Sustainable Practices

Marquis Energy has made significant investments in sustainability. Marquis was recently awarded the Environmental Protection Agency’s Efficient Producer Pathway for RIN generation. To achieve this designation Marquis Energy demonstrated that it achieved greater than 20% energy reduction to EPA’s standard. To accomplish this goal Marquis has invested in plant automation and power monitoring as well as consistent plant improvements that optimize production. Marquis Energy continuously evaluates technologies and process improvements that can advance the production of ethanol and make our facility more sustainable.

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E15 Fuel Mixture

According to Growth Energy, in March 2009, Growth Energy filed the Green Jobs Waiver to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency seeking approval to blend up to 15 percent ethanol in gasoline.

For more information please click on the E15 Fact Sheet below.

E15 Fact Sheet

Farming Practices

Ethanol is domestically produced and farmers and the agriculture sector benefit greatly from it. Air quality, energy security, ecological impact of production, and climate change all contribute the net cost of using a fuel. When looking at the balance of ethanol vs. gasoline on those criteria, ethanol wins in all of them. Also, farmers continue to improve and apply the most efficient farming practices to corn production while the ethanol industry continues to apply and research the most efficient production methods for each gallon of ethanol.

For more information, see the links below:

Facts About Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC)

Water is an Essential Ingredient in Ethanol Production

Food & Fuel

According to Growth Energy, economic and government studies have disproven the food vs. fuel myth, concluding that…high oil prices and the high costs of manufacturing, packaging and transportation all have far more impact than ethanol on the grocery prices that everyday Americans pay.

More information can be found here.

Greenhouse Gases

According to the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 34 percent in comparison to gasoline. In 2013, the 13.2 billion gallons of ethanol blended into gasoline in the United States helped reduce greenhouse gas emissions from on-road vehicles by approximately 38 million metric tons, which is the equivalent of removing roughly 8 million automobiles from the road.

More information can be found here.

Subsidy-Free Policy

The corn ethanol industry is a subsidy free industry. While there once was a tax credit named the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC), that credit was given to the blenders and refiners who put ethanol into their fuel blendstock, it was not given to ethanol producers. The ethanol industry supported the expiration of this tax credit on December 31, 2011 and has since not had any tax credits related to its industry.

Sustainable Economics

Our ethanol is made from the most renewable crop on earth. Corn. Corn yields per acre are greater than 200 bushels per acre compared 127 bushels per acre in 1994 and 52 bushels per acre in 1964. Yields have improved 57% since 1994 and 227% since 1964, respectively.

We pride ourselves on the continuous investment in the production efficiency of our facility. Our industry leading performance is driven by our constant improvement in yield and production. The industry is starting to see continuous production yield in excess of 2.8 gallons per bushel, a 40% improvement in yield since 1975.

Further investment in the reduction of energy consumption per gallon produced continues to drive energy consumption lower. BTU’s per gallon have gone from 100,000 BTU per gallon in 1975 to about 26,000 BTU per gallon in 2015. We anticipate further reducing our energy footprint by evaluating and investing in combined heat and power systems and green energy.