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New England gears up for an ethanol future

01:00 AM EDT on Wednesday, May 3, 2006

BY PETER C.T. ELSWORTH
Journal Staff Writer

While E-85, the motor fuel made from an 85-15 ethanol-gasoline mix, is currently unavailable in New England, plans are afoot to expand storage facilities and establish production plants in the area.

There are already terminals that can handle train shipments of ethanol from the corn-growing regions of the Midwest, including a large one on the Hudson River in Albany, N.Y. Meanwhile, US Development, a Houston-based railcar and storage company, is building two terminals, one in Linden, N.J., and the other in Baltimore, Md.

The company plans to handle about 25 million gallons of ethanol a month at each facility, according to Mike Day, a vice president with US Development. "There's an increased demand from refineries for blending gasoline, and given that ethanol is produced in the Midwest, we need to move it by rail to where the market is," he said.

Nationwide, there are 97 ethanol production facilities in operation, with about 34 additional plants under construction, according to Ron Lamberty, vice president market development at the American Coalition for Ethanol. He said he expects annual production to increase to about 6 billion gallons by the end of 2008.

The nearest production facility to the Northeast is in South Bend, Ind., but this could change soon. Northeast Biofuels, for example, plans to start producing ethanol in 2008 in an old Miller Brewing Plant in Fulton, N.Y. And Empire Biofuels, which is associated with the New York Corn Growers Association, is in the permitting stage for an ethanol plant also in upstate New York.

And Xethanol Corp., a New York-based biotechnology company which owns two ethanol plants in Iowa, has established NewEnglandXethanol in partnership with Westbrook, Conn.-based Global Energy. The company plans to build small ethanol plants across New England using such available biomass as wood chips.

For additional information, check out the following Web sites: http://www.ethanol.org/, http://www.us-dev.com and http://www.xethanol.com.

pelsworth@projo.com / (401) 277-7403