The U.S. isn’t the only country in North America that’s trying to fuel change in fuel standards. The Canadian Renewable Fuels Association says a new poll suggests Canadians are just as bio-conscious… A new nationwide poll shows that Canadians overwhelmingly support the national renewable fuels strategy to blend biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel in Canada’s fuel supply. The national Praxicus …
Food Price Increase Facts – Updated
Updated with recorded video Hello from Washington, DC and the National Association of Farm Broadcasting annual Washington Watch program. I’m covering their conference on our sister site, AgWired. Today at 1pm eastern time, I’ll be attending a press conference at the National Press Club being hosted by the Renewable Fuels Association. In attendance will be: The Honorable John Block, former …
Missing 500,000 Barrels a Day
An opinion piece in GreenEnergyWar.com asks an interesting question: Wouldn’t we miss the 500,000 barrels of oil that biofuels replace every day? Check out what former California Energy Commissioner John Geesman (who, by the way, has also been following California politics for more than 40 years) has to say: As debate continues to rage over the role which biofuels policies …
President Talks Ethanol in Press Briefing
President Bush talked about the farm bill, higher food and energy costs, expanding domestic oil production, ethanol and other alternative energy sources during a press briefing on Tuesday morning. The president was critical of Congress blocking efforts to explore in ANWR and to expand capacity and build more refineries, as well as a “massive, bloated farm bill that would do …
Importance of Ethanol
The development of agriculture-based biofuels is critical to revitalizing rural communities, according to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer. Speaking to farm broadcasters meeting in Washington, Schafer said managing the blending of energy and agriculture is one of the top priorities for USDA. “If we over the next ten years could convert one-fourth of the four billion barrels of foreign …
New Gas Detector Can ‘See’ Ethanol
Sensor Electronics of Minneapolis has developed a new gas detector that can detect dangerous concentrations of ethanol. The detector is thought to be ideal for protecting biofuel refineries. It’s designed for applications in biofuel processing plants, pipelines, pumping stations, storage facilities, fuel dumps, distribution networks and the like. Calibration is quick, easy: The gas detector simply sniffs a whiff of …
Monsanto, Mendel Helping Develop Biofuel Grass
Seed giant Monsanto and Mendel Biotechnology are teaming up to develop a variety of grass seeds ideal for ethanol and biodiesel production. This story from the St. Louis (MO) Post-Dispatch has more: [St. Louis-area]-based Monsanto will lend its crop testing, breeding and seed production expertise to the BioEnergy Seeds & Feedstocks unit of Mendel, which is headquartered in Hayward, Calif. …
Groundbreaking on Oil from Ethanol
VeraSun Energy broke ground on a new facility last week that will tap into ethanol for oil. VeraSun’s patent-pending Oil Extraction process is designed to yield 7-8 million gallons of corn oil annually from 390,000 tons of distillers grains currently produced at VeraSun’s ethanol production facility in Aurora, S.D. The corn oil will then be made available for sale into …
Ethanol Industry Supports Farm Bill Changes
A tentative agreement reached by conference committee members on funding for a new farm bill would reduce the tax incentive for blenders to use ethanol from 51 cents a gallon to 45 cents. The president of the Renewable Fuels Association says they can support that. “We do understand that they are looking at that in order to pay for cellulosic …
Corn Growers Chairman Responds to Attacks on Ethanol
The recent criticism of ethanol doesn’t sit too well with the chairman of the National Corn Growers Association. Ken McCauley says the figures used in the article published today in the Kansas City Star, for example, were too vague. He says they didn’t properly represent real data and were spun in such a way to make ethanol a culprit… a …