Sweet sorghum boom in Florida; pending trials will determine ethanol expansion potential

In Florida, Global Renewable Energy has planted a 10-acre test patch of sweet sorghum and said that it plans to expand to 10,000 acres and buld an ethanol plant if scientific tests reveal sufficient sugar yields per acre. The project is one of at least four proposed sweet sorghum projects in Florida.

The state government has awarded $7 million in grants to U.S. EnviroFuels for a $20 Mgy plant in Venus, and $1.5 million to Renergie which said it planned to build 50 Mgy in capacity at 10 ethanol plants.

DeGrande BioFuels has proposed a $30 million project in Flagler County to produce ethanol from sweet sorghum. The company said that 10,000 acres of the crop would be needed to support the proposed facility, and that the sandy soil of Florida was ideal for cultivating multiple crops per year. The company’s CO said that the fact that sweet sorghum was not a traded commodity would shield it from speculators driving up the price of feedstocks and making the plant economically unviable.

Florida background

Diversified Ethanol announced that it would complete its first waste-to-ethanol plant in Dade City, rather than Pomona, California as previously announced under its feedstock agreement with Master Recycling. The company said that faster-tracking in permitting, plus more favorable construction costs led to the decision to complete the Florida plant first.

Diversified Ethanol designs and builds small scale, modular ethanol plants using brewery, beverage or food processing waste.  The company’s Butterfield system includes a proprietary water recycling system reducing water use by up to 85%.

Entrepreneur Howard Melamed has offered to lease 192,000 acres of land from the State of Florida for $120 million per year and produce up to 120 million gallons of sugarcane ethanol. Melamed said that following a 30-year lease, the land would be contributed to the Everglades restoration project.  Florida recently agreed to purchase the land from US Sugar for $1.7 billion.

Gov. Charlie Crist announced that E85 would become available at three stations along the Florida’s Turnpike  system. The first E85 pumps, at Turkey Lake Service Plaza, will open this week, while service plaza at Port St. Lucie/Ft. Pierce and Pompano will add E85 in August. Prior to the launch of E85 along the Turnpike, the 500,000 flex-fuel cars in Florida could only obtain E85 fuel in Miami or Tallahassee.  The $1.5 million Turnpike cooperative initiative with Martin Petroleum will make it possible to travel the length of the system, and Florida, on E85.

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