep its costs at 50 cents per gallon below gasoline if it wants to continue on its growth track.
Fagen said that he also believes federal support is critical to building "momentum" for the ethanol industry and making it a "real" industry.
Ethanol's growth has occurred largely in the country's Midwestern corn belt. Iowa, Minnesota, North and South Dakota, Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio are among the states where his company is finding the greatest interest.
Fagen said that interest is starting to grow coast-to-coast. His company is working on the development of an ethanol plant in Texas, and there is also interest in a California plant. He pointed out that ethanol is already being produced at a plant his company built in Kentucky, where corn for fuel is being raised where tobacco once grew.
Looking ahead, he said he believes that ethanol can provide more than 10 percent of America's fuel needs. He believes that corn will continue to be the ingredient of choice until demand by the ethanol industry raises its price beyond what its market as food supports.
He doesn't believe that we will reach that point as quickly as some predict. Continued improvements in corn genetics- resulting in higher yields and corn better suited for conversion to ethanol-keeps boosting the supply of corn, he explained.
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But inevitably, Fagen said that he anticipates that producers will also turn to other sources such as barley, wheat, and perhaps switch grass to make ethanol as well.
If we develop biomass as a fuel source for ethanol, Fagen said the fuel could someday become our primary source of energy for transportation and end our reliance on foreign oil.
