One of the best received calls to action from President Bush's State of the Union speech on January 23, 2007 was in regards to energy independence.

G.W.'s idea seeks to lower our gasoline consumption by 20% in the next ten years.

The U.S. uses about 140 billion gallons of gasoline every year. That's more than 383 million gallons per day, or nearly 16 million gallons an hour.

About 66% of our transportation fuel comes from foreign oil, and a 20% reduction in gasoline use will supposedly reduce our oil imports from the Middle East by a whopping 75%.

And how does he plan to do that?

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandated that 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol be blended into our gasoline stocks by 2012. President Bush now says that he wants 35 billion gallons of alternative fuels available by 2017.

That's about a 500% increase over what the EPA2005 mandated. And let me tell you, it'll be impossible to get all of that from corn.

No, 35 billion gallons will take everything we can throw at it: switch grass, saw grass, wood chips, agricultural waste, coal, biomass… The list will grow, and the alternative fuels industry will welcome it all.

This news is exceptional for cellulosic ethanol pioneers like producers SunOpta, Inc. (STKL:NASDAQ), Abengoa Bioenergy (AMG:MCE), and Iogen (Private) and enzyme manufacturers like Novozymes, Inc. (NZYM:Copenhagen).

You may remember that last year Iogen received $30 million in funding from Goldman Sachs to begin building a pilot plant in Shelly, Idaho.

With this announcement, I think much more attention will be drawn to these companies. I'd keep my eye on Iogen if it decides to go public. If ever there were a time to do so, now would be it.

When I attended the Platts.com Cellulosic Ethanol conference in Chicago in late October, I had a chance to talk to Iogen's Executive Vice President, Jeff Passmore.

I did ask him whether or not the company would go public if its pilot plant in Idaho was a success.

He didn't answer me, declining to talk about future business strategies.

I think that means they are considering it.

With George Bush's push for more alternative fuels, investment dollars will be running to the nearest company.

Watch for another round of IPOs in 2007 regarding ethanol or other alternative fuels.