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DOE Awards Up to $385 Million to Six Cellulosic Ethanol Plants; Total Investment to Exceed $1.2 Billion
28 February 2007
The US Department of Energy will invest up to $385 million for six biorefinery projects over the next four years. When fully operational, the biorefineries are expected to produce more than 130 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year.
The solicitation, announced a year ago, was initially for three biorefineries and $160 million. However, in an effort to expedite the goals of the Advanced Energy Initiative and help achieve the goals of President Bush’s Twenty in Ten Initiative, within authority of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 2005), Section 932, Secretary Bodman raised the funding ceiling.
Combined with the industry cost share, more than $1.2 billion will be invested in these six biorefineries. Negotiations between the selected companies and DOE will begin immediately to determine final project plans and funding levels. Funding will begin this fiscal year and run through FY 2010.
EPAct authorized DOE to solicit and fund proposals for the commercial demonstration of advanced biorefineries that use cellulosic feedstocks to produce ethanol and co-produce bioproducts and electricity.
The following six projects were selected:
Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass of Kansas, LLC, up to $76 million. The proposed plant will be located in the state of Kansas and will produce 11.4 million gallons of ethanol annually and enough energy to power the facility, with any excess energy being used to power the adjacent corn dry grind mill. The plant will use 700 tons per day of corn stover, wheat straw, milo stubble, switchgrass, and other feedstocks.
Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass investors/participants include: Abengoa Bioenergy R&D, Inc.; Abengoa Engineering and Construction, LLC; Antares Corp.; and Taylor Engineering.
ALICO, Inc. of LaBelle, Florida, up to $33 million. The proposed plant will be in LaBelle (Hendry County), Florida. The plant will produce 13.9 million gallons of ethanol a year and 6,255 kW of electric power, as well as 8.8 tons of hydrogen and 50 tons of ammonia per day. For feedstock, the plant will use 770 tons per day of yard, wood, and vegetative wastes and eventually energycane.
ALICO, Inc. investors/participants include: Bioengineering Resources, Inc. of Fayetteville, Arkansas; Washington Group International of Boise, Idaho; GeoSyntec Consultants of Boca Raton, Florida; BG Katz Companies/JAKS, LLC of Parkland, Florida; and Emmaus Foundation, Inc.
BlueFire Ethanol, Inc. of Irvine, California, up to $40 million. The proposed plant will be in Southern California, will be sited on an existing landfill and produce about 19 million gallons of ethanol a year. As feedstock, the plant would use 700 tons per day of sorted green waste and wood waste from landfills.
BlueFire Ethanol, Inc. investors/participants include: Waste Management, Inc.; JGC Corporation; MECS Inc.; NAES; and PetroDiamond.
Broin Companies of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, up to $80 million. The plant is in Emmetsburg (Palo Alto County), Iowa, and after expansion, it will produce 125 million gallons of ethanol per year, of which roughly 25% will be cellulosic ethanol. For feedstock in the production of cellulosic ethanol, the plant expects to use 842 tons per day of corn fiber, cobs, and stalks.
Broin Companies participants include: E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company; Novozymes North America, Inc.; and DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Iogen Biorefinery Partners, LLC, of Arlington, Virginia, up to $80 million. The proposed plant will be built in Shelley, Idaho, near Idaho Falls, and will produce 18 million gallons of ethanol annually. The plant will use 700 tons per day of agricultural residues including wheat straw, barley straw, corn stover, switchgrass, and rice straw as feedstocks.
Iogen Biorefinery Partners, LLC investors/partners include: Iogen Energy Corporation; Iogen Corporation; Goldman Sachs; and The Royal Dutch/Shell Group.
Range Fuels (formerly Kergy Inc.) of Broomfield, Colorado, up to $76 million. The proposed plant will be constructed in Soperton (Treutlen County), Georgia. The plant will produce about 40 million gallons of ethanol per year and 9 million gallons per year of methanol. As feedstock, the plant will use 1,200 tons per day of wood residues and wood based energy crops.
Range Fuels investors/participants include: Merrick and Company; PRAJ Industries Ltd.; Western Research Institute; Georgia Forestry Commission; Yeomans Wood and Timber; Truetlen County Development Authority; BioConversion Technology; Khosla Ventures; CH2MHill; Gillis Ag and Timber.
February 28, 2007 in Cellulosic ethanol | Permalink | Comments (40) | TrackBack (0)
Comments
Posted by: Patrick | February 28, 2007 at 03:26 PM
Ok first off on ethanol. Uts to fill the gap as we transition to other sources of transport power. It also even 70 years from now will be an important fuel for many things. Its fast to ompliment and its local.
H2 and ev are a bit longer term 10-30 years. Together they should tackle alot of our needs both short and mid range and long range. But without ethanol and butanol and other biofuels we wont fill all the gaps.
As for iraq as I said waaaaay back with iraq war 1 its not about iraq its not about the oil. As long as they sell the oil to someone we dont give a damn as ots the same to us.
What is iraq? A valid and useable excuse to test our ,o;otary and improve it.
Now concidering how violent and nasty the next 100 yearsare likely to be I think you can figure out why.
Also the bill for any war ... Why is it people think everything about the war is a lie BUT the bill?
As for deaths.. if the us had not gone to war how many people would have died in training accidents anyway? If the soldiers were home how many of them would have been shot ere rather then in iraq?
Posted by: wintermane | February 28, 2007 at 03:27 PM
Lucas:
Our air quality regulations (California's Lev II and Tier 2 bin 5) are currently much stricter than Europe's, so I think we can get some credit for that. The price is that we're less fuel efficient than we could be.
Posted by: Cervus | February 28, 2007 at 05:05 PM
The war in Iraq was not about (cover story) WMDs, but good old Oil or has everyone forgotten about the new oil law? And we are not going to be leaving the country anytime soon (years) because we need to protect our new oil investment. If WMDs are what Bush is after why hasn’t he attacked North Korea yet?
It's going to a very long time to get off our oil habit and raising gas taxes isn't going to fix our addiction.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IB28Ak02.html
Posted by: OttoV | February 28, 2007 at 08:35 PM
Considering that something like 60% of the Air Forces budget is dedicasted to fuel costs, then add in transport all other branches of service fuel budgets, its no wonder White House wants to intensify Iraq campaign because none of these modalities benefits from renewable fuels (now)..domestic transport is simply an afterthought and this funding shows it.
Posted by: highmax | February 28, 2007 at 10:22 PM
OttoV:
For some countries oil is like yeast dropped into cesspool: it begins to bubble, expand, and overspill. Overspill hateful ideology, terrorism, potentially WMD, and actually regional wars threatening stability in strategically important to world economy region.
Problems with North Korea (and some other countries) are not yet such important.
Posted by: Andrey | February 28, 2007 at 10:22 PM
wintermane wrote:As for deaths.. if the us had not gone to war how many people would have died in training accidents anyway? If the soldiers were home how many of them would have been shot ere rather then in iraq?
Oh, gosh, probably about 650,000 dead, 50,000-ish injured. You just have no idea how dangerous it is when a soldier tries to get a stuck drink out of a Coke machine on base, and it tips over on him.
Posted by: George | February 28, 2007 at 10:28 PM
George:
I assume you are not familiar with day-to-day reality of the military life:
“Defense safety officials report that accidental deaths increased in FY 2000 to 113 on-duty deaths (108 deaths in FY 1999) and 322 off-duty deaths (321 in FY 1999).”
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_pden/is_200010/ai_1456584416
Posted by: Andrey | February 28, 2007 at 11:01 PM
Neil wrote "...In order for battery swapping to work I think there are a couple of things the business model would require. 1) the batteries would have to be owned and amortized by the energy companies (makes the car cheaper too). 2) you would pay a monthly subscription for the use of the batteries."
This doesn't make sense to me. I forsee swapping standard sized batteries that were puchased with the vehicle. To swap the batteries, drive up to the station, stop and center as indicated by orientation lights, push a button to open your access panel under your car, then the in-ground steel panel rolls back in the station exposing the catcher which accepts each battery ejection, then the hydraulic installer raises each battery into the vehicle, then the vehicle moves each battery into position, the access panels close. The batteries that were left behind are inspected and recharged on site. This wouldn't take much longer than a present day full fill-up. I'll skip Bob's torture of hydrogenated fats and tobacco (ban them both). I don't see any need for Neil's subscription fee.
Posted by: JC | March 01, 2007 at 06:45 AM
Considering that something like 60% of the Air Forces budget is dedicasted to fuel costs,
Nonsense. Each $1/barrel increase in the cost of oil raises the USAF fuel budget by $60 million, so at $70/barrel the contribution of oil to the fuel budget would be around 4% of the AF budget. Fixed refining costs would add something to that, but they wouldn't raise the budget fraction to anywhere close to 60%.
Posted by: Paul Dietz | March 01, 2007 at 09:15 AM
JC - a nearly new EV battery pack might be worth $10,000 while an old or abused pack is only worth a few hundred bucks. It's hard to run a business where each customer can cost you ten grand. And how many new car owners will exchange their fresh battery pack for one that just came out of an old clunker and gives 40% less power and 20% less range? Battery pack leasing schemes remove the risk of financial loss with each exchange. Doesn't solve the other 23 problems relating to battery exchange, though......
SpokaneWalt - bidodiesel does NOT yield more fuel per acre than ethanol with US crops. Soybeans yield about 50 gal/acre vs. 300+ or so for corn ethanol. Canola (rapeseed) can do a little over 100 gal/acre. Oil palm can yield 500+ gal/acre, but won't grow in Iowa. It's also unclear oil palm produces any GHG benefit after you account for the tropical rain forest that gets cleared to make room for the plantation.
Patrick - the $100b/year cost for Iraq war comes from incremental spending above and beyond the regular military budget.
Andrey - military deaths in Iraq are almost all incremental. The 90% or our mililtary forces NOT stationed in Iraq continue to die from training accidents and such at the normal rate.
Posted by: doggydogworld | March 01, 2007 at 09:48 AM
Doggydoqworld:
I know. Just tried to put numbers into prospective.
P.S. do not like "normal rate" per se.
Posted by: Andrey | March 02, 2007 at 05:39 AM
WHY ARE THE FEDS INVESTING ONLY $70,000 IN BUTANOL?:
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2007/03/epa_awards_sbir.html#more
BUTANOL IS A MUCH MORE PROMISING FUEL OVER THE LONG TERM THAN ETHANOL (HIGHER BTU CONTENT, NO ENGINE MODIFICATION, CAN SHIP THRU EXISTING PIPELINES)...
$70K FOR BUTANOL BUT $385 MM FOR CELLULOSIC ETHANOL...
PATHETIC!!!
Posted by: Vin Diesel | March 02, 2007 at 01:07 PM
It is a start, needs to be more. But was glad to see the bigger up kick in funding across different areas.
As for Iraq and Afghanistan. I guess those 50 million people can go back to being virtual slaves or worse, when over 300,000 were murdered in Iraq and millions of refugees fled the Taliban rampage.
Only White, Secularized Europeans are worth losing 400,000 lives for in war. We should be netural like the Swiss who do banking with the Nazi's and bin Laden's and turn our backs.
Same with South Korea, Slaves in the South for the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln was wrong to waste lives to free others. Altruism is meaningless.
We can talk about those oppressed and blame our President for others actions from a myopic American view. Because we know China does not support Sudan with money or weapons in exchange for oil. And China has no responsibility for 3 million dead the last 10 years. Communist are all squeaky clean. They feed money and weapons to Sudan for purpose of freedom and justice.
Lets all have meetings in Davos. We can get comfy while the Swiss show us how to finance the Chinese in Sudan. And the French can show us how to go around UN Sanctions in Iraq to Saddam while thousands die, the Russians too after they murdered 27,000 in one city alone in the city of Grozhny, Chechnya.
We can all be fat and happy. Tyrants can rule. I'm sure they'll never try another 9/11 again. Israel? Sure, wipe them off the face of the map. Joooos rule the world ya know, time we end it. Iran deserves a nuke. The man is right, soon the 12 Imam, Mahdi Messiah will appear and all of us will give ourselves to Allah willingly in his brilliance.
Hey, how many Christians and Muslims did Clinton "kill" in the Balkans? I guess its ok as long as the casualties are low for Americans - to kill other people that is. You know, to enter into a civil war that is none of our business in the first place. That Europe can handle itself, right? That was never approved by the UN?
Ohhh thats right, they couldn't handle that either without America. And ole Bill truly cared. His motives were beyond rapproach. God came down and spoke to him. Do it Bill, save the Balkans. I'll forgive you for Monica.
War is hell and everyone hates it. But sometimes we're forced into defending ourselves. Better there than here. Thousands of Al Qaeda have been killed. We now know all the rat lines and human intel we never had prior to 9/11. And thank God for those soldiers in all the wars prior and now who stand between us and the thugs who plot our destruction.
I hope we get off Middle East oil as fast as the next guy. But the Bush hating syndrome is overboard in comparison to the murderous thugs who kill and maim people daily around the world. Especially as American soldiers continue to volunteer and reenlist to go to Iraq. They deserve our unwavering support during these wars as much as the Civil War, WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Korea, Gulf I and Gulf II.
Iraqis and Afghanis deserve freedom as much as the French, the Dutch, England and the rest of Europe.
Posted by: Michael | March 03, 2007 at 06:41 PM
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