Sorghum taking root as a source for ethanol

By Rick Neale, USA TODAY

FELLSMERE, Fla. — The race is on to build Florida's first sweet sorghum ethanol plant.
And Ray Coniglio hopes a 10-acre test patch of waving plants here will cultivate construction of such a facility in central Florida's Brevard County.

"You can see how they're growing. They're shooting right up," says Coniglio, president of Global Renewable Energy's ethanol division, walking with hands outstretched between rows of waving sweet sorghum. "You come out here every three days, and you can see the difference."

GRE planted this test crop April 5, and scientific testing is underway. If sugar content and tonnage per acre prove sufficient, the company hopes to grow 10,000 acres of sweet sorghum and build an ethanol distillery.

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Grant Awarded for Sludge-to-Biodiesel Research

Water & Wastewater.com
By Robbie Ward
Jul 23, 2008

Starkville, MS -- Three Mississippi State chemical engineering researchers formally will accept a $200,000 grant from the regional director of the Environmental Protection Agency during a ceremony at McCain Hall, home of the Bagley College of Engineering.

Jimmie Palmer of EPA's Regional Applied Research Effort Program will present the research award dealing with the conversion of sewage into biodiesel to assistant professors Rafael Hernandez and Todd French, and associate professor Mark Bricka. The three faculty members are colleagues in the university's chemical engineering department.

The grant supports their work to chemically transform sludge and wastewater collected from a Tuscaloosa, Ala., treatment facility into a feedstock for producing biodiesel.

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In Gas-Powered World, Ethanol Stirs Complaints

New York Times Business
By KATE GALBRAITH
Published: July 26, 2008

OKLAHOMA CITY — “Why Do You Put Alcohol in Your Tank?” demands a large sign outside one gas station here, which reassures drivers that it sells only “100% Gas.”

“No Corn in Our Gas,” advertises another station nearby.

Along the highways of this sprawling prairie city, and in other pockets of the country, a mutiny is growing against energy policies that heavily support and subsidize the blending of ethyl alcohol, or ethanol, into gasoline.

Many consumers complain that ethanol, which constitutes as much as 10 percent of the fuel they buy in most states, hurts gas mileage and chokes the engines of their boats and motorcycles.

As ethanol has spread around the country, gas station owners and wholesalers are catering to concerns about ethanol that are often exaggerated but not entirely unfounded. High gas prices seem to be helping them plant seeds of doubt in customers’ minds.

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DOE, USDA Granting More Than $10M to Ten Biofuel Genomics Studies

[July 31, 2008]

By a GenomeWeb staff reporter
NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – The US Departments of Energy and Agriculture today said that they will provide nearly $11 million over three years to fund 10 genomics research programs that can help develop bioenergy feedstocks for use in cellulosic biofuels.

Under the joint Plant Feedstock Genomics for Bioenergy program, the DOE will contribute $8.8 million from its Office of Biological and Environmental Research, and the USDA will provide $2 million through its Cooperative State Research, Education and Extension Service.

“Developing cost-effective means of producing cellulosic biofuels on a national scale poses major scientific challenges — these grants will help in developing the type of transformational breakthroughs needed in basic science to make this happen,” DOE Under Secretary for Science Raymond Orbach said in a statement.

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Brazil weights ethanol case

The International Herald Tribune (New York Times)
The Associated Press
Published: July 30, 2008

GENEVA: Brazil is likely to ask the World Trade Organization to open a blockbuster case into U.S. ethanol tariffs, a senior official said Wednesday, outlining the first possible dispute to arise as a result of this week's global trade talks collapse.

Roberto Azevedo, Brazil's WTO ambassador, said there was a "strong possibility" that the Latin American country would make a formal complaint in September. Brazil would then be able to ask for the establishment of a WTO panel if a two-month consultation period with the United States fails to produce an agreement.

The case would concern a U.S. ethanol tariff of 54 cents per gallon, which critics say is designed to protect American corn farmers who cannot produce the fuel as cheaply as sugarcane growers in Brazil.

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In the tall grass, researchers find energy alternative

CNetNews.com
July 30, 2008 2:23 PM PDT

A perennial grass that grows as tall as 13 feet, requires little to no fertilizer, and can be stored away in bales almost indefinitely could be the next hope for efficient ethanol production.

At least that's the thinking of researchers from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who have been field testing a sterile grass known as Miscanthus giganteus, a distant cousin of switchgrass. In a report released Wednesday, the researchers said that the biofuel crop proved in field tests to be significantly more productive than other crops like corn in producing biomass for ethanol--an alternative to gas.

"By using Miscanthus...we can produce ethanol using a lot less land than we're using at present doing this with corn," crop sciences professor Steven Long, who led the study, said during in a presentation of the research. His work will also appear in this month's journal Global Change Biology.

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Senate Ag Committee on Ethanol to Be Held in Omaha

By: iStockAnalyst
Wednesday, July 30, 2008 9:52 PM
By Joseph Morton, Omaha World-Herald, Neb.

Jul. 30--WASHINGTON -- The role of ethanol in rising food costs will be at the heart of a Senate Agriculture Committee field hearing in Omaha next month.

In announcing the Aug. 18 hearing, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., said Wednesday that the committee chairman, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, agreed to hold it in the face of what Nelson called an ongoing "smear campaign" against ethanol. Harkin plans to attend, an aide said.

Ethanol plants have been consuming more of the country's corn crop, driving up prices for corn and other grains. That, in turn, affects the price of other agricultural commodities such as meat, dairy products and eggs, because farmers use corn to feed livestock.

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Deleting ethanol from U.S. fuel production systems would hard consumers

Times-Republican (Iowa)
COMMSTOCK REPORT
By DAVID KRUSE
POSTED: July 28, 2008

With so much public focus being put on oil and gasoline prices, it's difficult to imagine EPA doing anything that would send pump prices higher, potentially sharply higher. While many impacted by corn prices are "whining" as Phil Gramm puts it, the ethanol industry has become a large enough part of the U.S. fuel production system that deleting it now would have an unequivocally worse impact on consumers from raising pump prices than it has had in raising food costs.

No matter how much oil there is, there is a finite capacity in the U.S. to refine petroleum. The failure to build new petroleum refineries in the U.S. limits the U.S. ability to grow gasoline or distillate production to meet demand. While it's little talked about, ethanol made a significant contribution to U.S. refinery capacity. Albeit, ethanol plants refine corn into ethanol, the concept and result is the same.

Ethanol plants are refineries. They were a welcome expansion to U.S. refinery capacity. They are strategically located away from the Gulf where U.S. petroleum refineries are concentrated. That makes them less vulnerable to Gulf hurricanes, a strategic benefit. Ethanol production has added enough to U.S. motor fuel supply to have a significant impact on prices from boosting aggregate motor fuel production.

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USDA Report: Global Agricultural Supply and Demand

Global Agricultural Supply and Demand: Factors Contributing to the Recent Increase in Food Commodity Prices

USDA - ERS

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Debate over food vs. fuel could shift to farmland conservation

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 12:40 AM CDT
By CHRIS LUSVARDI - Herald &Review (Decatur, IL) Staff Writer

DECATUR - One of the state's leading agricultural economists predicted Tuesday that the debate over the cause of rising food prices soon could shift significantly.

The debate catching many consumers' attention recently has pitted food against fuel, but University of Illinois Extension expert Darrel Good expects that could change to a food and fuel vs. conservation debate.

"You haven't seen anything yet," Good told attendees at the Greater Decatur Chamber of Commerce's quarterly Ag Cafe luncheon.Good said that farmers could decide to shift unused acres back into production in an effort to alleviate rising crop prices, he said.

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