The Albany Port District Commission has approved a proposal to build an ethanol plant on port property which officials say it the largest development project in the history of the port.
According to the Albany Times-Union, the developer, Albany Renewable Energy LLC, would bring in 60 million bushels of corn annually — about what is produced in all of New York state — from regional and Midwest farmers.
The plant still needs to obtain financing and permits from the state Department of Environmental Conservation before construction can begin. Company officials say construction would take 6 to 12 months.
The Schenectady Gazette reports that the plant will be designed and built by ICM Inc. of Kansas, and that the company is also looking to acquire the rights to build another smaller production facility at the port. The total cost of the two plants could reach $350 million.
Albany Renewable Energy plans to send processed ethanol from its plant by barge to terminals at the major ports in Boston, New York City and Philadelphia.
Featured are RFA Vice Chairman Tom Branhan of 
The innovative technology allows ethanol plants to recycle and reuse wastewater streams as an alternative to discharge.
The almost 14-acre tract is filled with corn stubble today. But construction, to be done by Process Concepts of Pevely, MO, will begin soon. PCSE qualified for the Missouri Department of Agriculture’s Producer Incentive program last October. Under those guidelines, the state will pay PCSE 30-cents per gallon on the first 15 mgy of biodiesel created during the first five years of operation. One of the conditions of the incentive, however, is that the plant must be producing biodiesel by March 1, 2009. It is estimated the plant could be completed in 10 months.
“We’re always cautious when we review the March projections, because they are made before any seeds really enter the ground,” said Ron Litterer, NCGA president. “The corn acreage projections also have a tendency to go up. Last year, for example, there was a difference of more than 3 million acres between the March estimate and the final number.” Litterer pointed out USDA’s March report has underestimated actual corn acres in the each of the last four years.
In Michael Grunwald’s March 27 article “The Clean Energy Scam,” corn-based ethanol is the scapegoat of the week. Though Grunwald draws attention to the vitally important need for evaluation of global land-use changes, the environmental finger pointing at corn-based ethanol by his sources has come to the point of ridiculous.
The nuptials of 
VeraSun announced that the merger with US BioEnergy was approved by a majority vote of shareholders of both companies and is effective April 1, 2008.
Because we do lots of interviews and generate quite a bit of audio here at Domestic Fuel and because we are broadcasters by training, we thought it was about time we started our own podcast. 
Our first podcast features aerospace engineer and author Robert Zubrin, who has been getting some media attention lately for his book, 
USDA’s highly anticipated