ethanol

Year-and-a-half-old ethanol company Coskata made its public debut at the North American international Auto Show in Detroit in January, where it announced a partnership with General Motors.

On Wednesday, Coskata said it has signed a deal with ICM to manufacture a cellulosic ethanol plant that will be up and running by 2010.

ICM is an ethanol plant design and engineering firm responsible for about half of North American ethanol production, according to the companies.

When he announced the GM deal, Coskata President and CEO Bill Roe said that the company will be signed on to many partnerships to commercialize its … Read more

Many in the auto industry are touting ethanol as the solution to the challenge of post-petroleum transportation. Major carmakers advertise many new cars can run on E85--a mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline--and they trumpet the fuels environmental benefits relative to gasoline. But the ethanol story is not as straightforward as it sounds. Aside from the lack of infrastructure--only around 1,400 out of 170,000 U.S. filling stations have ethanol available--the production of ethanol from corn has drawn criticism for its cost (in terms of food-stocks and land usage) and the relative inefficiency of the … Read more

You can't buy cellulosic ethanol at the pump just yet, but Corvette Racing will use it on the track this year in the American LeMans circuit.

The Corvette team will put a version of E85 ethanol (85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline) made from cellulosic ethanol into its cars for the 2008 season. Unlike conventional ethanol, an alcohol made out of corn or sugar cane, cellulosic ethanol is made from sawdust, wood chips, and agricultural waste. Processing cellulosic ethanol is trickier, but advocates say it could result in a cheap form of transportation fuel someday because the feedstock (i.… Read more

LAS VEGAS--One of the big complaints from consumers who buy General Motors cars that run on E85 ethanol is the lack of places to fill up.

GM CEO Rick Wagoner, in a meeting with reporters at the Consumer Electronics Show taking place in Las Vegas this week, says he has received hundreds of e-mails from customers who have bought such cars and are frustrated they can't find ethanol stations.

When GM started selling its flex-fuel cars, there were about 600 stations that sold ethanol in the U.S. Now there are about 1,400 stations.

But there are 170,… Read more

A large-scale test on the effectiveness of switchgrass to make ethanol gave the native grass high marks on energy production and greenhouse gases.

Switchgrass is a favorite of politicians and cellulosic ethanol advocates who say that the grass, which can grow to nine feet, is a better feedstock than corn--the source of most ethanol made today.

A study published on Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that switchgrass contains five times more energy than it takes to grow it, which makes it significantly more cost-effective than corn.

The average greenhouse gas emissions from cellulosic … Read more

Mascoma, which hopes to make cellulosic ethanol out of old wood chips and weed-like plants, will hold a groundbreaking ceremony on Monday for its first plant that is expected to start producing fuel by the end of 2008.

The plant, in Rome, N.Y., will be capable of churning out 500,000 gallons of fuel a year when fully operational. While that sounds like a lot, it's small for the fuel industry. (Americans consume about 150 billion gallons of gas a year.) Thus, the plant will serve as a showcase for Mascoma's technology. The company, a spin-out of … Read more

Google to enter clean-energy business. It's a search engine, it's a $700 stock, it's a clean energy investor. Google surprised many this week with plans to get into the renewable energy business. Skeptics and fans await results. Roundup.

Can baking soda curb global warming? A start-up in Texas says it can turn the carbon dioxide emitted by power plants into baking soda. CNET News.com.

Ethanol Craze Cools As Doubts Multiply. Corn-based ethanol is considered renewable energy but it continues to draw fire from environmentalists, locations that host refineries, and, increasingly, investors. The Wall Street Journal.

Cleaning … Read more

Oil officials see limit looming on production. It's not an oil peak; it's an oil plateau. The Wall Street Journal reports on impending restrictions on oil extraction. Now both oil industry skeptics and execs are seeing limits. Recently, Don Paul, CTO of Chevron (not the presidential candidate), told us that the world has consumed 1.1 trillion barrels of oil and will go to 1.5 trillion by 2012. The world only had 3 trillion barrels to begin with.

A deeply green city confronts its energy needs and nuclear worries. The New York Times reports on the struggle … Read more

In the battle for congressional funding, sounding the national security alarm is a proven winner.

So it is that the Renewable Fuels Association--yes, there's a trade group for everything under the sun, folks--is arguing that renewable fuel is "critical to reducing dangers associated to increasing foreign oil dependence."

That's the headline of a press release which crossed the wires earlier today. And to be fair, you can make a strong argument that energy alternatives, which include renewable fuels, offer a way out of our reliance upon Middle Eastern (and Venezuelan) oil.

The problem with ethanol, as … Read more