The American Le Mans Series has partnered with the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council to make E10, “the official ethanol-enriched fuel” of the series.
Scott Atherton, President and CEO of the American Le Mans Series, considers this a perfect fit for the platform that is the American Le Mans Series.
“We’ve often described the American Le Mans Series providing a direct link for our manufacturers, the link from the race track to the show room,” Atherton said. “Today, we’ve established another direct link and that is from the race track to the fuel station.”
The American Le Mans Series was founded in 1999 by Georgia-based entrepreneur Don Panoz. It features top manufacturers such as Acura, Aston Martin, Audi, Corvette, Ferrari, Mazda, Panoz, Porsche, and Saleen.
The American Le Mans Series features 12 races in 2007, including the prestigious season opening Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring, which will be held on March 17, and the 1,000-mile Petit Le Mans. This will be the first time that ethanol-enriched fuel will be used in a 12 hour endurance race.
Atherton held a press conference with EPIC Executive Director Tom Slunecka and Bobby Rahal of Rahal Letterman Racing to make the announcement. A portion of that press conference can be heard here.
Le Mans Press Conference (24:00 min MP3)
A new survey indicates that the ethanol industry might want to consider getting women more pumped up about ethanol.
Mary Beth Stanek, GM’s director for Environment and Energy, has been making the midwest rounds recently talking about ethanol and the auto industry. This week she was in Des Moines at a biofuels forum sponsored by Successful Farming magazine.
I want to thank our sponsor for my coverage of this year’s National Biodiesel Conference, John Deere, represented here by Don Borgman. The conference is winding down with the NBB Board meeting and a few workshops still taking place. I’m headed home but have a number of posts that I’ll add within the next day, including all the Eye on Biodiesel award winners.
At our general session this morning here at the National Biodiesel Conference we got the political perspective from both sides of the aisle. On hand were Mary Matalin and James Carville.
I’ve got the recorded audio of the press conference for you here. The questions aren’t on microphone but the answers are very clear. The first question to kick it off is whether they think biodiesel as part of an energy solution is on the radar screen inside the beltway in Washington, DC.
This new industry, so critical to our economy, our national security, and our environment is already setting up shop in Michigan. With other states clamoring for this opportunity, Michigan cannot afford to wait.
Willett Kempton, Richard Garvine and Amardeep Dhanju at the University of Delaware and Mark Jacobson and Cristina Archer at Stanford, found that the wind over the Middle Atlantic Bight, the aquatic region from Cape Cod, Mass., to Cape Hatteras, N.C., could produce 330 gigawatts (GW) of average electrical power if thousands of wind turbines were installed off the coast.
“The production of renewable fuels is one of Missouri agriculture’s greatest success stories,” Blunt said. “In the same way that Missouri’s family farmers rose to a great challenge and fed the world in the last century, this century’s family farmers will answer another noble calling and fuel America. This study shows that renewable fuels will not only help reduce our dependence on foreign oil, but also create jobs and economic growth.”