Another Ethanol Victory The ethanol industry scored two wins this week. House Republicans trying to eliminate the ethanol industry’s tax breaks as part of a debt ceiling bill conceded to their Midwest colleagues by keeping the incentive intact. Then on Friday, the Biden Democrat-run U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced it would allow E15 ethanol to be sold this summer without restriction. Because ethanol has a higher volatility (evaporation) rate than gasoline in hot weather, the allowed blend rate is typically rolled back to a 10 percent level. The agency’s rationale for allowing the higher blend is the impact of Putin’s war in Ukraine on gasoline prices and to prevent fuel shortages. The argument is a little s...
Key Market Insights The broad market is locked in on this week’s Trump-Xi meeting in Beijing, but this is no longer just a trade summit. Increasingly, the meeting is becoming tied directly to Iran, energy security, and the growing global economic fallout from disruptions through the Strai...
From WPI Consulting
Illuminating the value of technical research
On behalf of a commodity producer organization, WPI evaluated the outputs from a project that featured a $5 million investment into technical research over multiple years. WPI’s team captured the results of this extensive effort and synthesized them for presentation to the organization’s governing board; among the findings uncovered and presented for the first time was the development of genomic traits proven, via rigorous testing, to provide crop yield advantages of 50 percent or more to U.S. farmers in times of drought. Capturing measurable results from long-term efforts can be challenging. Educating clients on the dynamics of success measurement when quantifiable results are not readily available requires deep client-consultant collaboration and an ability to consider both near- and long-term client aspirations with market/policy dynamics – attributes that WPI brings to every consulting engagement.