ethanol

Ethanol start-up Mascoma sheds staffers

Biofuel start-up Mascoma has laid off a handful of employees, including President Colin South and other executives.

The total number of eliminated positions was between 5 and 10, CEO Bruce Jamerson said Friday.

Mascoma is one of few well-funded companies that have developed technology to make cellulosic ethanol from nonfood feedstocks. General Motors and refiner Marathon Oil are investors.

Jamerson said Mascoma continues to hit its technology and business milestones. But he and the board felt that it was prudent to cut costs, including personnel.

Because of the upheaval in the capital markets, Mascoma cannot go public to raise additional … Read more

CNET News Daily Podcast: Why e-voting's still a mess

CNET News' Declan McCullagh calls it an expensive lesson in the law of unintended consequences.

He's talking about widespread adoption of touch-screen machines in the aftermath of the 2000 election debacle. But as the U.S. heads to the polls on Tuesday, there's a lot of anxiousness over the reliability of the e-voting systems which have since been put in place. This, and other headlines of the day, in Monday's podcast.

Listen now: Download today's podcast

Today's stories:

E-voting worries linger as Election Day nears

Ethanol maker VeraSun files for bankruptcy

Tesla Motors secures $40 million in funding… Read more

Ethanol maker VeraSun files for bankruptcy

VeraSun Energy, an ethanol producer that failed to foresee a drop in corn prices earlier this year, filed for bankruptcy protection Friday.

The Sioux Falls, S.D.-based company said it will continue to operate during bankruptcy, including making feedstock purchases and paying employees.

VeraSun, which claims to be the biggest ethanol producer in the United States, has run out of cash because of a change in its hedging strategy for purchasing corn. The global credit crisis has also hampered its ability to raise operating funds.

"Today's filing allows VeraSun to address its short-term liquidity constraints as we … Read more

Ford testing ethanol injection with Ecoboost

We haven't been too excited about Ford's Ecoboost tech, simply because it's not really new tech. However, Ford's next evolution of Ecoboost, code-named Bobcat, might be worth getting worked up about.

According to sources at PickupTrucks.com, the Bobcat is essentially a turbocharged engine running at a high compression ratio. Typically, this combination results in disaster, but Ford's system has a trick up its sleeve in the form of ethanol injection.

The Bobcat builds on Ford's Ecoboost engines by including a direct injected ethanol nozzle that adds small amounts of ethanol to the standard … Read more

Poet to make ethanol from corn cobs next year

Fuel producer Poet said on Wednesday that it will open an ethanol plant next year that will use corn cobs and fiber from kernels as a feedstock.

Construction on the $4 million pilot facility in Scotland, S.D., will begin by the end of the year and produce 20,000 gallons of ethanol per year.

Next year, it intends to begin work on a larger, commercial-scale plant using this same process that would begin operating in 2011. It is part of a $200 million Department of Energy cellulosic ethanol research effort called Project Liberty, the company said.

There are hundreds … Read more

Energy crops key to biofuels growth

After a rash of negative publicity, biofuels backers say that advanced technologies will reshape the industry, making ethanol from sustainably grown sources cost-effective within a few years.

General Motors on Friday convened a panel of experts from cutting-edge ethanol companies that described different technologies--acid hydrolysis, specialty microbes, and genetically engineered energy crops--which they say will bring back biofuels' faded luster.

The key technology transition, already under way, is shifting from corn to other feedstocks for making ethanol from plant cellulose. With the right technologies and policies in place, the U.S. could meet one-third of its transportation fuel needs by … Read more

In the tall grass, researchers find energy alternative

A perennial grass that grows as tall as 13 feet, requires little to no fertilizer, and can be stored away in bales almost indefinitely could be the next hope for efficient ethanol production.

At least that's the thinking of researchers from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who have been field testing a sterile grass known as Miscanthus giganteus, a distant cousin of switchgrass. In a report released Wednesday, the researchers said that the biofuel crop proved in field tests to be significantly more productive than other crops like corn in producing biomass for ethanol--an alternative to gas.

"By … Read more

Beware the allure of ethanol investing

I am a fan of ethanol. The addition of corn ethanol to our US fuel supply chain has had a significant impact in keeping gasoline prices way lower than they otherwise would have been, and has paid for the subsidies many times over. But that has not translated to gains for ethanol stocks, which are down on the order of 50% over the last year according to the Camino Energy index, and it won't change anytime soon.

As the bellwether US ethanol pureplays are finally down to earth, and my predictions have come to pass. Two years ago ahead … Read more

Algae farm in Mexico to produce ethanol in '09

Rather than squeeze algae for its oil, Algenol wants to turn each algae cell into a tiny ethanol factory.

The Maryland-based company said that business partner BioFields has licensed its technology and committed $850 million to build a saltwater algae farm in the Sonoran Desert in northwest Mexico. Production is scheduled to begin next year.

BioFields paid over $100 million to license Algenol's technology, Algenol CEO Paul Woods said Thursday. He said the ethanol produced at the farm will cost $1 less than today's gasoline, or about $3 per gallon.

Algenol's technology was first developed in the … Read more