Governor Tom Vilsack has signed a handfull of bills into law which seek to promote the use alternative forms of energy. The largest piece of legislation deals with ethanol and biodiesel, providing $2 million in grants to gas stations in each of the next three years to install E85 tanks.Monte Shaw of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association hails the legislation. “This is a great step forward for the industry. Iowa has been the leader in the production of renewable fuels. This bill puts us on the roadmap to be the absolute leader in the use of renewable fuels,” Shaw says. The bill establishes a goal: by 2020, one-quarter of the fuel purchased in Iowa should be ethanol or biodiesel. Twenty-five ethanol plants are on-line in Iowa today, using corn to make the alcohol fuel. There are three biodiesel plants operating in the state, using soybeans to make fuel. Representative Steve Olson, a Republican from DeWitt, helped craft the renewable fuels legislation, and he stood behind the governor as Vilsack signed the bills into law. “It was the conclusion to a long process,” Olson says. “It’s (an) historic day for Iowans.” Dawn Carlson of the Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Stores of Iowa says pumps that dispense E85 — the higher-concentration of ethanol — are expensive to install. “In metropolitan areas it could cost over $100,000 to put E85 in because you have to add on to your property, you have to get fire marshall approval, tanks, the dispensers,” Carlson says. “A new dispenser to put E85 in is going to be over $15,000 and to retrofit an existing dispenser we have to send those to Houston, Texas and where it costs over $7500 just to retrofit a dispenser that you’d see out there today.” Carlson says the question for gas station operators is whether consumers will buy E85. “For us to put it in we’ve got to see demand out there to know that we’re going to be able to sell the product,” Carlson says. Station owners won’t install E85 pumps if they think they’ll be losing money, and demand thus far has been “pretty low” according to Carlson. “The demand has not been enough to justify the expenditures today but we’re hoping with this legislation it’s going to increase awareness,” Carlson says. Carlson says as many as 30 stations are “waiting in line” to apply for the state grants for installing E85 pumps, and if those came on line in the next year it would double the number of pumps dispensing E85. The other pieces of legislation Vilsack signed today double the state tax credit for electricity produced by wind turbines, gives a tax credit to electric utilities that use a soybean-based lubricant on turbines and rewards those who buy solar energy production equipment. Vilsack says the new laws start Iowa on a “march” toward energy independence. “The group of bills that we sign today basically continue to put Iowa on the renewable fuel and energy map as a national and world leader,” the governor says. Vilsack calls the bills an “investment” in the state’s future. This past Saturday, Vilsack visited the “Echo Village” located just outside of Fairfield where solar and wind power are being used. “There’s a housing development which is using all alternative energy sources,” Vilsack says. “(I) talked with one of the homeowners who indicated that their heating bill was $48 last winter.”