“Improving the use of clean, domestically grown biofuels like ethanol will help move us toward a cleaner, more secure energy future,” said John Thomasian, director of the NGA Center for Best Practices. “The infrastructure for E-85 needs to expand now if the nation is to be ready for the significant growth in ethanol coming from new cellulosic and biomass sources,” said Beth Lowery, GM vice president of environment, energy and safety policy. “We need a range of alternatives to offset growing oil demand in this country and globally.”

Under the terms of the partnerships, GM will help states assess optimal locations for E-85 pump locations. GM, will work with top ethanol producers and fuel infrastructure experts to optimize E-85 supply to states and will leverage its network of dealers, plants and offices and its extended ethanol-related network to promote E-85 usage.

Source: Autobloggreen

“The infrastructure for E-85 needs to expand now if the nation is to be ready for the significant growth in ethanol coming from new cellulosic sources,” said Beth Lowery, GM vice president of environment, energy and safety policy. “We need a range of alternatives to offset growing oil demand in this country and globally.”

Among the states are Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Tennessee and Wisconsin in the new partnership.  GM is providing technical assistance to the states to help them produce ethanol in the most efficient manner.  It is also helping the states find ideal locations for E85 supplied gas stations.

“Increasing the use of E-85 makes all the sense in the world,” said Alabama Governor Riley.  “E-85 is a less expensive fueling option that is better for our environment and helps reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” said Governor Riley.  “And because it’s made from crops grown by our farmers, E-85 is a real growth opportunity for our rural economy.”

I think E85 can be a big boon to our quest for energy independence.  I, however, don’t think that using corn to produce it is the way to get it.  Food prices are high enough already, we don’t need to replace land used for growing food with land used for growing fuel.  There are alternatives to crops, many companies are working on solutions that would use methods to produce ethanol in big factories out in remote places.  That is a much more viable option for the long term.

A company called BioFields is hoping to change that.  The mexico based alternative fuel company has a factory set up in the Sonora  desert in New Mexico that they hope will produce 1 billion gallons of ethanol by the year 2012.   The 1000 gal capacity transparent bioreactors have five inputs: Algae, sunlight, CO2, nutrients and seawater. Outputs are: ethanol, oxygen and freshwater.

The things not needed for the process, developed by Algenol Biofuels of Baltimore, are arable land, harvesting, large amounts of fossil fuel, fossil based fertilizer or lots of fresh water. Algenol estimates the energy balance, i.e., the ratio of energy out vs. energy in will be greater than 8:1 which compares with 1.35:1 for corn ethanol.

Algenol explains that energy from the sun through photosynthesis produces simple sugars inside algae cells which, concurrently with enzymes, produce ethanol. Extremely fast growing algae renews the sugar supply.The cost is said to be less than for any other U.S. fuel.

The field coming online next year will have an initial output of 100 million gallons, ramping up to the 1 billion they hope to have in four years.