RFA Congratulates Randy Doyal on Well-Deserved High Octane Recognition and John Christianson Receives FEW Award of Excellence

(Renewable Fuels Association) The Renewable Fuels Association today congratulated Board Member and former Chairman Randy Doyal on receiving the prestigious High Octane Award at the 2022 Fuel Ethanol Workshop and Expo. The award honors a person who has helped the ethanol industry mature and progress over the years and whose passion and unstoppable pursuits have significantly benefited the ethanol industry.

“Randy is one of the ethanol industry’s true pioneers and has been a driving force behind many of the industry’s policy and marketplace accomplishments over the past four decades,” said RFA President and CEO Geoff Cooper. “He’s an important part of the ethanol industry’s colorful history. His wealth of knowledge about the history and development of ethanol is unparalleled, and he loves nothing more than to share his stories and experience with others. We are thrilled that Randy’s contributions are being recognized with this year’s High Octane Award and we join a grateful industry in thanking him for his decades of service.”

Doyal is retiring this year as CEO of Al-Corn Clean Fuel in Claremont, Minn., where he has worked since 1995. Doyal also is a founding member of RPMG, the Renewable Products Marketing Group, a marketing cooperative that now represents 19 plants across seven states and is one of the country’s leading ethanol marketing firms. Doyal has been an RFA board member since 1995, serving as board chairman in 2015-2016. In September 2021, he was profiled as part of a series on the association’s 40th anniversary. Doyal also has been an active member of the Minnesota Bio-Fuels Association, as well as numerous other state and local organizations.

Doyal has always recognized the importance of educating the public and policymakers about the ethanol industry, Cooper said. He has hosted numerous members of Congress and state officials at Al-Corn, explaining the production process and dispelling many of the myths and misinformation about this important value-added industry. In one recent example of his above-and-beyond advocacy efforts, Doyal provided a strong rebuttal to an ill-informed attack on ethanol in his local newspaper in Owatonna.

In addition, the 2022 FEW Award of Excellence went to John Christianson, founder of RFA Associate Member Christianson PLLP, which provides accounting and consulting services for the renewable fuels industry. This award recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the fuel ethanol industry through their research, technical advisory and/or development activities. READ MORE

Excerpt from Ethanol Producer Magazine: Upon receiving the High Octane Award, Doyal expressed his gratitude to his many friends and colleagues in the ethanol industry, and said he believes his career in biofuels was, in his words, “divine intervention.”

“I don’t consider myself an environmentalist but a steward. And that’s what’s so wonderful about this industry, the characteristics of stewardship, I see over and over and over again from all of you folks,” Doyal said. “You want to do more, use less, do it better, use less energy, find new products and probably the one thing that makes it so exciting for me is that we work together, we collaborate, that’s the neatest thing about this industry.”

Christianson, who grew up on a farm just a few miles from where he would start his renowned accounting firm, Christianson PLLP, also began his career knowing very little about ethanol. As a young certified public accountant in Willmar, Minnesota, in the early 1980s, Christianson gained experience and made important connections during the challenging farm crisis years. In the early ’90s, he started working with a farmer co-op in Benson, Minnesota, helping with the formation of what would become the Chippewa Valley Ethanol Co. ethanol plant. Helping CVEC turned out to be a turning point. Christianson’s involvement with ethanol rapidly took off, and his firm grew and expanded its services, eventually becoming a 90-plus person, full-service CPA and business advisory firm that it is today widely relied upon by ethanol producers. He and his team, listening to their clients, created new and innovative ways to help ethanol producers marry their financial and grain accounting systems. They created Intelego, an enterprise planning software now branded as Beyond, which is currently used in as many as 80 U.S. ethanol plants. His company was instrumental in developing dozens of ethanol plants during the construction boom of 2000’s and is maybe most recognized for its Ethanol Plant Benchmarking program used throughout the U.S. ethanol industry. Christianson left his managing partner role at the firm to become a director in 2021. He is also a member of the Minnesota Governor’s Biofuels Council and current board member of the American Coalition for Ethanol.

“I’ve had the opportunity to work in the industry for many years and I don’t consider it work because I enjoy going to work every day,” Christianson said. “The reason I enjoy it and I think the reason that the industry has such great future is because of the people and the people that this industry is made of, their character, their passion, their values.”

His nominator pointed out Christianson’s involvement in the development of early U.S. ethanol plants, especially those built in Minnesota. “He was truly instrumental in the development the first dry-mill ethanol plants built in Minnesota,” said his nominator. “In the early days, it was common for him to get onto an airplane with people like Ron Fagen to meet with a group interested in building an ethanol plant. He may have not known where they were headed, or when they would be home, but being a farmer himself, he knew the impact these ethanol plants could have—and so he went and did what he could to help grow this industry.” READ MORE