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For Many, Ethanol Is Losing Steam As Biofuel Of Choice
By Mr Ethanol | June 20, 2007
Houston Chronicle:
BP, the oil patch’s self-proclaimed king of green, says it sells more ethanol than anybody. But it doesn’t produce a drop.
And it doesn’t plan to.
“We’re not in the ethanol production business,” BP’s chief executive, Tony Hayward, told me last week. “What we’d like to do is get to the next generation of biofuels.”
BP blends ethanol as an additive in its gasoline and is embarking on a program to sell E85 ethanol (an alternative fuel that is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline) through many of its stations in the Midwest.
But it doesn’t see ethanol as the answer to the alternative fuel question.
Corn-based ethanol, which the government touts as the best substitute for gasoline, may already be losing its luster as a fuel of the future. Increasingly skeptical reports question its efficiency, energy output, emissions and economics.
Archer Daniels Midland, the world’s biggest ethanol maker, last month reported its slowest earnings growth in a year and a half because rising corn prices undercut ethanol profits.
That hasn’t dampened ethanol production, though. ADM, for example, plans to increase its production capacity by 50 percent next year, to 1.6 billion gallons, the company said.
This year, capacity is expected to expand by 7.1 million gallons a day, according to a Lehman Bros. study released in late April. That increased production may surpass demand by year’s end, the study found.
Part of the problem is that once it’s produced, it’s difficult to get ethanol where it needs to go.
Topics: Biofuel, Ethanol, News |
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