A DuPont executive says plans to bring advanced biofuels programs to market are on track and making significant technical progress toward the commercialization of biobutanol and the conversion of cellulosic feedstocks economically into biofuels.
“Biobutanol and cellulosic ethanol have the ability to transform the biofuels industry,” Vice President & General Manager John Ranieri told an investor conference last week. “Our flexible business models allow us to penetrate different geographies with the ability to convert various feedstocks to meet the significant global demand for biofuels.”
DuPont is developing and commercializing an upstream biofuel technology to produce cellulosic ethanol that will use non-food energy feedstocks such as corn cob and switchgrass, and a downstream biofuel technology to produce biobutanol, a high-performance biofuel that can be delivered through existing gasoline distribution channels.
In May, DuPont announced a joint venture with Danisco to deliver low cost, sustainable cellulosic ethanol technology. In July, the DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol LLC joint venture announced a partnership with the University of Tennessee to build a pilot and demonstration facility for the cellulosic ethanol technology, groundbreaking scheduled later this month. DuPont is jointly developing biobutanol with BP in a partnership first announced in 2006.
Department of Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer and Department of Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman are planning to release the National Biofuels Action Plan tomorrow in Washington DC.
In just about a week and a half, government officials, bioenergy experts and leaders in the private industry will gather in St. Louis, Mo., for the third in a series of conferences sponsored by the Farm Foundation addressing the issues facing rural areas as they move to a bioeconomy.
“The purpose of the conference is to provide an unbiased presentation of issues that are going to affect us in agriculture and otherwise as we transition to a bioeconomy.”
The land around Lake Okeechobee has long been one of the largest sugarcane producing regions in the nation. One company now wants to use a tract of land along the lake to produce sweet sorghum for ethanol.
Company CEO Aaron Pepper says they currently has sweet sorghum field trials underway in various types of soils in the counties surrounding Lake Okeechobee. He is shown here inspecting some of those trials. The company is negotiating with area farmers about planting sweet sorghum, which is similar to the sugarcane familiar in the area and grows up to 15 feet tall, but can yield two harvests per year and so could be planted on sugarcane acreage when it is fallow.
Ethanol plants are cool in a lot of ways. They’re producing a domestic fuel solution to our energy problems and that lessens our dependency on foreign oil for example.
“This report proves that being green is not optional, it is necessary for a healthy and robust economy,” said U.S. Conference of Mayors President Miami Mayor Manny Diaz. “Creating green jobs is an investment we must continue to make.”
Investors have stepped in to give troubled Imperium Renewables, which operates a 100-million gallon biodiesel refinery in the Seattle area, a boost to repay some of its debts.
The U.S. House of Representatives has reversed direction from just a week ago and approved 263-171 the Senate’s version of the $700 billion bill to fix the nation’s financial crisis.
Major U.S. pipeline company