Projections made by the Energy Information Administration show that energy consumption will increase by 14 percent while use of energy made from fossil fuels will drop by 2035, according to the government's Annual Energy Outlook 2010 released last week.

"Our projections show that existing policies that stress energy efficiency and alternative fuels, together with higher energy prices, curb energy consumption growth and shift the energy mix toward renewable fuels," said EIA Administrator Richard Newell in a statement. "However, assuming no new policies, fossil fuels would still provide about 78 percent of all the energy used in 2035."

A Renewable Identification Number is generated whenever renewable fuel is produced or imported into the United States, as we discussed in Briefing No.3 in this Educational Series. Established within the RIN is a vintage year at the time that it is generated. The vintage year is embedded in the RIN number at the time it is produced and can be found in digits two through five. As an example consider the following RIN number:

22008480270076000011020003994400048031

In this example the RIN has a vintage year of 2008.

Valero Renewable Fuels Company, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of refiner Valero Energy Corp., announced on Dec. 14 that it signed an agreement with ASA Ethanol Holdings, LLC to buy two ethanol plants that had been previously owned by VeraSun Energy Corp. for $200 million.

The plants, located in Linden, Indiana and Bloomingburg, Ohio, have an annual production capacity of 110 million gallons.