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Where Ethanol Meets Opportunity
By Mr Ethanol | April 24, 2007
FayObserver:
Anyone who listened to the State of the Union address knows that the Bush administration believes our country can grow its way to energy independence. Ethanol from corn, soybeans, sweet potatoes and switch grass. Biofuels. You may have heard it again from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center — the nonprofit group says that North Carolina can use its own crops to produce 10 percent of the state’s liquid fuel needs by 2017. “Wood waste, barley, soybeans, sweet potatoes and switch grass” will be the fuels we use to produce cellulosic ethanol — not to be confused with corn ethanol.
Lots of political muscle is lining up behind ethanol. Lots of money is lining up behind the political muscle. And a variety of businessmen are lining up to grab that money as it flows out of the public coffers. Unlike the small-scale ethanol plants of the past, current proposals are for plants five times the average size of existing operations — and built mostly by international investors on American soil.
Just this month the federal government issued new air quality regulations that will immediately allow ethanol plants to emit more than twice the previously allowed volume of pollutants into the air. The emissions ceiling that had been limiting plants to capacities of 100 million gallons per year will now allow those same plants to expand to more than twice their original size — without triggering the air quality permit restrictions imposed on other smokestack industries. 250 million gallons per year ethanol plants will now qualify as “minor emitters.” In North Carolina an ethanol plant — a minor emitter — gets an air quality permit in 61 days with no opportunity for public comment. We are the friendliest state in the country when it comes to permitting an ethanol plant.
Sounds like a plan. Mega-ethanol plants in every corner of the state and country. That is, as soon as we figure out how to produce ethanol from the crops we grow. And when we cut down the trees to either fuel the plants (wood waste) or plant the barley, soybeans, sweet potatoes and switch grass. Even the biotechnology folks acknowledge that North Carolina will never grow enough corn to contribute to ethanol production.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. As of today, no one has figured out how to commercially produce ethanol from anything we grow in this state. Corn is the fuel used by most ethanol plants in the United States. Sugar cane is used in Brazil. There are “boutique” plants around the country that have tried barley, sorghum, cheese whey, waste beer, and milo — but corn is the money crop. Wood waste, sweet potatoes and switch grass — the crops North Carolina is apparently most capable of producing — have never been tried. The crops aren’t currently available here in sufficient quantities, and cellulosic ethanol plants have yet to be designed or built. Midwest corn is the only fuel available for large-scale ethanol production — and the continued demand on supplies is pushing the price of meat, poultry, eggs, dairy, cereal and nearly every other staple of American diet to new highs.
Does it sound as if the ethanol industry is not yet ready for prime time? Read on…
Topics: BizOp |
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