Ethanol from ‘Energy Cane’ (and Someday, Orange Peels)

The New York Times
March 4, 2009, 12:28 pm — Updated: 2:54 pm
By Kate Galbraith

Could ethanol one day be made from Florida’s orange peels? Carlos Riva, the president and chief executive of the cellulosic ethanol developer Verenium, isn’t sold on the idea yet.
“You harvest it in one month, then you sit on marmalade for 11 months,” he told me during a visit in New York on Tuesday.

Mr. Riva is focused on a more promising near-term crop: “energy cane,” which he plans to start testing in the next week or two in the company’s pilot ethanol plant in Louisiana and, eventually, in a commercial-scale plant that will be built in Florida in partnership with the oil company BP.

Read the full story