Ethanol production plants must undergo a strict and complex permitting and compliance process before they are built. Additionally, they are subject to inspections and evaluations to ensure that they maintain ongoing compliance in a complex and ever changing regulatory structure. Regulations are intended to ensure environmental quality—and America’s ethanol producers are committed to meet these standards now and in the future.

Furthermore, a number of recent and reputable studies have shown that ethanol production is a net energy winner. In other words, ethanol production results in more energy than is consumed in producing the ethanol—including all manufacturing and distribution and the energy it takes to plant, grow and harvest the corn that is used as the raw feedstock for ethanol production.