Florida stands ready to fill up and feel good as it endeavors to become a leader in both the production and consumption of biofuels, including ethanol.
This edition of “Fill up, Feel Good” discusses the “Florida Needs Ethanol” campaign being conducted by the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council and features comments made by Florida Governor Charlie Crist, Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Charles Bronson, and EPIC Director of Operations Robert White at the recent Florida Farm to Fuel Summit in St. Petersburg.
The “Fill up, Feel Good” podcast is available to download by subscription (see our sidebar link)
or you can listen to it by clicking here (4:30 MP3 File): [audio:http://www.podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3?http://www.zimmcomm.biz/epic/epic-podcast-7-31-07.mp3]
The Fill Up, Feel Good theme music is “Tribute to Joe Satriani” by Alan Renkl, thanks to the Podsafe Music Network.
“Fill up, Feel Good” is sponsored by the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council.
According to the 
Recent rain in the Midwest has helped the corn crop rebound and led to lower corn prices, according to a 
The American Wind Energy Association is calling on Congress to enact a Renewable Electricity Standard (RES). Leaders from the AWEA will join with Congressmen Tom Udall (D-NM) and Mark Udall (D-CO) on Tuesday, July 31st at 10 a.m. at the U.S. Capitol to call for wider support of the amendment that would require power companies to use 20 percent renewable sources to produce energy by the year 2020. Pennsylvania Congressman Todd Platts (R. PA) is also a co-sponsor of the measure.
At the recent Farm to Fuel Summit in Florida, the state’s chief financial officer told the crowd that biofuels have made it into the mainstream. 
CFO Alex Sink related a story of how she had gone into her local Circle K convenience store that morning for coffee and newspapers on the way to the conference and the clerk at the counter noticed her “Farm to Fuel” shirt and asked her what she did. “I said I’m getting ready to go to a conference to talk about ways to grow crops to turn into fuel,” Sink said. “And she said, ‘You mean like ethanol?’ and I said ‘yeah’ and she said ‘that’s good, that’s very good, we need to protect our ozone layer.'”
The nation’s largest dry mill ethanol producer was recently honored by U.S. troops serving in Iraq. 
During the presentation at POET headquarters in Sioux Falls, SD, Major Chontos noted that the US Air Force is the highest fuel consumer of all the military branches. During a training weekend at the South Dakota Air National Guard, 10 F-16s typically fly two missions a day for two days consuming 60,000 gallons of fuel. One mission uses 1,500 gallons of fuel. At Camp Sather, 10,000 gallons of fuel are used per day for air conditioning and other electrical generation to support 1,000 airmen.
A Houston-based company is working on a briefcase-sized portable generator that runs on water… or more accurately, hydrogen.
A target audience for the device will be contractors, particularly ones who work on downtown skyscrapers. Power tools regularly sap their batteries. 
An ethanol plant in Kansas is the first in the nation to win a U.S. government award for a safe working environment. The White Energy ethanol plant just outside of Russell, Kansas won the Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) SHARP award for “upholding high standards for workplace safety and health.”
“I’m proud that the first ethanol plant in the nation to receive the SHARP award is a Kansas business,” Sebelius said. “Congratulations to White Energy and its employees on creating a safe work environment for this outstanding recognition. The award reinforces our state’s dedication to workplace safety and the future of ethanol and other renewable fuels production.”