The ethanol industry Monday launched a national advertising campaign aimed at defending the home grown fuel to critics.  The effort comes at a time when Congress is being asked to renew subsidies to oil companies designed to make ethanol blends more affordable at the pump.

Growth Energy, a producer group based in Washington D.C., unveiled six TV commercials at ten press conferences across the country, including an event at the Minnesota State Capitol in Saint Paul.

"It's just been so long that we thing we've been attacked wrongly, by Big Oil, by Big Food, a lot of misinformation out there," Richard Eichstaet, the manager of the POET ethanol plant in Preston told reporters.

WATCH: The "America's Fuel" ads

"So we're really happy to see this get out to the general public. Ethanol is a clean fuel. It's an economic fuel. It's a very good fuel and it's here right now. We just need to educate the public and get our message out."

The 15-second national ads will run two at a time, back-to-back, on the CNN, MSBNBC, Headline News and FOX News cable channels. The commercials have none of the iconic images TV viewers have come to expect in an ethanol ad, such as farmers, farm fields or harvested corn flowing into a grain bin.

Instead the ads contain only words set to music. The messages contrast ethanol with petroleum, in an effort to highlight the advantages of an American made renewable fuel.

"No U.S. soldiers have been deployed to defend our ethanol reserves," reads one of the messages.

Another one states, "No wars have ever been fought over ethanol: ethanol, America's PEACE fuel."

The initial ad buys will cost Growth Energy and its members $2.5 million.  The group expects to multiply the impact on the web and in the blogosphere.

Gary Wertish, a corn grower who serves as vice president of the Minnesota Farmers Union, said Monday many farmers felt maligned when ethanol was blamed for high food prices at times in the past three years.

He argued that the rising cost of fossil fuels had more to do with inflation in food prices, than did competition for corn between the grocery industry and ethanol makers.

"As a farmer working in the field raising corn, and familiar with the ethanol plants around the state, that was very frustrating. We were being blamed for something that was Big Oil's fault."

Growth Energy's public relations push comes at a time when ethanol-related subsidies are being debated in Washington.  Oil companies currently get a 45-cent-per-gallon tax credit from the federal government for blending the corn alcohol with gasoline to create various ethanol mixes, including E-10, E-20 and E-85.

Those credits suppress the cost of ethanol to motorists, but cost taxpayers nearly $5 billion per year.  The appetite for such credits waned when the ethanol industry was in a boom cycle two years ago. The economic downturn, which reduced demand for gasoline and ethanol, cut sharply into profits.

In Minnesota the ethanol industry receives a direct assist from the state government in the form of a producer payment program, but that was also called into question in a review by the Office of the Legislative Auditor in 2009.

OLA researcher John Yunker told lawmakers, "If you look at the last five years the companies have made profits of $619 million while receiving $93 million in subsidies from the state."

The most recent round of budget cuts signed into law by Governor Tim Pawlenty reduce ethanol producer payments from $12 million to $7.6 million.

But ethanol boosters contend the state subsidies and the federal "blenders" tax credit to oil companies are dollars well spent when one considers rural employment, air quality factors and the imported energy being replaced by ethanol.

Ethanol critics question the job growth figures touted by the industry, but the Farmers Union's Wertish asserts the 16 ethanol plants in Minnesota have been a lifeline in their host communities.

"The ethanol plants provide a lot of good jobs. These are rural developments jobs, jobs out in rural Minnesota."


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