Domestic Fuel

The Wisonsin Corn Growers will be giving away free, $20 gift cards to drivers purchasing E85 ethanol fuel Saturday, Oct. 25 at the United Cooperative Cenex, Poynette and Thursday Oct. 30 at the Tri-Par Qwik Stop, West Bend.

During both events, the first 85 Flex Fuel Vehicle (FFV) owners who purchase 8.5 gallons or more of E85 between 10 a.m. and noon receive a $20 gift card courtesy of the Wisconsin Corn Growers Association. Information on ethanol and its many benefits also is available during these events from representatives of the American Lung Association of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Corn Promotion Board.

“E85 emits lower levels of carbon and other air pollutants that can cause or exacerbate lung disease,” says Dona Wininsky, director of communications for the American Lung Association of Wisconsin. “For this reason, the fuel has been designated an official Clean Air Choice of the American Lung Association of the Upper Midwest.”

A Southeast ethanol company has formally announced the locations for four plants to be built around the sunbelt.

East Coast Ethanol intends to construct plants in Northampton Co., NC; Chester Co., SC; Wayne Co., GA; and Jackson Co., FL.

With a nameplate production capacity of 440 million gallons of ethanol per year, the four plants in operation would make ECE will become the sixth largest ethanol producer in the nation and the leading producer of ethanol and its co-products on the East Coast. According to the latest figures released by the Energy Information Administration, the Southeast ethanol market demand is estimated at 2.1 billion gallons per year.

Biofuels in general and ethanol in particular were part of the discussion at the World Food Prize symposium in Des Moines this year. Despite the food versus fuel controversy that permeated the headlines for 2008, there seemed to be more acceptance of biofuels as being able to co-exist with food production and being part of the overall global agriculture picture.

This Ethanol Report podcast features some of the comments made at the World Food Prize events last week by UK Scientific Advisor Sir Gordon Conway, International Biofuels Commission co-chair Roberto Rodrigues, World Bank president Robert Zoellick, former senators George McGovern and Bob Dole – this year’s World Food Prize recipients, and Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer.

You can listen to “The Ethanol Report” on-line here:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Or you can subscribe to this podcast by following this link.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.6MB)

Global demand is growing for the ethanol by-product distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS), which is used for livestock feed – and the US Grains Council is helping to move that product.

At the U.S. Grains Council’s International Distillers Grains Conference in Indianapolis earlier this week, attendees heard that Mexico currently holds the title as the number one purchaser of U.S. DDGS, importing 708,000 metric tons in the 2007 calendar year. Canada follows in second place importing 317,580 tons last year. But other countries hold promise for increased imports, including Thailand and Russia.

Grains Council president and CEO Ken Hobbie said at the conference, “DDGS and its value in all types of animal rations shows that US grain producers have the capacity and the capability to produce for both food and fuel.” Hobbie said that if the four million tons of DDGS exported from the US this year were divided equally between all the major livestock food sectors it would produce 331,000 metric tons of chicken, nearly five billion eggs, almost 86,000 metric tons of beef, 1.8 million metric tons of milk and 205,000 metric tons of pork.

Listen to Hobbie’s remarks here, provided to DomesticFuel by Hoosier Ag Today:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (5.5MB)

The stock market has been on a roller coaster ride lately… down hundreds of points one day, up hundreds the next.

But in this article from Reuters, Jeffrey Sohl, the director of the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire and a professor of entrepreneurship at the university’s Whittemore School of Business and Economics, says some alternative fuels might do well despite all the turmoil:

Q: Which sectors appear to be hot right now?

A: We’re picking up on industrial energy — that’s been kind of going up over the last several years, a nice sweet spot for them. Some new green technologies, new ways and new processes to deal with biodiesel. It could be new ways to keep coal emissions down. And some applications where you see solar and stuff like that – new ways to make those applications a little more cost effective.

Might not be time to drop your entire nest egg into those alternative fuel stocks, but it is good to know they seem to be doing all right.

After Minnesota’s Governor Pawlenty’s call to reduce petroleum fuel consumption, more of the state’s fleets are using the clean, alternative fuel — E85. According to the American Lung Association of the Upper Midwest and a new report from the Minnesota SmartFleet Committee, E85 use in the state fleet during the first three quarters of 2008 is 55percent greater than during the same period in 2007.

Since the beginning of this year, 529,000 gallons of E85 were used to fuel the state’s roughly 1,700 flexible fuel vehicles. Last year at this point, only 295,000 gallonsof the locally-produced, largely renewable fuel had been used. “We have increased our E85 use to approximately 12 percent of our total fuelpurchases,” said Tim Morse, chair of the SmartFleet Committee and director of Fleet and Surplus Services, Minnesota Department of Administration. “That’s very good progress toward our goal, but with E85 available at morethan 360 locations statewide, we can do even better.”

“A flexible fuel vehicle running on E85 instead ofgasoline produces significantly less tailpipe emissions than the samevehicle using gasoline,” said Kelly Marczak, director of the American Lung Association of Minnesota’s clean fuels program. “To-date, the state fleet’s use of E85 in 2008 has prevented more than 2100 tons of lifecycle carbondioxide emissions and other harmful pollutants from entering our air simplyby using E85 instead of gasoline.”

There are currently over 350 E85 fueling stations in the state of Minnesota, the most of any state in the nation.

The first school district in the country to run its buses on biodiesel is celebrating 10 years of driving on the green fuel.

This feature from the National Biodiesel Board explains that Medford Township School District in New Jersey first started using biodiesel when Director of Operations and Technology for the Medford Township Board of Education Joe Biluck applied for and received a Department of Energy grant for alternative fuel and filled a bus with what was then a little-known fuel called biodiesel:

“I will admit, I was a little scared that first time,” he said. “But when you see an opportunity or a technology that has a lot of potential, and you’ve done your homework on it, you have to be willing to take a calculated risk for the greater good. Someone has to raise their hand, and why not Medford?”

According to Medford Township Public School System officials, over the past decade the district’s school buses have traveled more than 4 million miles, consumed more than 615,000 gallons of B20, displaced more than 123,000 gallons of diesel fuel, and eliminated 127,000 pounds of hazardous emissions and 428 pounds of particulate matter while reducing the overall cost of fleet operations by $80,000 a year.

The district is being congratulated by the NBB, whose CEO Joe Jobe says that “Medford’s public school district serves as a great example to other schools looking to use biodiesel.”

Jobe goes on to say that the bold move 10 years ago has helped launch a natiowide use of biodiesel in an important and sensitive environment – the air around school children. Approximately 200 school districts nationwide use biodiesel.

The state of Oklahoma is set to host its third annual biofuels conference.

Governor Brad Henry will host GROW: The Oklahoma Biofuels Conference, November 12-13 in Oklahoma City at the Skirvin Hotel conference center. The conference is touted as a chance to appeal to a broad range of attendees including: biofuel producers, marketers and retailers; end users, including public and private fleet managers; research institutions; farmers, ranchers and agribusiness executives; private equity firms, venture capitalists, lenders and financial institutions; government regulators and representatives; entrepreneurs and anyone with an interest in this new and rapidly expanding Oklahoma energy industry:

The 2008 Oklahoma Biofuels Conference will cover topics that include:
• New and proposed initiatives and funding for bioenergy research including
the 2008 Farm Bill
• 2nd generation feedstocks for Oklahoma
• Discussion on food v. fuel debate
• Biorefinery construction – new players, plans and progress
• Biofuel impacts for end users
• Carbon control policies that may offer income potential for producers
• Energy sustainability
• Advances in feedstock conversion technology

For registration and more information, check out the conference web site, www.growok.com, or you can call 1-800-203-5494.

Export opportunities for the livestock feed co-product of ethanol production are increasing as the industry continues to grow. That was the main message to more than 500 who attended the second the U.S. Grains Council’s International Distillers Grains Conference this week in Indianapolis.

“The reason we’re holding this conference is that we are confident the U.S. ethanol industry will continue to grow due to efforts undertaken by the National Corn Growers Association and state producer organizations over the last several years,” said USGC president and CEO Ken Hobbie. “Due to the efforts of U.S. growers to establish the ethanol industry, we made DDGS our top priority in 2006 and since then have seen DDGS exports exceed 2 million metric tons annually.”

Senior Vice President of Informa Economics Scott Richman told the conference that as a result of the growth in the U.S. ethanol industry this year, 22.8 million tons of DDGS were available for global use in 2007/2008 marketing year, nearly a 50 percent increase from the 2006/2007 marketing year. He said the 2008/2009 marketing year, which just began on Oct. 1, will likely experience an additional 50 percent increase in the availability of DDGS, reaching 31.3 million tons.

“There will be a substantial amount of DDGS available for global livestock industries,” said Richman. “The U.S. Grains Council’s efforts promoting U.S. DDGS and opening several new markets across the globe is helping the U.S. ethanol industry in a big way.”

According to Informa, ethanol production this year is expected to total 9.3 billion gallons and projected to reach 11.9 billion gallons in 2009.

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a $1.2 million grant to Clemson University in South Carolina to assess the potential of switchgrass and sweet sorghum as feedstocks to produce ethanol in the southeast. The grant also will fund development of a small-scale biofuel processing plant at Clemson University’s Restoration Institute in North Charleston.

The South Carolina Bioenergy Research Collaborative has been formed to demonstrate the economic feasibility of using plants, such as switchgrass, trees and sorghum, to make ethanol. The collaborative includes scientists at Clemson, the Savannah River National Laboratory, South Carolina State University and industry incubator SC Bio, as well as industrial partners who are committed to building a pilot plant in the state.

At the same time, a group of Clemson and USDA-Agriculture Research Service scientists is investigating switchgrass production systems in South Carolina, including soil and crop management, new variety development and measuring environmental impacts.