Hey I just wanted to post something new today. I have heard that many new ethanol plants are being planned right now. A friend of mine says that he knows of a company that has a backlog of 50 plants on order and that each plant cost ~ 100 million to build. Some analysts say the number is about 190 ethanol plants are on order. This is great new, because this means something is happening right now and that the supply of fuel grade ethanol should go up and be widely available in just a few short years.

One thing that is distressing about this is that the Bush administration and some coal producing states are pushing for these plants to use coal in the distillation process and not the biomass or natural gas. What a shame. Here we have a very clean and green process that we want to pervert into a dirty one. Doesn't make sense to me.

"While only four of roughly 100 ethanol plants currently operating in the U.S. are powered by coal (practically all of the rest are fueled by natural gas), some 190 more are under construction or soon to be built. One energy analyst, Robert McIlvaine, president of the Illinois-based research group McIlvaine Company, predicts that "100 percent" of new ethanol plants built in the U.S. over the next few years will be coal-fired, "largely because of the exorbitant cost of natural gas right now, and the comparatively predictable future supply of homegrown coal." A recent article in the Christian Science Monitor also points out that many ethanol manufacturers are increasingly being drawn toward coal."

Click here to check this out.

http://www.organicconsumers.org/2006/article_559.cfm