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| Indiana opens 2 new ethanol plants - 2 days |
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| By DAVE BLOWER JR.
Farm World Editor
PORTLAND, Ind. — Sen. Richard Lugar helped open two new ethanol plants in north central Indiana last week.
The POET ethanol facility in Portland will consume 22 million bushels of corn and produce 65 million gallons of ethanol per year. With this facility, POET becomes the largest producer of ethanol in the world.
Others celebrating the new ethanol facility in Portland were Ken Kleme of the Indiana State Department of Agriculture, Brent Wake of Sen. Evan Bayh’s office, Kevin Sulc of Rep. Mike Pence’s office and various other local officials and business representatives.
Lugar also helped open Central Indiana Ethanol in Marion, which is estimated to generate 49-50 million gallons of ethanol on 43,000-47,000 bushels of corn per day. Most of that corn will come within a 60-mile radius of Marion.
Lugar said he’s been impatient to see Indiana’s ethanol-production facilities to start producing.
“It’s one thing to talk a good game about alternative fuels, but it’s another thing to produce them,” he said.
Lugar said the production of energy from farm products solves many problems.
“Biofuels offer the dual opportunity for an economic revitalization of rural America and a solution to a serious national security problem,” he explained. “Ethanol plants like the one we are celebrating (in Portland) create jobs and bring new sources of revenue into our communities. They provide new local markets for our farmer’s commodities, and they will soon produce even more fuels from farm, municipal and industrial wastes. This is a tremendous opportunity to stimulate growth in rural communities.”
Sulc concurred and added, “The economic benefit of all of this coming together here in Portland is tremendous. There are other communities who are saying, ‘We should have done this.’”
However, Lugar said producing the fuel is half the battle – making ethanol more accessible to consumers is the other half.
“I continue to assert that making competitively priced biofuels available to every motorist in America should be a national priority,” he said. “Today there are 94 E85 pumps in Indiana. That is 93 more than two years ago when I helped to inaugurate Indiana’s first pump in Terre Haute, but it is not yet enough to give Hoosiers reliable access as they travel across the state. Stations are even rarer as you spread outside of the Midwest.”
He suggested that global competition for oil continues to grow as demand soars and oil-rich states tighten their control over supplies. Lugar said if America didn’t need to rely on oil from politically sensitive countries, then it would also improve U.S. diplomatic power.
“A national policy that moved us away from oil dependence would be a powerful statement that U.S. interests were unrelated to any conspiracy theories asserting American intent to dominate oil resources in the Middle East,” he said. “It would improve our ability to function as an honest broker in regional disputes.”
The senator explained that ethanol needs to come from more sources than corn.
“Ethanol from corn is already making a crucial contribution to our fuels mix,” he said. “Many experts believe that ethanol from corn could produce 12-15 billion gallons annually while still allowing the crop to meet our food and feed needs. By adding biofuels from a wide variety of sources to today’s corn ethanol pool, rural America can maximize its contribution and income.”
Cellulosic ethanol
Jeff Broin, who is the CEO of POET, said his company is working toward using corn cobs as a cellulosic feedstock for ethanol.
“I am particularly excited that the POET company is investing in Indiana,” Lugar said. “On June 27 of this year, POET announced their successful production of cellulosic ethanol from corn cobs. They also plan to retrofit an existing corn ethanol facility to make cellulosic ethanol.
“This is an exciting step toward expanding biofuels availability, and it offers the prospect that farmers will be able to turn today’s waste into a marketable commodity.”
Broin said his company has grown along with demand for ethanol.
“When we started our first facility in 1988 at 1 million gallons per year, we had no intentions of becoming the largest,” Broin added. “We simply realized that farmers needed additional uses for their crops and the country needed a clean-burning, domestic fuel. Now, with 10,000 farmer-owners and investors from all walks of life, we are developing the rural economy, improving the environment and reducing our nation’s dependence on foreign oil.”
In addition to ethanol, the POET plant will produce 178,000 tons of Dakota Gold Enhanced Nutrition Distillers Products per year.
The $105 million facility will provide around 40 jobs with an annual payroll of about $2 million. Portland is the first POET plant in Indiana, with two more facilities under construction.
POET’s patent-pending BPX process eliminates the need for heat in the cooking process of producing ethanol, reducing energy use by 8-15 percent in comparison with conventional plants. It will also be outfitted with a regenerative thermal oxidizer that eliminates up to 99.9 percent of air emissions.
This farm news was published in the Sept. 19, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
| 9/19/2007 |
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