GoodFuels

VeraSun opens 11th plant

Today VeraSun, one of the largest ethanol producers in the country, celebrated the ribbon cutting at their 11th ethanol biorefinery, located in Albion, Nebraska.

VeraSun acquired the facility from ASAlliances in July 2007 and began production in October.

Nebraksa Governor Dave Heineman will be there as well as a host of other local ethanol supporters. VeraSun will be giving plant tours immediately after the ceremony.

Albion, like many rural communities, will reap a huge benefit from this plant. It’s providing 168 new jobs and injects an estimated $31.7 million into the economy.

This is another example of how ethanol is providing opportunity - it’s a fantastic economic engine for small-town America.

Nation’s first cellulosic ethanol plant opens

Verenium Corp is celebrating the dedication of their newest ethanol plant in Jennings, Louisiana today.  The Houston Chronicle reports, “the 1.4 million-gallon-per-year demonstration plant will attempt what others have found difficult — to produce large quantities of ethanol as cheaply from agricultural waste and nonfood crops as from corn, the main crop used to make the fuel in the U.S.”

The Jennings plant will use local sugar bagasse, what is left of the sugarcane after it is used to make syrup or other products.

This is a huge step forward. With the RFS requiring increased ethanol use and corn-based ethanol under attack, it’s increasingly important for cellulosic ethanol technologies to be improved and modified.

A 2005 report from the Energy Department and Agriculture Department estimated that U.S. lands are capable of producing a sustainable supply of 1.3 billion tons of biomass each year, enough to replace almost one-third of the roughly 140 billion gallons of gasoline Americans consume annually.

Verenium’s Matthew Musial describes the process of creating ethanol from the bagasse in this video from the Houston Chronicle:

Zubrin: Break up OPEC, Pump Ethanol

Robert Zubrin, a fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and aerospace engineer, called on the United States to break up the OPEC oil cartel which “is taxing the United States into a depression.”  How do we do it? “We need to break the cartel’s vertical monopoly by creating fuel choice on a global scale,” and that means putting more alternative fuels in our cars like ethanol.

Congress can make this happen with a stroke of the pen, by passing a law requiring that all new cars sold in the United States be flex-fuel vehicles that can run on any combination of gasoline, ethanol or methanol. The technology is readily available and it only costs about $100 per vehicle.

By making America a flex-fuel vehicle market, we will effectively make flex fuel the international standard, as all significant foreign car makers would be impelled to convert their lines over as well. Around the world, gasoline would be forced to compete at the pump against alcohol fuels made from any number of sources: This includes current commercial crops like corn and sugar; cellulosic ethanol made from crop residues and weeds; methanol, which can be made from any kind of biomass without exception as well as coal, natural gas, and recycled urban trash.