Filed under: Emerging Technologies, Ethanol, USA
DOE will invest $26 million in Mascoma's cellulosic ethanol plant in Michigan
During a conference call this afternoon, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm announced that the U.S. DOE will invest $26 million dollars in the state's first cellulosic ethanol production plant, being built by Mascoma in the Upper Peninsula. Granholm, speaking with a sore voice thanks to a cold, said that this is the first time that Michigan has gotten a DOE grant in partnership with the private sector.Granholm was joined by Senator Debbie Stabenow, Senator Carl Levin, Congressman Bart Stupak and others, both in Lansing and Washington, D.C., during the call. Mascoma CEO Bruce Jamerson called it a great day for Michigan, Mascoma and the country. Stabenow said that a new federal $1.01 per gallon tax credit for cellulosic ethanol should do for the second-generation biofuel what the previous 54 cent a gallon credit did for corn ethanol. All of the speakers highlighted that this plant will be a job creation engine for the UP, and Levin emphasized that this is a bit of good news amid a lot of bad economic news.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
greendeth 3:02PM (10/07/2008)
Great news! Cellulosic is a very important part of our transition to non-fossil fuel economy. Not only does this wean us off petroleum and provide new domestic jobs - it lowers dastardly CO2 by 30% over gasoline! It's a veritable cornucopia of goodness!
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Sir Vix 3:41PM (10/07/2008)
Great! Jobs in michigan are well needed! Especially in the U.P, which gets ignored sometimes. Does anyone know If cellulosic ethanol is more efficient to produce than corn? Example: sugar cane ethanol has the highest potency. And if so, how much?
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Steve-O 6:43PM (10/07/2008)
It is better than corn for a bunch of reasons...
Doesn't compete with food
Feedstock is diverse and can be grown without fertilization, pesitcides, and as much tending with fuel burning farm equipment!
On a large scale is economical to produce (or at least will be)
It should be a big part of our future "energy mix"
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DaveD 8:59PM (10/07/2008)
This is great except that it's mis-directed. We can produce a better output from the same people, the same inputs and the same technologies (more or less). It's called butanol. Please, folks, take a look at it before we spend anymore on ethanol. They are both produced from the same cellulosic/corn/etc/etc so I'm not trying to discourage anyone that is benefiting from this.
Butanol is just newer and less well known! It comes from the same sources and the same people and mostly the same processes.
Why we should care: Becaue butanol truly works in all existing infrastructure and ethanol does not. Ethanol destroys existing pipelines, existing infrastructure and can only be blended up to 15% without major changes to all of the above. Butanol can be up to 100% with NO changes to your car, the pipelines, the existing infrastructure, etc, etc.
Ethanol only has 60% of the energy content of gasoline...butanol has over 90%! And it's almost the same thing folks!
Hey, the same people benefit, it's still American energy independence, etc etc. Let's just start getting people educated that there is a better alternative.
Ethanol was there first because we understood it better....because it was the same yeast/process that helped us get some of the alcohol we've been drinking for thousands of years! LOL But folks there have been recent breakthroughs that show we can produce the butanol just as cheaply and it's better for our cars.
Read, get educated and pass it along. Let's see if we can take a better direction that helps us all:
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/20073/
http://www.greenchipstocks.com/aqx_p/6657?OVRAW=butanol&OVKEY=butanol%20fuel&OVMTC=advanced&OVADID=32827511522&OVKWID=148098662022
For full disclosure, I have NO horse in this race. I'm trying to do a hybrid electric car. Just learned about this in my reading/research and it looks very promising to me and gets rid of many of the drawbacks of ethanol with no downside that I can see. Well, as long as you stay away from corn and other food crops as the "feedstock". :-)
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Luke 8:19AM (10/08/2008)
Thanks for the info! +1!
JamesWB 8:53AM (10/08/2008)
I think ethanol plants can be quite easily converted to butanol plants. Seeing as celulosic ethanol does not give loads of money to the corn farmers there is no reason for them to lobby for less efficient ethanol production like there was when the subsidies were on corn ethanol.
abgajoy 11:59AM (3/09/2009)
Mascoma's cellulosic ethanol is a very good to invest for trust me...
Cheers,
invest my money in high interest
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