US Department of Energy awards $114 million to four cellulosic ethanol projects in Missouri, Colorado, Oregon and Wisconsin

In Washington, the US Energy Department awarded $114 million in grants to cellulosic ethanol projects in Missouri, Oregon, Colorado and Wisconsin.

The demonstration projects were proposed by ICM, for a plant in in St. Joseph, Missouri; Lignol Innovations, for a plant in Commerce City, Colorado; Pacific Ethanol, for a plant in Boardman, Oregon; and Stora Enso North America for a plant in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin. Pacific Ethanol received $24.32 million, while the others received $30 million.

Pacific Ethanol’s 2.7 Mgy plant will produce cellulosic ethanol from a process developed by BioGasol, which partnered with Pacific Ethanol and the Joint BioEnergy Institute on the project. JBEI will provide enzyme technologies.

Last February, the Department of Energy awarded $385 million to six cellulosic ethanol projects. They were Abengoa Bioenergy Biomass of Kansas, for a facility in Colwich, Kansas; ALICO Inc., for a facility in LaBelle, Florida; BlueFire Ethanol, for a facility located in Corona, California; POET, for their “Project Liberty” facility in Emmetsburg, Iowa; Iogen Biorefinery Partners, for a facility in Idaho Falls, Idaho; and Range Fuels, for a facility in Soperton, Georgia.

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 had directed the Department of Energy to solicit proposals for commercial demonstration of advanced biorefineries that use cellulosic feedstocks to produce ethanol and co-produce bioproducts and electricity. The solicitation closed on August 10, 2006. The private sector shared 60 percent of the respective project costs, meaning that DOE’s funding leveraged over $1.2 billion in total investment in the projects.

The other notable award activity by the DOE has been in funding national research laboratory efforts.

In California late last year, DOE and BP co-funded the Joint BioEnergy Institute, or JBEI, located at a new $135 million, 65,000 square foot biofuels lab at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in Emeryville. The Emeryville lab fuses the research efforts of UC-Berkeley, UC- Davis, the Carnegie Institution for Science, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore and Sandia.
The lab is focusing on cellulosic ethanol research including feedstocks such as rice straw, switchgrass and Arabidopsis, a plant in the mustard family. The lab will also research microbes found in the termite gut of the common termite, which assist in breaking down wood into edible sugars.

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