John Thune: “I, too, acknowledge the good work of our colleague from New Mexico, Senator Domenici, on this issue. It largely is a…”

“I, too, acknowledge the good work of our colleague from New Mexico, Senator Domenici, on this issue. It largely is a result of his good work in 2005. Senator Salazar is on the Energy Committee. I was, at the time, on the Environment and Public Works Committee, which worked to get the first ever renewable fuels standard put into law. That was a monumental breakthrough in terms of renewable energy production in this country. If you look at the way the market has responded to that, the story has been nothing less than remarkable. In 2005, we set a goal of reaching 7 rac{1}{2} billion gallons of renewal fuel production by 2012. We will achieve that by the end of this calendar year, 2007. South Dakota will have, on its own, a billion gallons of ethanol production reached by the end of 2008. This is a great success story not only for agriculture and for the farmers and the rural economies that benefit but for our environment because it reduces greenhouse gases. It is a great success story also in terms of lessening our reliance upon foreign sources of energy. I mentioned the statistic earlier: 170 million barrels of oil were displaced by the amount of ethanol production in this country. That saved $11 billion that we would have shipped to one of those petro economies elsewhere around the world that Senator Domenici referenced in his remarks.”