AMERICAN ETHANOL TO PLANT TREES AND PUT A LITTLE MORE GREEN IN SPRING

Becky Finfrock

Apr 02, 2014  |  Today's News

During the month of April, the National Corn Growers Association will join NASCAR® in kicking off its second year of the NASCAR Race to Green Campaign. The campaign is intended to highlight the environmental accomplishments of green programs put in place by NASCAR and its partners like American Ethanol.

The goal of NASCAR Race to Green is to highlight the accomplishments of NASCAR Green™ programs like the move three years ago to Sunoco Green E15, a fuel blended with 15% American Ethanol, and its massive tree planting initiative to help reduce the sport's carbon footprint.

“American Ethanol is a key part of NASCAR’s efforts to reduce the sport’s carbon footprint,” said Jon Holzfaster, a Paxton, Neb., farmer and chairman of NCGA’s NASCAR Advisory Committee.  “These high- performance cars have put more than five million tough competition miles on E15 in the last three years, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent. Combine this with the massive tree planting effort underway, and the results are phenomenal.”

American Ethanol - which is supported by corn checkoff investments and ethanol plant members of Growth Energy - has committed to plant 50 trees for every American Ethanol Green Flag waved during NASCAR’s national series races in the month of April.

In 2013, the 13.3 billion gallons of ethanol produced in the United States reduced greenhouse gas emission on our roads and highways by 38 million metric tons.

“That’s equivalent to removing 8 million cars from the road.” Holzfaster said. “Through the course of one mature tree’s lifetime, it absorbs one metric ton of carbon dioxide –the same amount of carbon dioxide emitted by a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series™ car driving 500 miles. American Ethanol and trees offer a great one-two punch for the environment.”

NASCAR Green, the largest sustainability effort in professional sports, includes everything from recycling of racing tires and engine oil to cleaning up the emissions by using 15 percent ethanol fuel blend, made from American grown corn. The model environmental program, which includes American Ethanol, will be featured in a nationally televised commercial that will break on Sunday, April 6th during the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series broadcast. The race from Texas Motor Speedway begins at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on FOX.

To date, NASCAR Green Clean Air Tree Planting Program Delivered by UPS™ has planted 188,000 trees. This is enough to completely offset carbon emissions for all three NASCAR national racing series for the past five years of NASCAR Green, plus the next 18 years.

As an environmental leader, NASCAR is taking its commitment to the next level by using American Ethanol and introducing impactful initiatives in recycling, alternative energy and carbon mitigation.

NASCAR Green has championed the adoption and implementation of sustainability practices across the sport. Since 2008 NASCAR and its stakeholders have:

- Recycled more than 20 million bottles and cans

- Recycled 600,000 race tires

- Recycled more than 200,000 gallons of automotive engine oil which is enough to power the Empire State Building for one year.

- Installed the world’s largest renewable energy project to–power a sports facility. The solar array at Pocono Raceway represents an energy savings equivalent to more than 806,000 gallons of gasoline.

The NASCAR Race to Green program will run until April 25. To learn more about American Ethanol and NASCAR Race to Green log on to www.AmericanEthanol.org or http://green.nascar.com/