The El Paso Times reports on the disparity of flex-fuel vehicles to the availability of ethanol to fill their tanks.
U.S. automakers have stepped up production of vehicles that can run on ethanol, and El Pasoans can easily find such vehicles at some local new car dealerships.
The problem is that ethanol fuel, most of which is produced from corn, is not easily found.
El Paso has no stations selling the fuel dubbed E85 — 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Fort Bliss has an E85 station, but only to fuel government vehicles on the Army post.
Only 1,261 stations in the United States sell E85 fuel, while the nation has about 168,000 gasoline stations, reported the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition, a Missouri-based E85 fuel advocacy organization.
The closest places to El Paso with E85 pumps are Albuquerque, with one station, and Tucson, with five stations, the coalition reported.
El Paso has more than 10,000 E85-compatible vehicles on the road, the coalition reported. Nationwide, an estimated 6 million E85-compatible vehicles are on the road, according to the coalition.
Read more here.
Photo of El Paso Chevrolet salesman Steve Boughton Sr. with a 2007 flex-fuel Impala by Vanessa Monsisvais of the El Paso Times.
With those words of wisdom, the 
New York City-based Tri-State Biodiesel has put out a call for people to join its Bio-NYC campaign… an effort to encourage New Yorkers to buy more biodiesel, especially that sold by the company, made from used restaurant cooking oil.
In Eugene, Oregon, SeQuential Biofuels opened the state’s first commercial biofuel facility last year. The station dispenses ethanol as well as locally sourced biodiesel. Company cofounder Ian Hill worked with his mother, Susan Hill, AIA, an architect based in Lexington, Kentucky, to incorporate green features into the station’s design. A roof embedded with a 32.6-kilowatt photovoltaic array shelters the pump islands; its central panels have clear backings to transmit more daylight. The roof above an accompanying 2,000-square-foot convenience store also received a green treatment: It is planted 5 inches deep with 4,800 native Oregonian plants. Bioswales adjacent to the parking areas filter storm water.
Alan Eliot Goldberg, FAIA, a former design consultant to ExxonMobil, has developed a prototype station that embraces sustainable materials as well as solar power, which is used to create hydrogen fuel via electrolysis. Adapted from his Advanced Refueling Retail Center concept, it dispenses six different kinds of fuel. The 5,000-square-foot station will include a convenience store and an information center for hydrogen power. “If you’re introducing a new product, you should have a new concept,” Goldberg says of its design. Developed by the ARRC/H2 Alliance, the first station is planned for Syracuse, New York. 
Production has started at Iowa’s 13th biodiesel plant… this one, a Western Dubuque Biodiesel, LLC, plant near Farley. 
Western Dubuque Biodiesel, LLC, will produce fuel from soybeans or other vegetable oils at the new plant, which will be beneficial to area soybean farmers, says Ray Gaesser, (Iowa Soybean Association) president and a soybean farmer near Corning, Iowa.
While at the ACE Convention I got to meet fellow biofuels blogger Nathan Schock. Nathan is the public relations director for 
As schools gear back up for another year, many of them will run their buses on biodiesel.