Centerfield

Cheap Ethanol is Fricken Cool

Hap tip to Instapundit for this story about GM getting into celllulosic ethanol production

Today at the North American International Auto Show, GM announced it has taken a non-controlling equity interest in biology-based renewable energy firm Coskata Inc. The greater-Chicago-based company simultaneously announced that it has developed a proprietary process for converting renewable carbon-rich materials ranging from cornstalks and woodchips to old tires and city trash into clean-burning ethanol at a cost of roughly $1/gallon. A pilot operation will be up and running at Coskata's R&D headquarters in Warrenville, IL by the end of January, 2008, and a 40,000-gallon commercial demonstration facility under construction at an as yet undisclosed location will go online by the end of the year. General Motors will purchase much of the ethanol produced by this plant for use in the test vehicles at its Milford, MI proving ground. And plans are in the works for a 100-million-gallon/year facility to be up and running by 2011.

GM's interest is primarily in making ethanol more widely available to increase the popularity of the many models it sells with flex-fuel capability (by 2012, half of GM's North American production will be flex-fuel capable). The company is also investing extensively in university research and in other firms pursuing different methods of cellulosic ethanol production. GM research suggests that by 2030, one-third of transportation fuel needs can be met by biofuels.

Boy I can hardly wait for idiotarians to start complaining about how $1 a gallon fuel could be bad.

I find it really promising that folks are working hard to solve the problem of our dependency on non-renewable fossil fuels, especially from foreign sources. If the result is cheap fuel and a way-reduced need for petroleum. I don't care if the inventors get filthy rich and there are 2 hummers in every driveway.

Then there are those who'll be crestfallen if everyday folks are not made to suffer for their evil, selfish, oil-consuming ways. F__K 'em, I say.