GM Partners With a Second Cellulosic Ethanol Maker
April 30, 2008
General Motors plans to announce Thursday a second partnership with a cellulosic ethanol maker. The automaker is providing no further details until GM President Fritz Henderson makes the announcement in Washington, D.C.
GM already has announced a partnership with an Illinois-based cellulosic ethanol maker, Coskata Inc., and last week said Coskata was establishing a pilot plant in Pennsylvania to demonstrate its innovative process of converting a variety of materials, from garbage to agricultural waste, into ethanol.
GM's partnerships for developing cellulosic ethanol come against a backdrop of increasing outcry for the industry to quit using corn-based ethanol, as food prices rise.
Posted by at 7:54 AM under GM , News , Technology | Comments (2) | digg this | Seed Newsvine
Good move on GM's part. Reading elsewhere, demand for grain is also having an effect on fertilizer prices world-wide as emerging nations are consuming more meat. Also, corn production & processing uses copious amounts of water, especially in ethanol production.
I think about the thousands of square miles of otherwise tillable highway medians we have in this country and wonder if we can create a lease contract or tax rebate plan of some kind to grow cellulose-bearing species between the right-of-ways of our Interstates. Maybe start by collecting the clippings from the mowing operations we already do there.
Posted by: fulcrumb | April 30, 2008 at 9:33 AM
I suspect that the real future of ethanol will be the waste that now goes to landfills and incinerators. Given the waste America produces in a year, creating ethanol out of waste will put a large dent in our need for fossil fuels. Corn ethanol only exists because Iowa and Nebraska farmers expect more government subsidies out of their otherwise economically inefficient operations. Once corn can be replaced with household waste, maybe we can actually 'reduce, reuse, recycle' as originally intended.
Posted by: Isaac | May 01, 2008 at 11:49 AM