Ethanol Statistics, a Netherlands-based market research and business information publisher, recently went to the expert on ethanol to do a feature about the future of the industry.
Bob Dinneen, president of the Renewable Fuels Association, is much more positive about ethanol in the United States because he knows why consumption has been lagging behind, because he knows what are and what aren’t showstoppers for the industry, and more importantly, because he probably knows more about upcoming legislation than anyone else. In an interview with Ethanol Statistics he ‘announced’: “It will be a busy 12 months with respect to legislation in Washington, I suspect.”
Ethanol Statistics also reports that Dinneen is pretty optimistic that the Senate will get an energy bill done by the end of the year, even though he thinks that “Washington is a dysfunctional place right now, in which it is far more easy to stop legislation than to pass legislation.”
TPI will begin construction next week on a 316,000-square-foot wind turbine blade factory.
Linc Energy and Bio Clean Coal announced the creation of the company last week and said they would spend $1 million over the next year to build a prototype bioreactor.
The University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus is hosting an energy, economic and environmental – or E3 – conference this week. 
Scientists at Stanford University are looking at a way to connect North America’s wind farms, making wind power less intermittent than its source.
Besides providing a steady production of electricity, connecting wind farms would present other cost benefits by “reducing the total distance that all the power has to travel from the multiple points of origin to the destination point” and by combining all the power on a single transmission line.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware) has unveiled a five-year, $50 billion energy plan akin to the Apollo project that put men on the moon during a campaign stop in Iowa.
General Motors and the U.S. Department of Energy have invited the media to ride in the vehicles participating in the Challenge X Competition… a multi-year engineering competition that has 17 university teams from across North America in a real-world engineering experience to develop GM vehicles in the company’s global vehicle development process. The idea is the teams will create advanced propulsion technology systems that increase energy efficiency and reduce environmental impact through hybrid, plug-in, or fuel cell systems, powered by alternative fuels such as biodiesel, ethanol and hydrogen.
A state program administered by the Iowa Department of Economic Development has handed out $563,800 to 21 Iowa retailers installing pumps for E-85 and biodiesel fuel, terminals installing biodiesel storage tanks and blending equipment, and tank wagons for farm delivery having dedicated compartments for E-85 and biodiesel.
There´s no denying the capability for the use of ethanol is a few steps ahead of the infrastructure for accessing the alternative fuel. But, that doesn´t mean consumers can´t fill up their flex-fuel vehicles with E85 without ease. Simply log on to 
And while the amount of turkey grease that Rocky Mountain Sustainable Enterprises collects this Saturday isn’t likely to cut our dependency on Middle Eastern oil, the company is still hopeful its post-Thanksgiving drive will be beneficial.