Ethanol plant expansion completed

Around 12 months ago, construction started on an expansion of POET Biorefining - Chancellor that would see its ethanol production capacity double to 100 million gallons per year. The expansion was completed last week and it took the plant less than 24 hours to reach its new nameplate capacity.

Construction on a solid waste fuel boiler (pictured here) continues at the site and is expected to be completed in the third quarter of this year. Once it is done, the solid waste fuel boiler will replace up to 60 percent of the plant's natural gas usage. For more information on the boiler, see this post announcing the project last year.

Comments

[kum Dollison]

You stated a few months back, I believe, that you were aiming for 22,000 to 24,000 btus of nat gas/gallon. Have you reached this level, yet? Do you expect to?

p.s. I believe it's very important for the General Public to understand that ethanol is a "Viable" product that isn't just recycling natural gas by way of taxpayer subsidies.

[John]

Nonetheless it still uses taxpayer subsidies in the way of welfare. While we need to get off oil it doesn't seem democratic or capitatlistic to be giving all of this money to big agribusiness people who routinely support anti-alternative-energy people like Norm Coleman, George Bush, and John Kline.

[Nathan Schock]

KD,
I'll be working on a post about our natural gas usage sometime soon.

John,
As you are no doubt aware, the taxpayer subsidies you reference do not go to big agribusiness. They go to those who blend ethanol into the gasoline supply: the gasoline refiners. The tax credit for ethanol ensures that the refiners have to blend ethanol, even though it competes with their primary product.

This typically leads to cheaper gasoline prices at the pump. When I pulled up to the pump this past weekend, the 89 octane blend was 12 cents per gallon cheaper than the 87 octane. That's because the 89 octane contained ten percent ethanol.

Finally, there is no energy source in the U.S. that is not subsidized. If you remember just a few weeks ago, Oil & Gas was defending their $18 billion in federal subsidies for their industry.