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MARICOPA -- A federal mandate currently requires 11.5 billion gallons of renewable fuels be blended into conventional fuel each year.

By 2022, in just 12 years, they propose to increase that amount to 36 billion gallons each year. An Arizona company located near the town of Maricopa is doing something about it.

"Most people think that we're railing in ethanol from Iowa or somewhere back east," says Clean Cities Manager Colleen Crowninshield from the Pima Association of Governments while touring the Pinal Energy ethanol production facility.

"And what we're gonna do here is convert starch to sugar." John Skelley is the general Manager at Pinal Energy. He explains the process of making ethanol from corn and milo. "And then we're going to ferment that sugar with yeast and the yeast will eat the sugar and it will make carbon dioxide CO2, and it will make grain alcohol."

Feedlots and dairy farms have been in central Arizona for decades. The feed, mostly corn, for the cattle has been railed in from the Midwest all this time.

"We had about 25 acres of open space," says Skelley. "We decided that ethanol was one of the future fuels that would be fueling vehicles in Arizona. So we made the decision to build an ethanol plant on the site to take advantage of the already existing infrastructure."

They produce 50 million gallons of ethanol a year. Most of it goes to the Phoenix and Tucson areas. Some of it is shipped to southern California.

Ethanol is cleaner to use but what about producing it?

"This is a very clean business. We have no discharge of water. We use our water. We have really no discharge of smokes or anything like that."

Good for the environment and good for the county.

"And you're also burning a product that is made in the United States," he says. "We're not bringing in oil from the Middle East. We're paying Iowa, Arizona, Nebraska farmers to grow crops that we make into these biofuels."

It is also good news for Tucson.

"We're bringing in to Tucson from right here in Arizona and it means a great deal," Crowninshield tells us. "It means lower prices. It means lower emissions for our own area here. So there's a big benefit to all of Arizona to have this plant right here."

Besides ethanol, Pinal Energy uses by product from the process, to make feed for livestock, CO2 for the beverage industry and dry ice.