ethanol news stories on Newser

Senate Reverses, Votes to Cut Ethanol Subsidies

Thu, 16 Jun 2011 17:31:35 CDT

The Senate voted today to repeal tax credits for producing ethanol, a vote that budget cutters hope will demonstrate a growing appetite in Congress to end special interest tax breaks to help reduce government borrowing. The Senate voted 73-27 to repeal the $5 billion annual subsidy, just two days after...

Jon Huntsman: I'm Skipping Iowa

Polly Davis Doig — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 15:40:45 CDT

Jon Huntsman won't be taking his toys to the sandbox in Iowa: The possible presidential candidate says that he's definitely not going to compete in the Hawkeye State, reports ABC News. “I'm not competing in Iowa for a reason. I don't believe in subsidies that prop up corn, soybeans, and...

Ethanol Group Paid Gingrich $300K

Rob Quinn — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 01:19:00 CDT

Newt Gingrich earned more than $300,000 acting as a consultant to a coalition of ethanol lobbying groups in 2009, according to IRS records. The possible GOP 2012 candidate—who declared "I am not a lobbyist for ethanol" during a spat with Wall Street Journal editors over his support for...

Four Loko Recycled Into Fuel Ethanol

Nick McMaster — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:08:03 CST

With Four Loko banned in many states and being voluntarily pulled from shelves in others, there's quite a few cans of the stuff lying around in warehouses around the US. What to do with it all? Wholesalers from a number of southern states have been converting their excess stock into...

Al Gore: I Was Wrong About Corn-Based Ethanol

Kevin Spak — Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:50:36 CST

Al Gore regrets supporting subsidies for corn-based ethanol when he was in office, he revealed during a speech in Athens yesterday, confessing that he’d done it more to bolster his presidential ambitions than to help the planet. “First generation ethanol I think was a mistake,” Gore said, according to Reuters...

Meet the First Car Made by a 3-D Printer

Matt Cantor — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:14:07 CDT

Saving the planet just got a lot better-looking: The hybrid Urbee is the first-ever car made using 3-D printers. The firms Stratasys and Kor Ecologic created the vehicle, whose whole exterior is printed by additive manufacturing—printing layer on top of layer until, essentially, a car appears—a method that...

Biofuel Boom Runs Out of Gas

Drew Nelles — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 12:49:02 CDT

Once considered a win-win for the environment and energy independence, America’s biofuel industry is sputtering to a halt, the Wall Street Journal reports. Thanks to the recession, lower oil prices, and government delays, two-thirds of American biodiesel refineries—dozens of plants—are idle, and companies across the country are shutting...

EPA Eyes Crackdown on Not-So-Green Biofuels

Katherine Thompson — Sun, 10 May 2009 16:24:54 CDT

Plants consume carbon dioxide, so growing corn to produce ethanol should be at worst a zero-sum game, emissions-wise, right? Wrong, says the EPA. There's another factor involved: Turning food crops into fuel drives up their prices, which raises demand for farmland worldwide. In places like Brazil, that means chopping down...

Ammonia + Corn = Energy Independence

Harry Kimball — Wed, 06 May 2009 14:09:01 CDT

Feeding cows parts of corn plants that farmers currently discard could eventually lead to American energy independence, Wired reports. An ammonia treatment applied to corn “stover” could make it palatable to cattle, freeing up more land for the production of ethanol, a Michigan State researcher says. That could, in turn,...