$350M ethanol plant chosen for port site March 31, 2008 by Eric Anderson, Deputy business editor
The Albany Port District Commission today selected a proposal to build an ethanol production plant at the Port of Albany that eventually could produce as much as 165 million gallons of ethanol a year.
The project would cost as much as $350 million, according to the proposal by Albany Renewable Energy LLC. The company would pay at least $20,000 per acre per year to lease a 20-acre site, with a minimum lease period of 20 years, said Robert Cross, who chairs the commission.
The project is expected to create 300 to 400 construction jobs, and would employ as many as 50 to 60 people full-time at an average annual salary of $60,000.
The project would be a windfall for the port, creating 600,000 tons of cargo to be handled each year, including 500,000 tons of distillers grain, a feedstock for cattle that is a byproduct of the ethanol production process.
Corn would come from regional and Midwest sources, said Ed Stahl, senior project manager for Bio Pro Resources, a North Carolina company that will build the plant.
Financing could be a challenge, Stahl said, given the rising cost of corn. But the price of oil also has climbed, he said, and ethanol prices typically track those of gasoline.
The partners in the project were drawn to Albany because of the presence of multiple rail lines next to a deep-water port. Rather than loading ethanol onto tank cars after it is produced at landlocked plants, the fuel can be loaded directly onto barges for shipment to East Coast fuel terminals, where it can be blended with gasoline.
Permits are expected to take as long as a year to secure before the project can move forward.
Corn supply, demand, causing food prices to soar BY MARY CLARE JALONICK The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — From chicken nuggets to corn flakes, food prices at grocery stores and dinner tables could be headed even higher as farmers cut back on the land they’re planting in corn this spring. Corn prices already are high, and a drop in supply should keep them rising. Combine that with the huge demand for corn-based ethanol fuel — and higher energy costs for transporting food — and consumers are likely to see their food bills going up and up. Farmers are now expected to plant 86 million acres of corn this year, the Department of Agriculture predicted Monday, down 8 percent from last year, which was the highest since World War II. Corn is almost everywhere you look in the U.S. food supply. Poultry, beef and pork companies use it to feed their animals. High fructose corn syrup is used in soft drinks and many other foods, including lunch meats and salad dressings. Corn is often an ingredient in breads, peanut butter, oatmeal and potato chips. Corn components are even used in many grocery store items that aren’t edible — including disposable diapers and dry cell batteries. When the corn that goes into those products goes up in price, increases eventually are passed along to consumers. And corn prices have skyrocketed in recent years, almost tripling since 2005. They have been pushed along by the burgeoning ethanol industry, which turns the crop into fuel, and by rising worldwide demand for food. “People who are working families, just barely making it and already paying higher prices for gas and home heating oil are going to be shot in the pocket by higher food prices,” said Carol Tucker-Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America. Richard Lobb of the National Chicken Council said recent increases in the cost of corn feed have been absorbed by larger chicken companies, such as Pilgrim’s Pride or Tyson Foods, that provide feed to poultry farmers. But that could change. “At a certain point we have to readjust and get back to square one,” Lobb said. “The only people who have money ultimately are consumers.” Tucker-Forman of the Consumer Federation of America and Scott Faber of the Grocery Manufacturers Association both say rising food prices could be stemmed if Congress would pull back subsidies for the ethanol industry. The number of ethanol plants has almost tripled since 1999 and more are being built, according to the Renewable Fuels Association. Such plants could gobble up more than a quarter of the country’s corn crop. “Food prices being driven by the food-to-fuel mandates will most significantly affect working poor,” Faber said. Matt Hartwig of the Renewable Fuels Association said the higher prices can’t be blamed on the ethanol industry. There are a host of factors contributing to higher corn prices — surging global demand to feed people and livestock, a weak dollar encouraging exports, and rampant speculation — that have a far greater impact than America’s ethanol industry,” he said. According to the Agriculture Department, corn planting is expected to remain at historically high levels but may dip this year because of the high expense of growing corn and favorable prices for other crops, such as soybeans. As many farmers have switched, soybean planting is expected to be up 18 percent this year, at almost 75 million acres. Farmers are also expected to plant more wheat this year, which could lower retail prices for pasta and bread. The Department of Agriculture report is based on sample surveys of 86,000 farm operators in the first two weeks of March. Terry Francl, a senior economist for the American Farm Bureau Federation, predicted Monday that corn prices will continue to rise but says consumers shouldn’t panic just yet. Many farmers will take a look at the report and decide to plant corn instead of other crops, he said, and weather conditions could also change things. “We’re going to have to wait until we go through the spring planting season,” he said. John Hoffman, a soybean grower from Waterloo, Iowa, and president of the American Soybean Association, said farmers will always find ways to grow more crops to stabilize prices. Though high prices are good for the farmers, there’s bound to be a correction, he said. “There’s an old saying out on the farm that the cure for high prices is high prices.”
MEL EVANS/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS A shopper looks at her receipt as she pushes a cart through a Wal-Mart superstore in Turnersville, N.J., on March 11.
Well, seems they're hard at work putting in the Ethanol pump at Cumby's now. Who knows if our fire department will be able to fight the fire, if needed.
CAPITAL REGION Engine woes, ethanol linked Mechanics: Fuel blend harmful to small motors BY JASON SUBIK Gazette Reporter
Duane Leach, owner of All Seasons Equipment in Glenville, said every year around this time, lawn mowers and other devices with small engines begin showing up at his repair shop because they overheat when fueled by gasoline blended with alcohol. “For years we’ve always had problems with people who use winter gas in the spring of the year during hotter weather,” Leach said. Gasoline blended for sale during the winter has contained more oxygenates than summer blend gas since 1992, when the federal government mandated oxygen-rich chemicals like MTBE or corn-based ethanol be added to mitigate greater carbon monoxide emissions from car engines made colder by winter weather. Oxygenated gas burns cleaner and it burns hotter than the blend which used to be sold in the summer. Now some repair shops for small motor equipment and boats are predicting a greater incidence of equipment breakdown this season because virtually all gasoline sold in the Capital Region this spring and summer will contain 9.5 percent corn-based ethanol, the alcohol fuel blend known as E10, which burns hotter than the old winter blend gasoline. “It’s obviously going to happen because ethanol makes [equipment] run hotter. It’s leaner fuel and it will make the little air-cooled engines [heat up more],” Leach said. “A lot of the older engines that were made for higher compression will definitely be affected.” The Global Companies LLC terminal at the Port of Albany, which operates that terminal for Exxon Mobil, is the last local gasoline distributor still selling straight gasoline — although many Mobil retail gas stations have already switched to selling E10 purchased from other distributors. By May 1, the Exxon Mobil terminal is expected to convert to selling gasoline blended with ethanol, said Global Companies Executive Vice President Ed Faneuil. “The Albany facility will be 10 percent ethanol blend on all gasoline products,” Faneuil said. After Global Companies completes its switch, Capital Region consumers will have no local options beyond E10. Mike DellaRocco, owner of Mike’s Outdoor Power Equipment & Small Engine Repair in Albany, said newer small engine equipment is generally designed to “run hotter” than older engines, but that may not always matter. He said consumers sometimes use devices like lawn tractors at less than full speed, hoping to keep them from overheating, but forgetting that the machine’s engine is cooled by air flow. “The faster that fly wheel turns the more air is blowing over the hottest part of the engine, which is where the piston goes up and down. It blows the heat off of that,” he said. He said it remains to be seen what running E10 in small engines will do, but he’s not optimistic. “What will happen is the ethanol will [increase the heat of the engine and] take the alcohol out of the rubber parts and they will crack,” DellaRocco said. “Heat is the worst enemy of your engine … and if people aren’t going to be changing their oil, yeah, there’s probably going to be a lot of problems down the road.” David Pimentel, a professor of environmental policy at Cornell University, said he’s been studying biofuels like ethanol for more than 20 years. He said small engines not designed to burn ethanol may experience problems. “It rusts them out and some of the plastic pieces are dissolved away, if they’ve got plastic, and some of those are used in the carburetor and so forth. It’s a disaster,” Pimentel said. Pimentel also said ethanol poses dangers to boats. Joseph Michalek, president of Cranberry Cove Marina in Mayfield, said some of his customers have expressed concern about running E10 in their boats. “The engines aren’t made to run it. When it says right on top of the motor ‘do not run alcohol,’ you’re not supposed to run alcohol and that’s what [ethanol] is,” Michalek said. “There are quite a few boats that have [that warning]. Anything that’s 20 years old has probably got that.” Steve Hart, service manager at Yankee Boating Center in Colonie, said last year he started seeing more and more boats come into his shop with damage caused by E10. “It damages fuel lines, fuel pumps, issues like that. It can also damage fi - berglass [fuel] tanks, but not too many boats around here have those. They’re mostly toward the coast,” Hart said. “I think [boat owners] are getting more aware of this. Especially when they get a major repair bill because of it.” Hart said boat owners should be adding fuel stabilizers to the E10 they use and should consider a fuel separator for their fuel lines. Leach said lawn mower owners should consider using premium gasoline because it burns cooler. “They should migrate to [premium gasoline]. The best gas they can buy,” he said. “In today’s market … if you’re paying [almost $4 for E10 regular gasoline per] gallon now, you might as well use [premium] because you get better gas mileage and it runs cooler. Premium is a bargain now.” Faneuil said even premium gas sold out of the Global Companies terminal will contain 10 percent ethanol by May 1.
There may be no direct link between the big jump in ethanol production in this country and the growing international rice shortage, but ethanol — a fuel additive made from corn — has clearly driven up the price of that commodity, plus numerous related ones. High corn prices have, in turn, led to an increased reliance on rice in some Third World countries, and a tendency among some producers to horde the product, helping drive up its cost and causing supply concerns elsewhere. It’s a mess, and U.S. energy policy is at least partly to blame. Some backtracking is in order, and quickly, because the advantages of ethanol seem to be far outweighed by the disadvantages. Mixing ethanol with gasoline was primarily designed to reduce our dependence on oil and ease gas prices. If either has happened in any meaningful way, it’s pretty hard to tell. Even if pump prices are slightly lower when gas is mixed with ethanol, the energy content (miles per gallon) is reduced. Ethanol was also supposed to help reduce air pollution. It has to the slight extent that it has lowered carbon emissions, but at the same time it has increased emissions that contribute to ozone. Moreover, high concentrations of nitrogen and phosphorous in all the fertilizer used in Corn Belt states have created a “dead zone” the size of New Jersey where the Mississippi River meets the Gulf of Mexico. And the overplanting of corn in Iowa, among other states, has depleted the soil and reduced the size of some other crops. That’s one of the reasons wheat prices are so high this year. Finally, there’s the issue raised by Thursday’s Gazette story, of the damage done to small engines (lawn mowers and motorboats) by ethanol. This problem alone would seem to be a deal-breaker for ethanol. Why hasn’t our government done anything about it? Presidential candidates have been selling their souls to Iowa corn farmers since Earl Butz was agriculture secretary, but George Bush didn’t have to make ethanol the cornerstone of his energy policy earlier this year. It’s time to reconsider the generous subsidies and tariff protection our government provides for ethanol production, and look to other, less-troublesome energy alternatives.
Someone turn on the light please.....oh, wait we couldn't afford to pay the National Grid bill......oh, excuse me did I bump into you? are those pillows?.....It's awful dark in here.......help us.......
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Molasses eyed as alternative to corn for ethanol plant BY JASON SUBIK Gazette Reporter Material from the Associated Press was included in this story. Reach Gazette reporter Jason Subik at 395-3198 or
Amid growing concerns about the environmental and economic impact of cornbased ethanol, Albany Renewable Energy LLC has been engaged in discussions about another possible ingredient for the ethanol plant it wants to build at the Port of Albany: molasses. Albany Renewable Energy President Ed Stahl said his company has begun preliminary discussions with molasses importer Westway Trading Corp. about attempting to convert molasses, a by-product of sugar production, into ethanol, an alcohol fuel. “We’re simply exploring at this stage whether the use of molasses as a source of sugar enhances the production of ethanol,” Stahl. “The discussions are to identify whether technically a corn-based plant can accept this liquid stream of high sugar content material as an additional source of fermentable sugars, and does the cost of that product make economic sense.” In March, Albany Renewable Energy gained the rights to lease 18 acres at the port for the purpose of building a plant capable of producing 55 million to 110 million gallons of corn-based ethanol a year. Westway Trading Corp., a subsidiary of European holding company ED&F Man Holdings Ltd., operates a cattle feed liquid supplement plant on a parcel adjacent to where Albany Renewable Energy’s plant would be built. “If he wants to buy molasses we’d be glad to sell him molasses,” Westway Eastern Region Operations Manager Mark Morris said. “We could [import] a whole lot more [molasses] than we are. Today we probably bring in 45,000 tons of molasses a year.” Stahl said his company is still negotiating a lease agreement with the Albany Port District Commission. He said Albany Renewable Energy won’t begin to raise the $240 million needed to build its ethanol plant until a lease is in place. The plant’s production capacity will depend on how much investment money Albany Renewable Energy can convince investors to provide. The venture comes at a time when support appears to be eroding for the federal government’s corn-based ethanol subsidies and mandates. In December, Congress passed an energy bill that mandated a fivefold increase in ethanol production by 2022, to decrease the nation’s dependence on petroleum. Ethanol production is on the rise in other nations, as well. At the same time — many say because of this diversion of grain from food to fuel production — food prices have spiked, causing shortages and riots around the world. The U.S. Department of Agriculture blames 20 percent of food cost inflation on the ethanol industry. International aid groups, including the World Bank, say ethanol accounts for a much larger chunk of the price surge. Ethanol advocates put ethanol’s role at only 4 percent. Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, on Wednesday called for a repeal of government incentives designed to boost ethanol production, calling them “a classic case of the law of unintended consequences.” “Congress surely did not intend to raise food prices by incentivizing ethanol, but that’s precisely what’s happened,” Flake said in a statement. Earlier in the week Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, proposed freezing the ethanol production mandate at current levels. Senate Democrats are expected to call for similar measures today at a hearing on food prices before Congress’ Joint Economic Committee. Stahl said Albany Renewable Energy is preparing to answer investors’ concerns about a possible rollback of federal support for corn-based ethanol. He said it remains to be seen how a loss of subsidies would affect the planned plant’s business model. “Could we survive? Well, what’s the price of corn? What’s the price of oil? What’s the price of gas at the pump? Those are the scenarios we need know to answer that simple question,” Stahl said. “There have been times in the near past when we absolutely could not have made it. The market forces would have crushed the industry and there have been times when we could have survived.” When the Albany ethanol proposal was announced in March, public officials said the company would follow up with an adjacent plant that would boost total production at the port to 160 million gallons per year. That remains a long-term goal, Stahl said, but won’t happen in the near future. Albany Renewable will not seek a lease for the second parcel at the port at least until the first plant is built and operational, and possibly not until it generates a profit.
Stay away from gas station that say 10% ethanol. Now we're making corn farmer, AND oil companies billionaires. We are subsidizing ethanol producers billions of dollars to pay more at the pump, AND get less miles per gallon! Not to mention, it's destroying our small engines.
Quoted Text
The Wholesale Price of Ethanol
Why ethanol always costs 50% more than gasoline (per mile driven) "We would normally expect the spot price of ethanol to exceed the wholesale spot price of gasoline by about 50 cents per gallon, the amount of the ethanol tax credit." (DOE) This statement from the US Dept. of Energy is the key to understanding wholesale ethanol prices. Here's how they work. Blenders will pay 51¢ more per gallon for ethanol because they get a 51¢ blenders credit from the federal government. So if wholesale gas is $1.50, blenders will pay $2.01 for ethanol. However, since it really costs them only $1.50 (after the subsidy), they will sell it as if $1.50 were the wholesale price. So far, no harm to the consumer (only to the taxpayer who paid the subsidy). But the reason blenders (and gas stations) will pay (after subsidies) the same for ethanol is because they can sell it at the same price as gasoline to consumers. A consumer will pay the same for ten gallons of E10 as for ten gallons of gasoline even though the E10 contains a gallon of ethanol. Virtually all consumers are willing to pay the same for the gallon of ethanol for three reasons. (1) They often don't know there's ethanol in their gasoline. (2) There is often ethanol in all the gasoline because of state requirements, so they have no choice. (3) They never know the ethanol has only 2/3 the energy of gasoline and gets them only 2/3 as far. The result is that drivers always pay much more for ethanol energy than for gasoline energy, simply because they pay the same amount per gallon. In effect when gasoline prices are $2.00 gallon, they pay $3.00 (plus a little) for the same amount of ethanol energy.
Many who want to slow global warming support corn-ethanol subsidies. It seems to make sense because corn takes CO2 out of the atmosphere so using corn-ethanol is carbon neutral. The problem is that making corn ethanol makes lots of GHGs. ADM, a big multinational corporation, was the first big lobbyist for corn ethanol, but once it got going the farm states got behind them. It's not just the ethanol makers who make money, all corn farmers make money, even the ones who sell their corn for chicken feed, or corn syrup. The demand for ethanol corn drives up the price of every bushel of corn, and corn is the biggest crop in the US. In 2006, over $8 billion in subsidies (some direct and some from artificially high ethanol prices) went into the ethanol market. This doesn't even count the extra money made on the 80% of corn that is not used for ethanol. Any politician that tries to cutting off that much money will lose a lot of votes. Here's the ADM story.
How ADM makes a killing on ethanol Excerpts from the NY Times, June 25, 2006
Farmers are seeing little of the huge profits ethanol refiners like Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) are banking. ... The ethanol explosion began in the 1970's and 1980's, when ADM's chief executive, Dwayne O. Andreas, was a generous campaign contributor and well-known figure in the halls of Congress who helped push the idea of transforming corn into fuel. Given the glut in corn, the early strategy of Mr. Andreas was to drum up interest in ethanol on the state level among corn farmers and persuade Washington to provide generous tax incentives. But in 1990, when Congress mandated the use of a supplement in gasoline to help limit emissions, ADM lost out to the oil industry, which won the right to use the cheaper methyl tertiary butyl ether, or MTBE, derived from natural gas, to fill the 10 percent fuel requirement. Past Scandal Adding to its woes, ADM was marred by scandal in 1996 when several company executives, including one of the sons of Mr. Andreas, were convicted of conspiracy to fix lysine markets. The company was fined $100 million. Since then, ADM's direct political clout in Washington may have waned a bit but it still pursues its policy preferences through a series of trade organizations, notably the Renewable Fuels Association. ... But ADM has not lost interest in promoting ethanol among farm organizations, politicians and the news media. It is by far the biggest beneficiary of more than $2 billion in government subsidies the ethanol industry receives each year, via a 51-cent-a-gallon tax credit given to refiners and blenders that mix ethanol into their gasoline. ADM will earn an estimated $1.3 billion from ethanol alone in the 2007 fiscal year, up from $556 million this year, said David Driscoll, a food manufacturing analyst at Citigroup. ... ADM has huge production facilities that dwarf those of its competitors. With seven big plants, the company controls 1.1 billion gallons of ethanol production, or about 24 percent of the country's capacity. ADM can make more than four times what VeraSun, ADM's closest ethanol rival, can produce. Last year, spurred by soaring energy prices, the ethanol lobby broke through in its long campaign to win acceptance outside the corn belt, inserting a provision in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that calls for the use of 5 billion gallons a year of ethanol by 2007, growing to at least 7.5 billion gallons in 2012. The industry is now expected to produce about 6 billion gallons next year. ... Now, government officials are also pushing for increasing use of an 85-percent ethanol blend, called E85, which requires automakers to modify their engines and fuel injection systems. In the ultimate nod to ADM's successful efforts, Mr. Bodman [Energy Secretary] announced the new initiatives in February at the company's headquarters in Illinois. "It's been 30 years since we got a call from the White House asking for the agriculture industry, ADM in particular, to take a serious look at the possibilities of building facilities to produce alternative sources of energy for our fuel supply in the United States," said G. Allen Andreas, ADM's chairman and Dwayne Andreas' nephew. ...
The ethanol industry creates jobs. Sure enough. Pump $4 billion a year in subsidies into the corn states, and they will build ethanol plants and run them. There will be new jobs. Now if the corn states would send $4 billion to the South that would create some jobs down there. And if the South sent $4 billion to New England ... This is getting a bit silly, and so is the claim that ethanol subsidies create jobs. They create them in the corn states and destroy them in the rest of the country. If that were not the case, we could just tax every region and send the money to the next region and permanently solve the unemployment problem. Some industries are more capital intensive, e.g. oil refineries, and some are more labor intensive, e.g. restaurants. If money is taken from capital intensive industries and given to labor intensive ones, there should be a net increase in jobs—at least for a while. Now, here's the key question: Is an ethanol factory more like an oil refinery (capital intensive) or a restaurant (labor intensive)?
"I once asked Governor Tom Vilsack of Iowa at a news conference why Californians and northeasterners should be forced to put ethanol in their gasoline when the science clearly shows it has no environmental benefits," recalls Paul Rogers of the San Jose Mercury News. "Because it helps farmers from my state expand their markets, he explained. 'So I guess you'd support a new federal law to require everybody in Des Moines to buy a computer, to help people in Silicon Valley expand their markets?' I asked. He didn't concur."
Where do they sell gas that does NOT have ethanol in it?
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
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