GRINNELL, Iowa -- Iowa Governor Chet Culver, a longtime advocate of cleaner-burning biofuels, helped kick off a special promotion from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. yesterday at the Kum & Go convenience store in Grinnell, Iowa.
Also celebrating the opening of Iowa's newest E85 outlet (located north of Interstate 80, about 35 miles east of Des Moines) were Kyle Krause, president and CEO of West Des Moines, Iowa-based Kum & Go; Mark Oberkircher, General Motors' zone manager for Iowa; and Tim Gerlach, vice president of the American Lung Association of the [image-nocss] Upper Midwest.
During the one-day event, owners of flex-fuel vehicles (FFV)cars, trucks and SUVs designed to run on the alternative fuel E85 or gasolinepaid $1.85 a gallon, with a limit of 30 gallons per FFV. The event was promoted by the Iowa Clean Air Choice Team, a coalition of organizations that support the use of cleaner-burning E85 in Iowa. The group recently opened another E85 pump in Lamoni, an Iowa town near the Missouri border.
The Iowa Clean Air Choice Team is a group consisting of GeM, Iowa Corn Promotion Board, Iowa Soybean Association, Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, Kum & Go, Iowa Farm Bureau Federation, Siouxland Energy & Livestock Cooperative, the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition and the American Lung Association of Iowa.
Several other Iowa retail gasoline locations have recently begun selling E85, added The Des Moines Register, citing the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association. Iowa now has 61 stations offering E85 and 180 stations offering biodiesel blends.
Casey's General Store on Highway 141 in Mapleton recently began offering both E85 and biodiesel. It is the first E85 station in Monona County. Fredericksburg Cooperative on Highway 18 in Fredericksburg recently became the second station in Chickasaw County to offer E85. Cartersville Elevator in Rockwell recently began selling biodiesel.The stations in Grinnell, Mapleton and Fredericksburg received funding from the Renewable Fuels Infrastructure Program, which gives grants to stations that want to sell E85 or biodiesel.
Click here to view Kum & Go's biofuels webpage.
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