Verenium to build its first commercial scale cellulosic ethanol plant
Verenium Corporation has been awarded a $7 million grant from the state of Florida and it will use the money to build its first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant. The money comes through the state's Farm to Fuel initiative, something sure to enrage ethanol opponents. The plant, to be constructed beginning later this year in Highlands County, Florida, is expected to start generating fuel in 2011. When fully up to speed the facility will employ 140 people and produce 36 million gallons of ethanol annually. The total cost of the refinery is expected to be $250-300 million. Verenium's enzyme-based process for breaking down cellulose into sugar for fermentation will use grasses as the main stock at the Florida facility.
[Source: Verenium]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Carney 1:17PM (1/20/2009)
I'm not opposed as such to this spending, but the pursuit of cellulosic ethanol in some ways misses the point.
If we instead mandated that all new cars sold in America were fully flex fueled. able to run on methanol, ethanol, or gasoline, the size of the market for alcohol fuels would be so large so swiftly that private capital would rush into efforts at commercializing various alcohols, and there would be far less need to spend taxpayer dollars on such projects.
Furthermore, with methanol compatibility being a standard feature in all new cars, any form of biomass becomes available to make auto fuel. Methanol can be made from any biomass without exception - crop residues, weeds, trash, compost, sewage, etc., today, with no need for further research.
In effect, without an FFV mandate, cellulosic ethanol research, especially funded by tax dollars, helps perpetuate and spread the false idea that alcohol fuels aren't yet ready, can't be produced in enough quantity, to move our surface transportation fleet. Ironically, therefore, such government research in the current context arguably helps continue our status quo of unnecessary lock-in to gasoline only, which enriches OPEC and harms the world.
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