Me-oh, me-oh my-oh, we're sure in love with bio

Biofuels are the hot topic this Sunday morning before the Legislature convenes in solemnity and wisdom Monday in Olympia.

Bills to push for B-2 — 2 percent of each gallon of diesel fuel mixed with bioproducts — are, as we say, en fuego. The enthusiasm for biofuels in cars and trucks embraces Republicans and Democrats and neatly enfolds both the urban environmental ethic and rural counties' search for another cash crop. Rep. Janéa Holmquist, Republican from Moses Lake, is ebullient to the point of jumping out of her shoes over the idea. At The Seattle Times Thursday, Holmquist described herself and colleagues as "ready and raring to go" for biofuel legislation this year. In the session of 2005, a similar bill did not get out of a House committee for a vote.

Opponents naturally include Big Oil, whose executives may see 10 percent of ethanol or 2 percent canola oil as simply that much less gasoline that could be sold at the same pump. But Holmquist is counting on high gas prices and the $25 million a day Washingtonians spend on fuel to prompt the question: Why not spread the current oil supply out a little longer?

Other opposition comes from Republicans who simply do not like government mandates. The plan to make B-2 compulsory for every tank of diesel sold gives rise to further questions about the fuel's true efficiencies and the state's ability to fill the supply stream. There's also the dodgy question of waiting to mandate B-2 until state farmers and crushing machines are prepared to enter the marketplace.

Holmquist freely admits staging mandatory requirements for gasoline and diesel fuel is a deliberate hesitation to get Washington agriculture into the right planting cycle. "2006 is gone for farmers who have already decided on their crops," she said. "But rotating seed crops for biofuels can happen as early as 2007."

Holmquist's statement on mandatory biofuels inserts the state as a trigger on behalf of Washington crop growers. Her legislation would "phase in the renewable fuel standards as state production and demand increases ... [A] 2 percent biodiesel requirement would kick in when the director of the state Department of Agriculture determines there is sufficient quantity of competitively priced Washington-produced fuel available to meet 2 percent of the state's aggregate diesel fuel demand. A similar trigger is included for the ethanol requirement of 10 percent."

Why wait, was my question. If the stuff is good for use now, there's plenty of seed oil available in Minnesota, and Iowa is up to the brim in ethanol. But outsourcing the product breaks the symmetry between invigorating a cash crop for rural Washington and filling Puget Sound gas tanks with seed oil. Proponents, including Seattle greens, see the need to let Washington farmers in on the mandatory B-2, or else the political dynamic doesn't work.

Dodging the issue of restraint of trade, the link between seed producers and gasoline consumers is seen by proponents as the latest Golden Calf of do-good technology, like wind power, only waves of grain.

Biofuel is one of the five top legislative priorities of Healthy Washington, a consortium of environmental organizations including the Washington Environmental Council and a dozen more battalions of greens. Making biofuels one of the priorities of such powerful advocacy groups plus early legislative initiative and vigor from Gov. Christine Gregoire, together with Eastern state agriculture and water interests combine into something politically combustible.

We're going to hear a lot about biofuels in the next weeks. A short, 60-day legislative session will be chock-full of ideas; some will make it, some not. Expect the next round of debate to be whether biofuels really make a difference, how they affect your car's engine, plus examples of successes and failures of the seed market in other places.

But when mandatory fuel components come out of farm country and are greeted with kisses from Seattle greens, the political calculation is hard to dismiss. Politically and economically, there's a lot at stake.

James F. Vesely's column appears Sunday on editorial pages of The Times. His e-mail address is: jvesely@seattletimes.com