The number of E85 stations across the country continues to increase. In April 39 new locations were added bringing the total to 1560 stations.
Researchers at the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University have released a study that shows ethanol blended into the fuel supply has caused retail gasoline prices to be 29 to 40 cents lower than what they otherwise would have been.These reductions in retail gasoline prices are surprisingly large, especially when one considers that they are calculated at their mean values over the sample period. The availability of ethanol essentially increased the “capacity” of the U.S. refinery industry and in so doing prevented some of the dramatic price increases often associated with an industry operating at close to capacity.
The Missouri Corn Merchandising Council commissioned John Urbanchuk of LECG to study the effects the ethanol mandate that went into effect on January 1, 2008 was having on gasoline prices in the state. The study found that the 10% ethanol blend was saving Missouri motorists 9.8 cents per gallon based on the wholesale price difference between ethanol and gasoline.
A new study conducted by the Argonne National Laboratory for the Renewable Fuels Association shows that ethanol production has become more efficient since 2001. The study analyzed ethanol producer survey responses to determine how ethanol production in 2006 compared to 2001. Major findings of the study include...
At the request of the Department of Defense, the Southwest Research Institute has concluded testing that shows Solazyme Inc's proprietary algae biodiesel blend, Soladiesel meets DoD cold weather requirements.THROUGH its award-winning Cow Power program, Central Vermont Public Service (CVPS), a Vermont utility headquartered in the city of Rutland, is helping dairy farmers diversify their incomes by turning manure into electricity. The farmers process manure in anaerobic digesters to generate power, which CVPS customers voluntarily pay a premium to purchase. In addition to income from electricity sales, farmers are reaping other benefits from digesting the manure, including capturing surplus heat for their farms and hot water, using the fibers separated from manure for animal bedding and compost production, reducing pathogens and weed seeds, and improving air and water quality.
“Digesting the manure is providing bedding for the herd, diversifying the farm’s income, reducing manure odors, improving water and air quality and reducing methane emissions to the atmosphere,” says Bill Rowell.
The Grocery Manufacturers Association issued a press release yesterday criticizing ethanol production for driving up food prices.Today the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics released CPI data for March 2008, showing food and beverage prices rising at an annualized, seasonally adjusted rate of 5.1 percent for the first three months of 2008. The unadjusted percent change for all food and beverage over the past year is 4.4 percent. This data follows the release of the Producer Price Indexes (PPI) on Monday, which showed that finished food prices are rising at twice the rate of all other finished goods prices.
“Federal food-to-fuel mandates have led to over one quarter of corn to be diverted from food to ethanol production, driving up the price of corn and other commodities to historic highs,” said Faber. “The data released today prove that the result has been devastating for American families: cost of food and beverages have risen and annualized rate of 5% over the first quarter of the year. This is an unsustainable pattern that must be addressed; Congress must re-examine food-to-fuel mandates."
A couple of days ago, Pilgrim's Pride announced that it was reducing chicken production by 5%. The most interesting part isn't what the press release says, but what it doesn't say.PITTSBURG, Texas, April 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Pilgrim's Pride Corp. NYSE: PPC today said it plans to reduce weekly chicken processing by approximately 5% in the second half of fiscal 2008 when compared to the same period a year ago, as part of its continuing effort to better balance supply and demand amid record-high costs for feed ingredients such as corn and soybean meal.
The reduction began with eggs set earlier this month and should take full effect with weekly processing beginning in June. The company said the reduction will remain in effect until average industry margins return to more normalized levels. The 5% reduction includes the impact of the previously announced closing of the Pilgrim's Pride plant in Siler City, NC, which should be completed by June.
"Soaring feed-ingredient costs fueled by the federal government's misguided ethanol policy has created a crisis in our industry, the true effects of which are only just now beginning to be felt by American consumers in the form of higher food prices," said Clint Rivers, president and chief executive officer. "Over the past two weeks, a growing number of smaller chicken producers have announced production cutbacks in an effort to manage these unprecedented increases for corn and soybean meal, which are expected to add billions of dollars of cost to our industry this year. It is clear that chicken producers of all sizes are feeling the tremendous financial strain from these additional grain costs. We have been encouraged by these public announcements, for they indicate that the production cutbacks this time are being shared more broadly across the industry, rather than limited to just the largest processors, as was the case last year. We believe the cuts we are enacting will strike a better balance between production and demand and strengthen our competitive position. As we have said in the past, reducing overall supply to better match demand is an important component in helping return the industry to profitability."
The company also said it is continuing to review its production facilities for potential mix changes, closure and/or consolidation in response to current negative industry fundamentals. Pilgrim's Pride acknowledged that its processing complex in El Dorado, Ark., is among those being reviewed for possible closure. But the company emphasized that no decision has been made at this time.
These actions are part of a plan to curtail losses amid record-high costs for corn, soybean meal and other feed ingredients and an oversupply of chicken in the United States.
"We've invested millions in that facility, and there has been no return," Atkinson said. "That complex has consistently lost money, plant costs are not competitive, it hasn't been able to attract new customers, and quality and productivity are well below other similar facilities," he said.
Nella Oil Company to open a handful of new E85 stations in northern California, including two in Sacramento. California currently only has three public stations offering E85 and an estimated 500,000 flex fuel vehicles.But at present, to supply grain-based ethanol, we are diverting a large percentage of American farm acreage away from food production
Crops included are corn, sorghum, oats, barley, winter wheat, rye, durum wheat, other spring wheat, rice, soybeans, peanuts, sunflower, cotton, dry edible beans, potatoes, canola, proso millet, and sugarbeets. Harvested acreage is used for all hay, tobacco, and sugarcane in computing total area planted. Includes double cropped acres and unharvested small grains planted as cover crops.
Texas A&M recently released a study into ethanol's effect on Texas food and feed. Like many other studies it found that energy prices had a greater impact than did commodity prices. Some of the key findings include..As one of the coordinators of the Inter-American Ethanol Commission, Rodrigues said food and oil companies have opened dual fronts from which to attack ethanol as the reason for food inflation and shortages.
"It seems there's an orchestrated effort, led in part by the U.S. food sector and the oil industry, especially in Europe," Rodrigues said.
POET announced today that it had reached an agreement with City of Sioux Falls to use methane (landfill gas) generated at the Sioux Falls Regional Sanitary Landfill to offset some of it's natural gas needs at it's Chancellor, SD plant.
High Plains Bioenergy, a subsidiary of Seaboard Foods recently opened a new plant in Guymon, Ok. to produce biodiesel from pork fat. The plant will produce up to 30 million gallons per year and will employ about 30 people.
The microwave drying process for drying distillers grains developed by Cellencor and tested for eight days by Corn Plus was successful.Doug Litwiller, project manager at Alliant Energy, said the results were positive. “The numbers that were received, that we recorded, reflected numbers very similar to numbers we had originally projected early on,” he said. Cellencor has publicized that ethanol producers could save 20 percent or more in operating costs by using the process. “It [would be] significantly less on the dollars per ton basis to dry [corn] using the microwave system, versus the traditional natural gas fire dryer,” he said.
Verenium announced today that it's demonstration scale cellulosic plant at Jennings, LA has entered into the startup phase. Over the next three months each of the more than forty separate systems will be tested.
This subject is a little closer to my heart than most since I own a lawn care company. I know there are rumors all over the place that ethanol can't be used in small engines, but I can tell you first hand that they are just that, rumors.
The roots for a new energy crop in Southwest Florida have been planted.
In LaBelle, a company called My Dream Fuel LLC is cultivating Jatropha curcas, a tree-shrub that shows promise as a new biodiesel crop in the U.S. that could one day power engines and generators.
Nearly 1 million seedlings are in the ground at a nursery in Hendry County and promoters are looking for farmers – here and across the country – to raise them as oil-producing plants.
A couple of years back I ran across this article with this quote by a member of OPEC."Our competitors, the alternative energy providers, are intensively pursuing research programs aimed at reducing the domination of oil and gas in the global energy market," Abdullah Salatt, Qatar's representative to OPEC, said. "Likewise, we should have our own independent programs."
After the War, oil became cheap in the Middle East causing decline in biofuel production but while the global oil market encountered recession in 1973 and 1979 this created new interest in biofuel production.
The US will cut its 75% fuel import by 2025 through biofuel production.
Environmental and human rights organizations in different countries have voiced protests against biofuel production affecting food security. Similar protests are being echoed also in Bangladesh. With the conscious global society we may also have to realize that biofuel production is a 'crime committed against humanity'. And with the global conscience, we may also have to stay alert and vigilant against it.
Fieldale Farms of Baldwin, GA announced on Thursday that it was reducing it's chicken production by 5%. Below is the entire press release.BALDWIN, Ga.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Due to dramatic cost increases, effective immediately Fieldale Farms is reducing live chicken production by 5%. According to Executive V.P., Mr. Gus Arrendale, the decision was due substantially to current excess supply and the high cost of chicken feed, particularly corn.
According to Arrendale, “It’s a tough decision to make, but unfortunately, the markets we sell in have not yet caught up to the rapidly rising cost of feed and it seems to be getting worse. Not long ago feed corn cost a little over $2/bu, now it’s approaching $6 and some are predicting $8/bu this summer. With the U.S. Agriculture Department anticipating a substantial drop in planting acreage this year, further impacted by feed corn being committed to production of ethanol, prices are not likely to fall.”
Fieldale Farms, headquartered in Baldwin, GA, is one of the country’s largest poultry producers, supplying fresh and frozen chicken products to retail and food service outlets throughout the United States.
Defense Life Sciences, based in McLean, Va., was given a contract to come up with a solution. It teamed with a group of researchers at Purdue University and developed two 4-ton “tactical bio-refineries” that they are preparing to send to Iraq next month. Each can run for 20 hours on a ton of trash — enough electricity to power a small village.
Organic garbage is fed into a reactor, in which it is fermented into ethanol. Then plastic, cardboard and other paper items are burned to create propane or methane. These elements are then combusted in a modified diesel engine to power a 60 kilowatt generator.
The prototype costs $1 million and is now ready to be tested in a war zone.
"It is the perfect storm: everything is going wrong at once."
"To make matters worse, demand for food is growing faster than population."
"Then there is global warming, which is probably already cutting into food production."
"But the worst damage is being done by the rage for “bio-fuels” that supposedly reduce carbon dioxide emissions and fight climate change. (But they don’t, really -- at least, not in their present form.)"
Worse yet, rainforest is being cleared, especially in Brazil and Indonesia, to grow more bio-fuels. A recent study in the US journal “Science” calculated that destroying natural ecosystems to grow corn (maize, mealies) or sugar cane for ethanol, or oil palms or soybeans for bio-diesel, releases between 17 and 420 times more carbon dioxide than is saved annually by burning the bio-fuel grown on that land instead of fossil fuel. It’s all justified in the name of fighting climate change, but the numbers just don’t add up.
Tilman, who is currently on sabbatical from the University, said he feels the study is misunderstood by others in the industry.
"The goal of our paper was to point out if we do certain things, that those things would give us fuels that didn't have very much environmental benefit," he said.
Tilman said the paper didn't say the problems were happening now, but instead that they could happen in the future.
January ethanol production continued to rise reaching over 664 million gallons for the month. That number is up from 488 million gallons produced in January 2007.E85 stations across the country continue to increase reaching 1521. The month of March saw the addition of 20 new E85 locations down from the 26 in February.