U.S. Sugar sees the future in plant waste: ethanol

The Miami Herald
Posted on Monday, 11.17.08
BY JANE BUSSEY - business@MiamiHerald.com

From sugar on the table to fuel in cars -- U.S. Sugar eyes stalks and leaves as an alternative energy source.

CLEWISTON -- Egrets, herons and other birds circle as a sugar harvester rolls slowly through a cane field, slicing the stalks at the base, loading them into transport trucks and then blowing the thrash back onto the ground.

The harvested cane will be milled into raw sugar in a mere seven hours. But someday there may also be value in what is left in the fields.

Judy Sanchez, spokeswoman for Clewiston-based United States Sugar Corp., pointed to the piles of leaves and other plant material blanketing the cane field. ''All that can be used as biomass,'' she said as she watched the birds swoop in to feast on insects churned up in the harvest.

Alternative energy production is a promising new business and one of the compelling reasons for keeping the Clewiston mill and refinery operating under U.S. Sugar's control.

Rather than distilling sugar cane into ethanol, U.S. Sugar is interested in using the estimated one million tons of plant waste generated in sugar production -- the biomass -- to make lower-cost ethanol.

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