05/09/06 Wall Street invests in cellulosic ethanol

Farm and Ranch May 9, 2006 Right now, when it comes to ethanol in the United States, corn is king, but there are those who believe the alternative fuel's futures is in cellulosic ethanol which can be made from biomass including wheat straw. Iogen Corporation, a Canadian based company that has plans to build the first American cellulosic ethanol plant in Idaho, recently announced it had received a 30-million dollar investment from Goldman Sachs, a major Wall Street Investment firm. The National Association of Wheat Growers has been working with Iogen and Mark Gaede, Director of Government Affairs for Environmental Policy, says the group is working to make sure federal loan guarantees approved in last years' energy bill for cellulosic ethanol are properly funded. Gaede: "So that they can start putting shovels in the ground by spring of next year to develop the first facility. By the way, they have under contract right now, pre-production contract, about 600-thousand tons of straw in Idaho with our members there, so this is not as far in the future as people think. But we would like to get that first facility up in the spring of 2007." Iogen operates the largest pre-commercial cellulosic ethanol facility in the world in Canada. Also this week Syngas International Corporation said it hopes to lower the cost of North American ethanol production by replacing corn with less expensive cellulose based feed stocks and using a catalytic conversion instead of fermentation. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.