Biofuel groups envision ethanol-powered jets. But fueling the effort has not been easy

MENOKEN, N.D. (AP) — Some day, the passenger jets that soar 35,000 feet (10.6 kilometers) over Dan McLean’s North Dakota farm could be fueled by corn grown on his land and millions of other acres across the Midwest.

It’s a vision the U.S. airline industry embraces and agricultural groups see as a key to ensuring strong future sales of ethanol, a fuel that consumes more than one-third of the nation’s corn crop and offers a cleaner-burning alternative for the nation’s airlines.

But making that dream a reality hasn’t been easy, in part because even as farmers would benefit from a huge new market for corn, the plan relies on federal tax credits triggered by capturing carbon dioxide at refineries and then moving the gas hundreds of miles through pipelines that would snake across the Midwest, including beneath farmers’ fields.

Some of those farmers, along with environmentalist and property rights groups, have gone before regulatory authorities in several Midwest states to oppose the lines, and frequently they have succeeded in at least slowing the process. A key decision is expected soon in Iowa.

“This whole thing is private industry — rich private industry — getting tax money, strictly tax money to bury this stuff,” said McLean, who opposes a line that would cross his farmland east of Bismarck. “That tax money is coming out of everybody’s pocket, and they’re going to walk away from it, and we’re going to be left with a big poisonous pipe running across the country.”

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