The Saudi Arabia of Ethanol Iowa is to corn ethanol what Saudi Arabia is to oil. At present Iowa has the capacity to produce 3.5 billion gallons of ethanol per year, which is 26% of the nation's total (Source). This is of course due to the large amount of corn ...

I began to hear rumors about a week ago that Range Fuels had started to produce some methanol from their plant in Soperton, Georgia. This week they announced that they have indeed begun to make some product: Range Fuels Finally Gets its Cellulosic Plant Running Georgia -- After a two ...

In my recent post Thoughts on an Ethanol Pipeline, I described what I feel would be a more rational approach to ethanol policy than some of the policies that have been pursued over the years. This gist is that the Midwest currently produces about 95% of the ethanol in ...

Local Production for Local Needs I currently live in Hawaii, and one thing I hope to help facilitate is for Hawaii to become more sustainable in food and energy. We have the natural resources here to be largely sustainable, but we depend on outside sources for around 90% of our ...

Previously, I described a portion of my role in the early development of the MixAlco Process. Developed in the laboratories of Professor Mark Holtzapple at Texas A&M University, the process has undergone significant further developments, which I report on in this essay. Details of the MixAlco Process Here I will ...

Last December, I received an intriguing request from the Public Relations Director at the world's largest ethanol producer. Nathan Schock asked if I would be interested in posing a video question that would be answered by POET CEO Jeff Broin. He said that any topic was fair game, except ...

I have had family visiting me for the past two weeks, which has slowed my posting down a bit. I am trying to finish up the followup story to the essay on the MixAlco process, but it will probably be early next week before that one is ready. Until ...

In this essay, I am going to talk about my graduate school work at Texas A&M. Since leaving A&M there have been a lot of developments related to the technology I worked on, so in the essay following this one I will discuss more details on the nature of the ...

Everyone who thinks Big Oil should get $31 billion from U.S. taxpayers, please sign on the dotted line.

That title appears to be reserved for me, even though I did not set out to earn it. It all started with the first story I wrote on Range Fuels in which I pointed out that their progress does not remotely align with their early promises. Since that initial ...