Kjellander Caveat to Bio-Mass

 I don’t think anybody in Idaho disagrees with this…we’d like to be much less dependent on foreign oil.  Truth is we can be with alternate fuels like ethanol. But then there’s the question of ethanol made from corn which drives up input costs to farmers and food costs to consumers. But along comes bio-mass based ethanol and that’s made out of dead trees, corn cobs and weeds. Why doesn’t that concept take off like a rocket ship? Here’s Idaho Energy Director Paul Kjellander: “I think the key to all of this is gonna’ depend on the price of gas at the pumps. When it dropped down to below $2 earlier last fall, a lot of these projects went under water. Now that we’re seeing the price come back, as that price continues to rise, some of these ethanol plants may start producing again and bring some renewed interest into ethanol production. The key is to create something that’s sustainable, something that can withstand the volatility of the transportation fuel market as we see it today. I’m hopeful that as the technology continues to advance, especially with forest bio-mass for the production of ethanol, that we can see methods and technology that would allow those prices to become a little more stable so that we don’t have to worry about shutting plants down when the price of gasoline and diesel goes through its volatile stages.”