2010 could be good year on energy front

The new year could see new advances in home-grown energy, locally and nationally.

Earlier this month, a Minnesota-based company, BioPro, announced plans to build a 25-megawatt power plant in the Rock Falls Industrial Park. The plant won’t use coal or natural gas, but corn stalks and leaves, to generate electricity in a revolutionary process invented by BioPro.

Imagine that. The facility is expected to generate enough electricity to power 19,000 to 20,000 homes (equal to about half the housing units in Whiteside and Lee counties combined), and generate 20 to 25 full-time and 40 part-time jobs, from plant residue that otherwise is left in the field after the corn crop is harvested.

Amazing.

The stalks and leaves, known as corn stover, will be in big demand after the BioPro plant opens in 2011. How big? Try 175,000 tons a year, with a fertilizer byproduct available for the farms where the stover originated.

BioPro’s proposed power plant could mark an important step in advancing energy independence.

Likewise, corn-based ethanol production offers home-grown energy to help power vehicles on America’s highways. Dozens of ethanol plants have been built to increase production of the fuel additive. Flex-fuel vehicles can burn a mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline, known as E85. Most other cars can burn a mixture of 10 percent ethanol and 90 percent gasoline, known as E10.

The nation’s farmers and renewable fuel advocates want the percentage of ethanol cleared to run in normal vehicles to rise to 15 percent. This E15 blended fuel would increase the demand for farmers’ corn – good for the rural ag economy – and decrease the use of foreign oil – good for the nation’s balance of trade and energy independence.

The federal EPA, unfortunately, recently delayed a decision to OK the E15 blend immediately. Instead, EPA officials want to wait until mid-2010 when more research has been completed. However, all indications are that E15 would work just fine in vehicles from the 2001 model year and newer.

The EPA should not delay its decision any longer than is absolutely necessary to prove that the E15 blend is what its supporters claim – another tool in the nation’s arsenal in the battle to free itself from unreliable foreign energy sources.