The Wisconsin Corn Growers Association (WCGA) is offering a free $20 E85 gift card at this year’s Wisconsin Farm Technology Days. The promotion is part of the celebration of reaching over 100 stations offering the clean, renewable fuel.
The gift cards will be available at the WCGA booth in tent D this week, offered from a variety of state merchants in exchange for a receipt showing a purchase of at least eight gallons of E85. The offer is limited to one per household.
“With gasoline prices hovering around $4 per gallon, American consumers must realize that ethanol and the country’s Renewable Fuels Standards are part of the solution for rising food and energy costs,” says Randy Woodruff, president of the Wisconsin Corn Growers Association. “Home-grown biofuels are replacing imported oil and helping lower gas prices as much as 40 cents per gallon. In addition, several recent studies have shown that petroleum prices impact retail food costs three times more than farm prices do, yet big oil and food companies continue trying to blame farmers for the high cost of groceries.”
Currently, there are 112 E85 fueling locations within the state of Wisconsin to fuel about 154,000 flexible fuel vehicles.
An Illinois biodiesel company has bought a biodiesel refinery that had been mothballed. Blackhawk Biofuels, LLC, with $19.8 million in financial backing from the state of Illinois, has bought the 45-million-gallon-a-year biodiesel plant at Danville, Illinois.
“As a business, we have always done everything we can to positively impact our customers and our economy,” stated Chris Barstow, president of Favorite Foods. “Now, we are taking steps to positively impact our environment. By investing in initiatives like a Biodiesel program, energy efficiencies in our new warehouse, and an expanded recycling program that will allow us to reduce waste exponentially, Favorite Foods can give back in a whole new way.”
A coalition of business, environmental and energy policy organizations advocating aggressive development of renewable energy will team up with members of Congress for the the 11th Annual Congressional Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency EXPO + Forum, July 31st in Washington, DC.
“Rapid determination of EYP of corn can be a valuable step in improving ethanol plant efficiency,” said Dennis Thompson, ICIA chief executive officer. “ICIA recognizes the need for rapid measurement tools based on standardized reference lab methods. Our initial validation procedures have shown a strong correlation between the Pioneer EYP calibration and our laboratory method.”
“Fueling Revolution” is the theme for the 2008 Ethanol Conference and Trade Show being held August 12-14 at the Qwest Center in Omaha, Nebraska.
According to the company, Primafuel Solutions will deliver next-generation, market-ready technology solutions to the biofuels industry. By taking Primafuel’s advanced technology platforms to market, Primafuel Solutions is working with customers to facilitate the transition to more sustainable bio-refineries. The team’s initial offering is SMAART™Oil, a down-stream system that extracts more food and fuel from the same bushel of corn.
“Removing the tariff would not lower food prices,” said RFA president Bob Dinneen. “Such an action would halt development of new ethanol technologies and take the jobs and economic opportunity being generated by the domestic ethanol industry to foreign countries. I strongly encourage President Bush to recognize that skyrocketing oil prices play a far greater role in the complex issue of food prices than does ethanol and reject the efforts to remove the secondary tariff.”
Biofuels groups from the US, Canada, Brazil and Europe put aside their differences this past week to present a united front to world leaders meeting in Japan.