Earth2Tech Maps: Biofuels Deathwatch
Biofuel plants have been put on hold faster than your phone company’s tech support line. With corn and soy prices hitting record high prices and an ethanol glut flooding the market, ethanol’s profit margin per gallon has dropped to a meager 25 cents from $2. That’s causing numerous ethanol and biodiesel plants to get put on hold or downright canceled. Hundreds of millions of gallons of production capacity and hundreds of millions of dollars in biofuel investments are now hanging in limbo, as investors hope prices will level out.
That’s not to say that ethanol is dead in the water. There’s a variety of positive reports coming out on the future of the industry — there’s reports that see a meaningful future for ethanol , as well reports saying ethanol could be deliver a better-than-expected energy return. Add in a healthy merger and acquisition market and biofuels will play a role in the future of weaning the U.S. off oil.
They’re just having some serious growing pains. Below we’ve mapped out specific biofuel plant hiccups complete with annotations. It’s a work in progress and we’ll be adding more plants as news comes in and please add any extra information in the comments.
If you like this map, check out our Coal Power Deathwatch map as well, recently updated with information from you, our readers!
Definitely a few issues at work here that need to be resolved as the market evolves but I can see one problem in the supply chain. While I see flexfuel vehicles on the road almost every day, I haven’t seen ethanol at any of the gas stations along my commute or where I do most of my other driving here in the Boston area.
[...] Edit Staff, Wednesday, January 9, 2008 at 2:27 PM PT Comments (0) With corn and soy prices hitting record-high prices and an ethanol glut flooding the market, ethanol’s profit margin per gallon has dropped and biofuel plants across the country are being put on hold faster than your company’s tech support line. For a succinct view, check out the map over on Check on Earth2Tech. [...]
A more viable use of ethanol in vehicles? :
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/18304/
[...] for those of you who are fans of our other maps, make sure to check out our Biofuels Deathwatch map and Coal Deathwatch map. Digg Stumble Reddit del.icio.us Email « Earth2Tech Week [...]
[...] Such media attention on the biofuel plants’ pollution is more bad news for new plant construction. With high corn prices, low ethanol prices and growing construction costs, it’s no wonder that so many biofuel plants are being put on hold. [...]
Green energy is definitely the best solution in most cases. Technology like solar energy, wind power, fuel cells, zaps electric vehicles, EV hybrids, etc have come so far recently. Green energy even costs way less than oil and gas in many cases.
[...] cellulosic ethanol, as food-based biofuels, especially corn, have taken a beating. There have been numerous frozen ethanol refinery projects and the public backlash in the food vs. fuel debate has further dampened food-based ethanol [...]
[...] We’ve added the company’s recent cancellation to our Biofuels Deathwatch map. [...]
[...] ethanol producers are struggling as a result of sharply higher corn prices. The report cites a biofuels deathwatch map from earth2tech.com that identifies 18 US biofuels plants that have either been put on hold or [...]
You ought to keep a running tally like they do at
http://www.ml-implode.com
You’ve done a Nice job
[...] More at Earth2Tech.com This entry was posted on Monday, July 21st, 2008 at 10:39 am and is filed under Ethanol News, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. [...]