ONLY 8 MORE DAYS BEFORE OUR BELOVED LSU TIGERS TAKE THE FIELD TO BEGIN THE 2012-2013 QUEST FOR ANOTHER NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP. I don't know if readers have seen the "Death Valley" night lighting system just completed with purple and gold lighting on the arches on the stadium North End Zone? Here is a pic..........just beautiful at night! And, the facelift on the outside of the stadium is gradually restoring it to what it used to be, and of course, the addition to the South end zone to wrap it to the existing east and west sections will bring the stadium to a little over 100,000 capacity! Look at this pic...........
GEAUX TIGERS!!
Tiger Stadium North End Zone Night Lighting
Back to ethanol business.........yesterday, I posted an article on a company that has just secured a government backed loan to build a plant to demonstrate a new process to make ethanol from grass and other materials instead of corn.......sounds refreshing and worth looking into. But, today, I ran across this article which is not so optimistic about this new technology.........here is the article:
HAVE A GREAT WEEKEND READERS.................
"Pete"
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Before there was Solyndra, there was cellulistic ethanol
Posted by Travis Fain on Friday, August 24, 2012 at 4:15 pm
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's official announcement this week of a $99 million, 80 percent loan guarantee for a new cellulistic ethanol plant in Sampson County, reminded me in tone of the otpimism we heard down in Georgia, when a similar project was announced back in 2007.
That optimism turned out to be mis-placed, as did various loan guarantees, government grants, tax incentives, employment expectations and private investments. From my former colleagues at The Macon Telegraph:
In 2007, the Colorado-based Range Fuels was awarded a $76 million
grant from the U.S. Department of Energy under the Bush administration, plus
the loan guarantee and a state grant, in order to build and start operating the
country’s first cellulosic ethanol plant. Cellulosic ethanol is made from the
woody or fibrous plants -- in this case wood chips -- rather than from food
crops such as corn.
But the plant, which was scheduled to open in 2008, never scaled
up to full operation and shuttered early this year after making one test batch
of fuel. About 30 workers were laid off, said John Lee, executive director of
the Treutlen County Development Authority.
The plan for Sampson County is much the same as the plan was in Georgia - a private company (in this case Chemtex, with U.S. offices in Wilmington, but owned by the Italian company Gruppo Mossi and Ghisolfi) is relying on government seed money and promising jobs in a rural area. Chemtex plans to use switchgrass to generate biofuel, as opposed the the wood chips at issue in Georgia.
As in 2007 Georgia, the state's biofuels office says the state is perfectly suited to producing the building block of this natural fuel in abundance (see paragraph 8).
Obviously cleaner domestic energy is a laudable goal for the U.S. government to pursue. Inarguably failure is an important part of progress. Perhaps Range Fuels' failure in Georgia (and this additional ethanol plant bankruptcy here in North Carolina) helped pave the way for success in Sampson County.
But let us ask: What has changed? The USDA's answer to that question, provided by its communications department, is below:
Over the past 3 years, USDA has taken a number of steps to improve
the processes to mitigate the risk and improve the prospects for success for
investments in the 9003 program.
For example, in 2011, USDA, incorporating public comments,
proposed and implemented a stringent new rule (Federal Register Vol 76 No. 30).
In addition, the agency developed policies to further strengthen the program
such as:
• Provided an additional level of application processing by including state Rural Development officials.
• Provided an additional level of application processing by including state Rural Development officials.
• Strengthened the application review by adding an Independent
Score Review Team.
• Improved the underwriting process and analysis by requiring
additional technical operating data and validation prior to issuance of loan
note guarantees and establishing a Debt Service Reserve Account.
• Increased frequency and depth of loan recipient financial status
and construction monitoring. Construction monitoring requirements increased
from quarterly to monthly
reviews. Agency management updates are now provided
on a weekly basis.
Those sound like significant changes. But they won't accomplish much if the technology doesn't work, and that has been the problem with cellulistic ethanol.
