Life on the Ethanol-Guzzling Prairie

[frigidmagi]

New York Times

[quote]THE quilt of winter brown that covers the high plateau makes this area look particularly depressing on a February afternoon. But the still-life can be deceptive.

Later this year, a Canadian company, Iogen, will announce whether Idaho will get what could be the first large-scale commercial plant in the United States to produce fuel from straw. Not ethanol made from corn, as refineries in more than a hundred mostly small towns are now doing, but ethanol made from the native prairie grass, corn stalks, field waste and wood chips.

That would follow an announcement just last month that a company whose investors include Bill Gates plans to open a corn-based ethanol plant here in Burley — the latest in a boom of biorefineries that are being planted in some of the most depressed areas of the United States.

What is happening here is a vision that many in rural America see as their salvation: high-performance moonshine from amber fields of grain, and a “grass stationâ€