A Gasoline Competitor From Poet In Two Years?

Poet LLC, the largest producer of corn based ethanol says it can compete with gasoline in two years. The company says that it has reduced the cost of making ethanol from $4.13 to $2.35 a gallon using a better cocktail of enzymes and by cutting capital costs.

It also plans to use a byproduct lignin as fuel and expects to produce cellulosic ethanol in just two years. The company launched a cellulosic-ethanol pilot plant a year ago in Scotland and had gotten round to cutting capital costs by 40%. Farmers are also expected to gain substantially as an acre of corn would produce 480 gallon of corn based ethanol and 55 gallon more from processing cobs, leaves and husks. It is estimated that the nation could produce 5 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol and perhaps 10 billion gallons later. There are other companies that want to make cellulosic ethanol from wood chips and switch grass.