Spotlight on POET Biorefining Laddonia

The Financial Times devoted yesterday's In depth report to ethanol. It included a couple of articles on the tough times the industry is facing (like it's the only one) and the political support for the ethanol industry. But it also includes a slide show pictorial on POET Biorefining - Laddonia, an ethanol production facility near Laddonia, Mo. (Although I'm not sure why it's titled "Ethanol Fever." If anyone has a theory, please let me know).

Anyway, the slide show is worth watching and shows how important these plants are to the communities where they are located.

 

On balance, it was pretty accurate and very well done. But there were a few issues that need to be clarified. First of all, it's not accurate to say that ethanol has "cost taxpayers billions." Take last year. The tax credit for ethanol blenders cost the federal treasury $3.3 billion dollars. That same year, ethanol led to $4.6 billion in federal taxes and saved the government $8 billion in farm bill subsidies because of higher commodity prices. For the math challenged, that's a net gain of $9.3 billion. And that doesn't count the billions of dollars ethanol has saved consumers at the pump and the thousands of jobs the industry has created.

The FT reporter also does something that more and more reporters are doing these days: mentioning the high price of corn and its supposed impact on food prices without giving recent context. Here's the context: corn is now trading at $3.85 per bushel on the CBOT. That's less than half of it's high of about three months ago. That collapse in corn prices came as ethanol production capacity increased. And at the same time, food prices continue to increase. To recap: ethanol volume up, corn price down, food price up.

One thing the report gets spot on: the ethanol industry has brought significant economic development to rural communities across the Midwest. In the case of Laddonia, the ethanol production facility was the largest investment in the community in a century. If that's a fever, I don't wanna be cured.

Alexandria Grand Opening Next Week

Next week, POET will open its 23rd ethanol production facility in Alexandria, Ind. The facility will be the second plant opened in the state of Indiana where one more is under construction. The grand opening is scheduled for April 17 and complete details can be found in a release on our web site.

Hoosier Ag Today interviewed Dave Hudak, the general manager of the facility, and posted it on their web site. You can also listen to the interview here:

Broadcast coverage of the Energy Bill News Conference

There was significant broadcast coverage of the Energy Bill news conference we participated in with U.S. Senator John Thune, including the local affiliates of all three major TV networks. The ABC affiliate KELO piece can be found on their web site or viewed here:

KDLT, the NBC affiliate, posted a very brief recap of the event here. To launch the video, click here (link expires soon).

Peter Shinn of the Brownfield Network also attended the event. He posted a three-minute story on their web site, which you can listen to here:

For the latest print stories, visit the news page on our web site.

POET cellulosic project discussed on Brownfield Network

Peter Shinn of the Brownfield Network interviewed Dr. Mark Stowers, Vice President of Research & Development for POET (pictured here), on Project Liberty. You can read Poet making cellulosic ethanol happen quickly or listen to the audio here:

While you're at it, be sure to check out the Brownfield Blog.

Chatting with the Portland GM

In one week, POET Biorefining - Portland will hold a grand opening ceremony to celebrate the beginning of operations at their facility. When added to existing ethanol production capacity, Portland will put POET at more than 1.1 billion gallons annually. For a photo, click here.

With a new facility comes a new general manager to the POET family. This post contains an interview with Greg Noble, the general manager of POET Biorefining - Portland.

In the interview, Greg talks about one of the unique features of the facility, which is located next to a quarry. Up until now, that quarry pumped out water in order to continue its excavation activities and discharged it into a local stream. Now, that water will be diverted to POET and fulfill 100 percent of the production facility's water needs. In order to accommodate the quarry water, POET constructed a 10 million gallon retention pond (pictured here in the foreground) that stores the water so the sediment can settle out before it is utilized in the plant. By using water that was previously discharge, POET Biorefining - Portland leaves more water for other commercial and residential uses in the community.

Here's the interview with Greg Noble:

Cellulosic ethanol project director speaks

Every day, there's lots of activity at POET around our project to construct a commercial cellulosic ethanol production facility. That work is taking place in little pockets all across the company. On a monthly basis we get everyone together for a company-wide progress update.

After this month's update, I sat down with the director of Project LIBERTY, Jim Sturdevant (pictured here), to talk about the progress and get some of his thoughts and perspectives on his first three months at POET. We decided to make it our first audio post on Rhapsody in Green.

POET CEO featured on renewable energy podcast

Jeff Broin, the CEO of POET, was interviewed by Stephen Lacey for Inside Renewable Energy, a weekly podcast on renewable energy from RenewableEnergyAccess.com. In the interview, Jeff dispelled some of the myths of ethanol and talked about our cellulosic project.

If you aren't already subscribed to the show's RSS feed, go here to listen to the issue that includes Jeff Broin. Once you've listened, I'm sure you'll want to subscribe. I know I listen every week.