Who Shall Dare: Biobutanol and the intrepid ethanol producer

Biofuels Digest
Jim Lane
June 22, 2012

Declining ethanol margins and plant idlings; ethanol price gloom; controversy over RFS2 targets.

Despair? Bah! It all spells “opportunity” for the intrepid ethanolista.

This week in biofuels, two storylines that have been gaining a lot of attention have been the declining margins and plant slowdowns and shutdowns in the US corn ethanol sector, and the battle over IP rights between Butamax and Gevo in the biobutanol sector.

The story lines are, in fact, closely linked. One of the reasons companies like Dupont and BP are pushing so hard on securing IP rights in biobutanol is the massive opportunity to bring the technology forward with corn ethanol producers, to improve their margins and increase the sector’s downstream distribution opportunities.

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