Emmetsburg, Iowa — The “Project Liberty” plant in Emmetsburg, an ethanol plant designed to make fuel from corn cobs and stalks rather than kernels, has closed.
Iowa State University agronomist Emily Heaton says corn stover can easily be converted into cellulosic ethanol, the hard part is competing with the price of petroleum.
(As above) “It’s the same story of the plant in Nevada that DuPont closed and now unfortunately POET’s Project Liberty is closing and that is a real loss for Iowa,” she says. “Those were two, ground-breaking, first-in-the-nation cellulosic ethanol plants that simply couldn’t compete with the low price of oil that we’ve had for the last few years.”
DuPont closed its cellulosic ethanol plant in Nevada in 2017. POET shut down production at the Emmetsburg plant about a year ago and took steps to lay off its remaining employees this summer. The ethanol plants still operating in Iowa use corn kernels to make the fuel. Heaton’s research at Iowa State focuses on using perennial crops.
(As above) “The idea was that we would get started to using corn stover to make cellulosic ethanol,” she says, “but then switch to using these high-yielding perennial crops, like switchgrass, to make ethanol.”
Heaton says switchgrass and other perennials that can used to produce ethanol have the side benefit of holding valuable Iowa soil in place and improving water quality.
(As above) “Really the opportunities that cellulosic ethanol presents for Iowa are huge,” Heaton says, “which is why the loss of these first generation corn stover plants is so real for the state.”
More than two-thousand people — including the King of the Netherlands — attended the grand opening of the ethanol plant in Emmetsburg in 2014. The plant was a joint venture of a Dutch company and POET, an ethanol company based in South Dakota, with an ethanol plant located at Ashton. The State of Iowa provided 20 million dollars for job training and construction costs. The U.S. Department of Energy provided 100 million dollars worth of grants to build the plant.
