Patricia Woertz, CEO of one of the world’s largest agricultural processors, spoke before students and faculty at the UCLA Anderson School of Management on Wednesday about the future of biofuels and the alternative fuel industry.

Alternative fuels, which include hydrogen, electricity and plant fuels, come from renewable sources and produce less pollutants and harmful emissions than fossil fuels and other conventional fuels, which are finite and geographically restricted to specific regions.

“We are consuming oil faster than we are finding it. ... We also face restrained refining capacity,” Woertz said. “There is an increasing demand to see biofuels fill this gap.”

Woertz focused her talk on ethanol, which is the alcohol refined from corn and other grains and is typically found in alcoholic beverages.

The more environmentally-friendly ethanol is blended with traditional fuel to cut costs without noticeable impact on fuel performances, Woertz said.

“Ethanol is the here-and-now strategy” she said.

Woertz’ company, Archer Daniels Midland, is one of the world’s largest ethanol producers. The company has manufacturing, sales and distribution facilities across five continents, including over 270 plants worldwide. ADM processes, transports and refines grain to make a variety of products, from fuel to food, sweeteners and animal feed.

Woertz also addressed concerns that increasing ethanol production would lead to fewer raw resources going into food production. She argued that viewing global demands for fuel and food as conflicting interests is the wrong approach.

“We believe that the best solutions will come by looking at this holistically,” she said. Technological advances in refining, harvesting and transporting raw materials “hold the potential for more fuel and more food” as well as lower prices, she added.

Woertz offered a brief historical overview of ethanol, which shared the market with fossil fuels during the heyday of the Ford Model T in the early 20th century, but faded into obscurity after oil reserves were discovered in the Middle East prior to World War II.

After her speech, Woertz answered a small number of questions from the audience. She took the opportunity to dispel the claim that ethanol is inefficient.

“There is some old research that shows ethanol is not energy positive. ... In fact, most of the current research refutes that,” she said, citing research which showed the fuel returned about 35 percent more energy than is used to produce it.

MBA students raised questions about other alternative fuels, including biobutanol and biodiesel.

Biobutanol is an alternative fuel produced primarily from saw grass. Woertz said the fuel had “exciting” potential but added that it costs four times what ethanol does to produce and that researchers have not figured out “how you get there from here.”

As for biodiesel, which is a strong industry in Europe, Woertz said she expects the U.S. market for it to grow gradually in regions where diesel fuel is most needed, such as in the Midwest. But she does not expect the growth to be as rapid or widespread as that of ethanol.

Woertz also addressed legal and regulatory concerns, predicting that current tariffs on ethanol imports would fade away and defending the “blender’s credit,” a government subsidy which uses taxpayer money to make alternative fuel production more profitable and attractive to producers. Ethanol blends are already common across the country. Most fuel in the Los Angeles basin is a 5.6 or 5.8 blend, Woertz said, referring to the percentage of ethanol content.

According to Victoria Podesta, director of executive communication at ADM, the industry currently has the capacity to develop 5.8 billion barrels of ethanol per year. With new facilities in production and the government phasing in E10, a fuel blend with 10 percent ethanol, that number is expected to reach 14 billion barrels within a decade, Woertz said.

ADM stock has seen tremendous growth as a result of these projections, according to Forbes magazine, who reported a 55 percent increase in the price of ADM stock as of last September.

Judy Olian, dean of the Anderson School, who introduced Woertz and led the subsequent Q&A session, said the CEO is one of 10 women leading a Fortune 500 company. She also said Woertz has been involved in the energy business for years, using her fluency in Russian to manage oil fields in Kazakhstan for Chevron, among other achievements.