Domestic Fuel

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns will hold a tele-news conference on Wednesday, December 7th at 2:30 p.m. EST. Secretary Johanns will discuss a comprehensive energy strategy to help farmers and ranchers mitigate the impact of high energy costs, create long-term resiliency, and promote renewable fuels. The press conference will be available live via webcast from the USDA website www.usda.gov.

The Minnesota Corn Growers Association and Minnesota Corn Research and Promotion Council have climbed aboard the EPIC bandwagon to present a unified front for the promotion of ethanol nationwide. “This is a significant milestone for ethanol promotion, to have all these different ethanol producers come together in a common cause,” said Jerry Ploehn, chair of MCR&PC. “We finally have the individual horses hooked to the same wagon and they are all pulling together. The more that join in, the more strength we can harness to achieve a name for ethanol.” EPIC’s Tom Sluneka made a presentation to the group last month.

This company is into some innovative technology for “green fuels.” Last week, GreenShift – which is a publicly traded company – announced new technology that converts agricultural waste into biofuels. Basically what it can do is take the concentrated sludge created from livestock processing, which has a high concentration of protein and fat, and make biodiesel out of it. The sludge is created as a by-product of wastewater treatment at processing facilities. Read the full story here.
GreenShift also has a subsidiary with a great name - Mean Green BioFuels Corporation – which has announced its plans to build a 30 million gallon per year biodiesel production facility in western Tennessee. The new Tennessee facility will be one of five such facilities that Mean Green intends to build, own and operate commencing in 2006. (Link to press release)

On-track testing of the IRL Indy Car new ethanol-blended fuel begins next week in Florida at the Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Bryan Herta of Andretti Green Racing and Buddy Rice of Rahal Letterman Racing will use the fuel as part of a one-day test with manufacturers Honda and Firestone. In March, the Indy Racing League announced it had partnered with the ethanol industry to become the fuel supplier beginning with the 2006 season. Teams will use a 90 percent methanol and 10 percent ethanol for the test and during the 2006 season. In 2007, the fuel will be 100 percent fuel-grade ethanol in IndyCar Series cars.
Ethanol is the only proven commercial scale renewable transportation fuel currently available in the marketplace. The 2006 season will not be the first time ethanol fuel has powered a car in the famed Indianapolis 500. At the 1927 race, a car driven by Leon Duray was fueled by ethyl (grain) alcohols.
The testing will be done December 7.

I really don’t like posting stories about companies with no website that I can find. These days a website is just such a given for a company that I am surprised when I can’t find one. It’s important not only because it provides legitimacy, but also information.
ANYway, website or not, Advanced Bioenergy, LLC is breaking ground December 2 for a 100 million gallon ethanol plant in Fairmont, Nebraska. When complete, the plant will be a leading ethanol producer in the state of Nebraska. It will also produce 320,000 tons of dried distillers grains for use in livestock feed and use 36 million bushels of corn a year. The plant is being built by Fagen, Inc. of Granite Falls, MN on a 260-acre site located a mile south of Fairmont and will employ up to 50 people when completed.
Here’s a link – to the Renewable Fuels Association website where they have the release they sent out on the groundbreaking.