USDA offers to back ZeaChem's first commercial biorefinery

Ethanol Producer Magazine
By Kris Bevill January 26, 2012

On Jan. 26, the USDA announced it has approved a $232.5 million conditional commitment to support the construction of ZeaChem Boardman Biorefinery LLC, a 25 MMgy integrated biorefinery to be built in Boardman, Ore., along the Columbia River. The announcement is the USDA’s second conditional commitment offer to a commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol project in less than a week. On Jan. 20, the USDA announced it had approved a conditional commitment for a $25 million loan guarantee to build Fiberight LLC’s 3.8 MMgy municipal solid waste-to-ethanol facility in Blairstown, Iowa.

In announcing the conditional commitment for ZeaChem’s project, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said the projects being offered loan guarantees from his agency will support the Obama administration’s goal of developing alternative energy sources to reduce the country’s fuel imports. “In his State of the Union address, President Obama outlined his vision for a new era for American energy—an economy fueled by homegrown and alternative energy sources that will be designed and produced by American workers,” Vilsack said in the news release. “This project and others like it will help to establish a domestic advanced biofuels industry that will create jobs here at home and open new markets in the Pacific Northwest and across America.”

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