A couple of days ago, I told you about how Cincinnati, Ohio had changed its bus fleet to biodiesel and saved the city nearly half-a-million dollars last year. Now, officials in Pocatello, Idaho are making the change to the cleaner form of fuel. They expect to change the city’s entire fleet… cars, buses, snowplows… over to a 20% blend of biodiesel.

That bandwagon seems to be just getting bigger everyday.

Back on January 4th, we told you about a plant near Dexter in Southeast Missouri that is using chicken fat to make biodiesel. Read the original AP story here.

Today, I talked with Jerry Bagley, one of the co-owners with Global Fuels, LLC. He told me that he thinks they are just on the edge of the potential for using what would normally go to waste and turning it into a clean, renewable fuel.

Check out the interview. Global Fuels (4 min MP3)

A former brewery in New York state will soon be brewing up biodiesel. Officials with GS AgriFuels have announced a partnership with Homeland Energy to build a biodiesel plant at the site of the old Miller Brewing Company plant in Fulton. Homeland Energy already has an ethanol plant adjacent to the site.

In a release on Business Wire, GS AgriFuels President and Chief Executive Officer, Thomas Scozzafava, says “We are pleased to have been able to partner with Homeland Energy and participate in this, our first majority-owned biofuels production facility. I’m proud to be involved with a project that will re-utilize an existing industrial facility to produce clean fuels that will benefit both the central New York economy and its environment.”

The 10-million gallon-a-year plant will use some of the old brewing equipment and storage tanks already in place and is expected to begin production later this year.

There are two sides to the stories out this week about the increased cost of tortillas in Mexico, being blamed partly on increased demand for corn to be made into ethanol.

One is that it will cause the poor in Mexico to go hungry because they can’t afford to pay more for the basic staple of their diet.

The other side is that Mexican farmers, who are among the country’s poor, are making more money because of the higher prices.

As first reported in the LA Times, high corn prices are wreaking havoc on Mexico’s inflation rate and forcing shoppers to pay more for eggs, milk and tortillas. But they’re a godsend to farmers such as Victor Manuel Amador Luna.

With world corn prices riding high on strong demand from U.S. ethanol producers, Amador is looking to expand production on his farm about 125 miles east of Mexico City in the state of Puebla. He planted most of his 222 acres with corn this year and would like to buy more land.

Other news outlets have picked up the story and run with it on different angles, like this AP report which places part of the blame for the higher tortilla prices on corporate monopolies.

The San Francisco Chronicle put it this way:
Just why tortillas cost so much remains murky.

Mutters about monopolies and price gouging have been rising, leading Mexico’s antitrust agency to say on Thursday that it will investigate hoarding and price manipulation.

Besides investigating, the Mexican government is importing 650,000 metric tons of duty-free corn in an attempt to drive down tortilla prices.

Other crop producers are reaping the benefits of higher corn prices driven by ethanol. Among them are the sorghum farmers, who are meeting this week in New Mexico. Brownfield Network’s Peter Shinn reports that ethanol was the focus of Monday’s general session at the National Sorghum Producers (NSP) annual meeting.

NSP President Greg Shelor, a Kansas sorghum grower, told Brownfield that’s because ethanol is already increasing sorghum producer profitability. “On the ethanol, that’s real promising for another market for our grain sorghum because it’s interchangeable with corn in all these ethanol plants, so it just gives us another market and gets our price up there a lot closer to corn.” In fact, in some locations, sorghum is commanding a 10 to 15 cent per bushel to premium to corn, according to several growers in attendance here.

The other ethanol export to address Monday’s NSP general session was Dr. John Ashworth, Team Leader of Partnership Development for the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s National Bioenergy Center in Golden, Colorado. He told sorghum growers their crop will play an even bigger role in ethanol production as cellulosic technologies are perfected.

The Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) supports the incentives outlined in the Governors’ Ethanol Coalition report, Ethanol from Biomass: How to Get to a Biofuels Future.

According to a BIO release, “The technology for commercial production of ethanol from cellulosic biomass is ready today, but no modern biorefineries are currently operating to make use of the technology,” said BIO President and CEO Jim Greenwood. “The production incentive proposed by the governors would help jumpstart the construction and commercial operation of modern biorefineries by pioneering companies. We need to move quickly to ramp up production of renewable fuels that can help America move toward energy independence.”

BIO supports the Governors’ Ethanol Coalition’s recommendations to create a Cellulosic Ethanol Production Tax Credit and to fully fund research, demonstration and incentive programs authorized in the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

Clearing the driveway in the winter months can help clear the air if you use ethanol-enriched gasoline in your snowblower.

According to the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council, small engines can efficiently burn 10 percent ethanol blends and the use of E10 reduces greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 30 percent.

“It’s important to think green year round,” said Joanna Schroeder with the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council (EPIC). “Winter air pollution is a concern for many communities across the U.S.”

“Small engines in snow blowers perform well with ethanol-enriched gasoline, without sacrificing performance,” said Ralph Groschen with the Minnesota Department of Agriculture’s Ethanol Program. “Check your owner’s manual and be sure to use fresh fuel at the start of the season.”

Read more from EPIC.

Domestic Fuel welcomes our newest blogger, John Davis.

John is a 20 years+ veteran of traditional news and is getting his first taste of this “new media.” We’ve known John since Chuck hired him to work at the Brownfield Network in January, 2000 after he served an 11 year stint in the U.S. Air Force as a broadcast journalist. He’s getting out on his own now after working for Learfield Communications for almost six years as a network broadcaster.

John lives in Jefferson City, Missouri with his wife, two sons, two dogs, a cat, a mouse, and a fish! You can read more about him and his thoughts at his own website John C. Davis Online.

Welcome aboard, John!

Small railroads are seeing big opportunities in hauling corn to ethanol plants and then transporting the finished product and by-products back out again.

An Associated Press article discusses the potential ethanol is presenting for the Minnesota-basedTwin Cities & Western Railroad with its mere 200 miles of track.

Chief operating officer Mark Wegner said his trains carry mainly corn and soybeans. But ethanol is working it’s way into the lineup.

DDG stands for distillers dried grain, an ethanol byproduct used for livestock feed.

Read more.

Even some oil-rich nations are getting on the biodiesel bandwagon. Check out this article in the Brunei Times. Apparently, the sultanate on the coast of Borneo in the South China Sea has inked an agreement with a private company to build two biodiesel and glycerine production facilities.

The facilities can produce 100,000 metric tonnes of biodiesel per annum in Phase 1 and 400,000 metric tonnes per annum in Phase 2. The entire project costs US$263 million

The plants will produce biodiesel from the leftovers from slaughterhouses and cooking oil. By the way, Brunei exports about $4.5 BILLION in petroleum products each year.