Electric meters are running backwards as Rock Port, Missouri became the first town in the country to run on 100 percent wind power.
This article in the Maryville (MO) Daily Forum says the meters started moving in the other direction after this weekend when the four wind turbines (pictured on the right) on a hill just above the town started producing more electricity than residents were using:
“Rock Port officially declared its energy independence today,” said Tom Carnahan, president of the St. Louis-based Wind Capital Group that brought the Loess Hills Wind Farm to fruition.
Opening the official ceremonies celebrating the launch of the five-megawatt alternative energy system, Eric Chamberlain, project manager for Wind Capital’s Rock Port project, told the gathered crowd of several hundred residents, students and interested parties that the city’s wind turbines were not only generating the energy “Rock Port is using at this time, there is enough for another community this size.”
After remarks by Chamberlain, Rock Port Mayor Helen Jo Stevens, Carnahan, Missouri 6th District U.S. Rep. Sam Graves and Martin Wilkinson of John Deere Credit USA, the ceremony’s organizers brought out an oversized light switch — complete with a green toggle — and symbolically made Rock Port the nation’s first community to draw100 per cent of its electric energy requirements from a renewable source.
“We are now the No. 1 community for our percentage of renewable energy,” according to Chamberlain.
“Government, industry and private citizens all worked together to make Loess Hills,” Chamberlain said. He cited the Missouri Department of Natural Resources for its help in rebuilding an electrical substation at Rock Port and also the benefits derived from federal tax credits for alternative energy sources.
“But John Deere turned the possibility into reality,” Chamberlain said. The company signed on with Wind Capital Group to develop the 50.4-megawatt Cow Branch Wind Farm between Rock Port and Tarkio but had nixed early ideas for a smaller project to serve Rock Port only. When a new request for power bids that included language allowing consideration of alternative energy sources was distributed by the Rock Port City Council, that thinking changed.
This is the second of four wind projects Wind Capital Group has completed in Northwest Missouri. Carnahan says his company will need two important components to finish the other two: long-term renewal of the federal wind-energy tax credit and voter approval of a ballot measure this November in Missouri that will require the state to get a certain percentage of its energy from renewable sources.
A new analysis of America’s ethanol industry shows dramatic efficiency gains in ethanol production have been made in the last five years. 
“This is not your father’s ethanol industry anymore,” said 
Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear visited the headquarters of Alltech this weekend for the ribbon cutting of the company’s new Nutrigenomics Center. Alltech is an international company involved in a variety of enterprises from animal nutrition and biotechnology to horse racing and malt whiskey. The governor says everyone is very excited about Alltech’s new venture into biofuels.
Alltech president Dr. Pearse Lyons says he was humbled to receive one of the three new DOE grants announced last week and he is confident about the project, which will cost an estimated $70 million. “In 15-18 months, we will be using what we call solid state fermentation to go forward cracking cellulose to ethanol,” said Lyons. “And we will use 30 percent corn stover or switchgrass.”
Independent regional fuel distributor and specialty refiner Direct Fuels has opened a biodiesel facility at its Euliss refinery in North Texas.
Biofuel maker Nova Biosource Fuels, Inc. has updated the progress on its Seneca, Illinois biodiesel plant.
A commercial launch company in Massachusetts will run some of its boats this summer on biodiesel.
Mid-Harbor Launch plans to begin using a mixture called B20, and possibly higher mixes, on three or four of its new launches for the upcoming boating season.
Among the projects is a grant of up to $30 million to help pay for a $70 million cellulosic ethanol plant to be built in Springfield, Kentucky.
Without the expansion of biofuel production and use in the US, Brazil and elsewhere, world oil demand would increase and so would the price. Merrill Lynch analyst Francisco Blanch 
POET Biorefining – Alexandria is the company’s second plant in the state of Indiana and Lieutenant Governor Becky Skillman told the crowd on hand for the official ribbon cutting that the new plant further strengthens Indiana as a national leader in the production of biofuels. “Governor Daniels and I congratulate POET on the grand opening of their second plant in our state,” said Skillman. “This plant will stimulate our agriculture industry, create new jobs to Madison County residents and provide a clean and home-grown fuel to Hoosiers.”
Indiana Corn Marketing Council executive director Chris Novak says the new plant “represents the many positives that a robust biofuels industry can bring to our state, including a new market for area corn farmers, new jobs, a cleaner environment and less dependence on foreign oil.” The plant will utilize 22 million bushels of corn from the area to produce 65 million gallons of ethanol and 178,000 tons of distillers grains per year.
A $50 million project could help one of Canada’s biggest biofuels producers build the largest biofuels facility north of the border.