Ethanol


In the race to commercialize the next generation of advanced biofuels created from inedible plant material, 50/50 BP – Dupont joint venture Butamax is pushing to make biobutanol the next big thing. The company is moving toward the commercial phase of its program to make biobutanol the US fuel blend of choice.

“We are very excited about this product – biobutanol is the highest value biofuel that can be made,” Butamax CEO Paul Beckwith recently told Breaking Energy. Keep reading →


After 30 years of government largesse that would have made even Nancy Pelosi blush, Congress in December let expire the roughly $6 billion annual subsidy for corn ethanol. That’s bad news for the big refiners that were paid 45¢ for each gallon of corn ethanol they blended into gasoline supplies. But it’s good news for those worried about the “food-fuel dilemma” when the demand for corn to make ethanol has been raising the price of some foods. Not so fast. It turns out that while the subsidies are gone, U.S. law still requires oil refiners to blend corn ethanol into fuel — some 12.5 billion gallons this year and at least 15 billion gallons by 2015. That’s still a small portion compared with the 133 billion gallons of gasoline that the U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates Americans will burn this year, but nonetheless enough to keep upward pressure on corn prices. That law needs to change, argues Jeremy Grantham — who oversees nearly $100 billion at his Boston investment firm, is known for calling both the dotcom and housing bubbles and is an environmentalist to boot. “It [U.S. ethanol policy] is truly diabolical,” he says.

Corn and soybeans are the major crops used to produce biofuels and are best grown in the corn belt, which is Midwest-based.
@ENERGY


The ethanol and biofuels markets are set for major change as tax benefits and other subsidy programs expire and face high barriers to renewal in an era of contracting federal budgets.

The changes for the ethanol business will be “dramatic,” former Senate majority leader Tom Daschle told the CME Global Financial Leadership Conference in Naples, Florida. Keep reading →

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