EIA: US fuel ethanol production capacity little changed in past year
20 May 2013
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| US fuel ethanol production capacity, 1 January 2013. Source: EIA. Click to enlarge. |
US fuel ethanol production capacity was 13.852 billion gallons per year (903,000 barrels per day), as of 1 January 2013, according to the latest annual report released by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). The report shows a 0.9% increase in the total capacity of operating ethanol plants compared to 1 January 2012 (13.728 billion gallons/year). A total of 193 ethanol plants were operating as of 1 January 2013, compared to 194 plants operating a year earlier.
Most of the existing fuel ethanol capacity (about 91%) is located in the Midwest (PAD District 2). Total nameplate capacity in PADD 2 is 12.6 billion gallons per year (822,000 barrels per day). The number of plants in this report includes plants that were idled or temporarily shut down during 2012.
(PADDs, Petroleum Administration for Defense Districts, were created by the Federal government during World War II to help to organize the allocation of fuels. The districts are now used for data collection.)
The report includes data for the total nameplate production capacity for all operating fuel ethanol production plants as of 1 January 2013. Nameplate production capacity, the measure of capacity tracked by EIA, is the volume of denatured (made unfit for human consumption) fuel ethanol that can be produced during a period of 12 months under normal operating conditions.
The total capacities in the report are listed by region (PAD Districts) in both millions of gallons per year and thousands of barrels per day. The report is updated annually.
In two previous reports on ethanol capacity, EIA included data on maximum sustainable production capacity of ethanol plants. Starting with this third report, EIA decided to publish only nameplate production capacities, and will discontinue collection and publication of maximum sustainable capacity data.
EIA determined that nameplate capacity is a sufficient measure of available ethanol production capacity, and the additional burden on respondents to report a maximum sustainable capacity number is not justified by the value and utility of the information.
The next EIA annual report on ethanol production capacity is expected to be released during the spring of 2014. The 2014 report will include facility-level nameplate production capacity data, which will increase the transparency of the ethanol industry data.
The capacity data are reported to EIA by respondents on the EIA-819 Monthly Oxygenate Report. The EIA-819 is submitted by all operating fuel ethanol and other oxygenate production plants within the United States.
Corn based ethanol may have reached a limit based on feed stock availability and rising price?
Posted by: HarveyD | 21 May 2013 at 09:28 AM
They make DDG for livestock as an output. Make the fuel out of corn stalks and cobs.
Posted by: SJC | 21 May 2013 at 12:20 PM