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The U.S. ethanol industry delivered another strong year of profitability in 2025. Net returns for a representative Iowa plant averaged $0.21 per gallon, well above the long-run average of $0.13 per gallon since 2007. On an annual basis, nominal profits of $23.2 million marked the sixth consecutive year in positive territory and the sixth year since 2007 with profits exceeding $20 million. Given the headwinds facing the industry at the start of 2025, this is a genuinely impressive result.

A particularly controversial part of the EPA proposals for the RFS in 2026-27 is the limitation of imported biofuel and feedstock to 50% of the RINs generated by domestic biofuel and feedstock. There has been widespread reporting in recent weeks that the so-called “half RIN” proposal may be eliminated in the final rulemaking. This article projects biomass-based diesel production and feed-stock use for 2026-2027 without the half-RIN provision and higher biomass-based diesel RVOs.

Recent trends in the operational efficiency of the U.S. ethanol industry are analyzed in this article. The picture that emerges from the analysis is one of tradeoffs in operational efficiency of dry mill ethanol plants, with more ethanol and corn oil production coming at the expense of less DDGS. The picture that emerges from the analysis is one of tradeoffs in operational efficiency of dry mill ethanol plants, with more ethanol and corn oil production coming at the expense of less DDGS.

The U.S. experienced a major ethanol boom between roughly 2004 and 2011, with production nearly quadrupling from 3.4 to 13.3 billion gallons.  By far the most common explanation for the…