There’s a quiet race going on to be the first in the U.S. to turn the country’s waste and biomass into next-generation ethanol at a large scale; as companies make progress it’s getting louder. Ethanol producer Verenium said today it has officially opened a demonstration facility in Jennings, Louisiana, which will produce 1.4 million-gallons-per-year of cellulosic ethanol. The company says their demo plant is now in the commissioning phase (the final testing and evaluation phase) and the company is on track to start construction of a 30 million gallon-per-year commercial plant “in the middle of next year”.
Verenium says the opening of their cellulosic demo plant is “a first for the U.S.” and its commercial plant will be “the first of its kind,” located in the southeastern United States. The company is publicly traded on the Nasdaq, and its stock rose slightly this morning to $2.40. Last time we looked at Verenium’s stock it had dropped 12 percent in February on its weak earnings: for the quarter ended Dec. 31, Verenium posted a loss of $21.6 million, compared with $6.1 million, for the same period a year earlier. Read More
Verenium Opens Cellulosic Ethanol Demo Plant
-
Verenium Opens Cellulosic Ethanol Demo Plant
By Katie Fehrenbacher
Earth2Tech, 5/28/08
Straight to the Source