September 14, 2007

Portland Ethanol Refinery

Next Tuesday, Poet Biorefining-Portland will begin producing ethanol 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“To produce 65 million gallons, we need 22 million bushels of corn a year, or 80 to 100 truckloads a day,” said Matt Clemme, technical manager for Poet. “We have about a six-minute turnaround time on our trucks. We get them in and out of here efficiently.”

I have heard many say, suppose Global Warming is not real, what is the harm of behaving as if it were? Wouldn't we only reduce our dependency on oil, wouldn't we clean the environment?

But when we see 22 million bushels of corn a year, 80 to 100 truckloads of corn a day, 365 days a year, being poured out for fuel instead of food at just one, just one refinery... you do the math on how that raises the cost of feed and the cost of food... you do the math on the possibility of shortages of both.

Just how high is the cost of biofuel? And just how much thought are we giving to the hidden costs.

Update: A Grant County Ethanol plant, as well.

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