General Motors, eager to ensure a supply of fuel for the big fleet of flex-fuel ethanol-capable vehicles it is building, has joined the rush into alternative energy and invested in a company that intends to produce ethanol from crop wastes, wood chips, scrap plastic, rubber and even municipal garbage.
The company purchased an equity stake in Coskata, a start-up company in Warrenville, Ill., that plans to make ethanol without using corn. G.M. would not say how much it paid or how big a stake it took in the company…
Coskata is not the only company pursuing the gas-to-bacteria-to-fuel route, but claims its process gives more ethanol per ton of raw material — 100 gallons — and uses less water, less than one gallon for each gallon of ethanol.
William Roe, CEO, said that “at full production, Coskata ethanol should be 50 cents to $1 cheaper than gasoline at the pump,” and that the total production cost would be under $1 a gallon when the fuel begins flowing in 2010 or 2011. Mary Beth Stanek, G.M.’s director for energy and environment, said the process showed “near-term readiness” and that no scientific work was involved to commercialize it.
“It’s literally just physical building,” she said.
We’ve been commenting for a spell on alternatives to food crop-based alternative fuels. Costs and environmental impact are both reduced in the quotient.
Since the only remaining portion of this project is the physical plant and ramping-up, we should see how this works out in just a few years.
From what I’ve read of the process, it will even gobble up one of the truly deleterious components of world trash – used tires.
Maybe they could harvest that Texas-sized whirlpool of plastic trash in the Pacific Ocean.
I wish someone would recycle wastes of humanity.
There are far too many out there screwing up our world.
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Is Coskaka using switchgrass?
#3
Soylent Green!
its about time, weve known for a long time that corn isnt the answer
#3, #5 – It would be fun to see Hillary recycled.
Buwahhahahahaha….
#7
Her husband is good with the environment, he doesn’t use ethanol based drinks to seduce fat women.
This is excellent. There are billions of tons of grass clippings buried in landfills every day.
With every announcement like this we have to ask: serious, or just more PR to distract us from what their lobbyists are really doing?
GM became a joke by showing the same fiberglass mockups of fuel-cell and electric cars for 40 years. I’d like to believe they’ve turned a corner, but after a while you feel like Charlie Brown trying once again to kick that football..
#9, Hopper,
I know !!! I wonder why. I use the mulcher on my tractor and leave the clippings to go back into the soil. Every couple of years I throw some anti-grub fertilizer on the lawn to keep the moles at bay but other than that, nothing.
There is a huge amount of wood that goes to waste every year. There are also some very fast growing trees, such as Poplar, that could be farmed.
This ethanol things already draining aquifers all over the country and needs tobe stopped.
#10 I agree with you. This is the very same GM that couldn’t kill off its Electric Vehicle project (in 1991) fast enough. And then buy the gas guzzling Hummer, so it could make them at a huge profit for the Army (wonder how they knew there’d be a war on soon?). GM buying up an ethanol technology, is a lot like Chevron Oil buying up the NiMH battery technology. In both cases, they’ll be in a position to squash it, should it threaten their primary profit maker. And how come of gov’t no longer sees this sort of thing as a possible “conflict of interest”? Not a word of concern about GM owning the process that might make greener fuels for a very small line of it cars, and all other competing car makers. Should GM be in the fuels business, at all?! Is the word “monopoly” dead?
The fact that it doesn’t require the use of fields that could otherwise be used for food/livestock fee crops is a big plus. The idea of mass production of corn ethanol, which is not terribly efficient, is not the wonder solution that politicians like to tout it as.
Using trash for fuel is a great solution for two large problems.
As for mulching. If you have a yard bigger than a postage stamp, do it. It’s easy and you have free mulch for your gardens (flowers or veggies). Nothing like eating your own home grown veggies using soil you made (with some help from the worms of course).
Does that make me sound like a hippy?? LOL
#13, I wonder if the promised “Volt” will be the make-or-break decision for GM. If they back down on this one, or just do a few for California without investing in any real production capacity, I think they’re at the point of no return.
I bet this kind of news makes the farmers lobbyists happy!
(where’s that sarcasm emote)