EnviroFuels ethanol plant: what will be plant's energy source?

There's an ethanol plant slated to be built at Port of Tampa. Announced at least a year and a half ago, the plant would be built by EnviroFuels. While there is a lawsuit challenging the plans, in general I like the theory of burning cleaner fuel in our internal-combustion engines.

The downsides? Well, for one, read the brief article about the lawsuit, linked above. Another potential issue is that the plant is expected to consume 500,000 of water per day from Tampa Bay. Heck, we're already struggling to have enough water in Florida. Here in Tampa area, we get most local water from the Hillsborough River. The desalination plant is entering final testing (after years of problems and legal delay) ...but the projected 25-million gallons per day will be processed from Tampa Bay. Granted, the ethanol plant will only use an additional fraction of that, but this is not an endless supply of water.

Another issue - and the question to which I'm trying to find an answer - is this:
What will be the source for the energy that the ethanol plant will need? Ethanol production consumes energy before we end up with the cleaner-burning ethanol. If the plant is using energy produced from fossil fuels, that may negate some or all of the benefits.

So I went to the EnviroFuels website to research. I couldn't find the answer there, so I went to their contact page, which includes this information:

United States EnviroFuels, LLC
10027 Water Works Lane
Riverview, FL 33569
(813) 425-5478
Email : info@usenvirofuels.com

Excellent. So I sent them an email. Here's the immediate response:

Nice. Publish an email address for contact, but don't accept mail. I also tried calling, but the office was closed. That's to be expected, since this is the weekend, so I'll try on Monday. Their office hours are 8am-6pm, Monday through Friday.

The ideal would be for EnviroFuels to be truly green, and use solar and/or wind for the plant's energy needs. I hope to learn that this is the case (following the green lead of the wind-powered desalination plant in Australia!)

Comments

[Barry in Portland]

It's not nice to brand people based on their former employers (something to which we are sometimes sensitive), but I can't help noticing that Bradley Krohn, president of USEF, spent 12 years doing genetic research on food crops for Monsanto.

I suppose it's possible his work was unrelated to Monsanto's less-than-savory business practices (I'm thinking of the 'gotcha' they've delivered to 3rd-World farmers), so maybe it's all kosher. One wonders.

[adam]

It seems like you have a good deal of time to spend on your issues. How do you juggle your career and everything else?

[Joe Litton]

@Barry: Man, I was totally unaware of Krohn's history. nice.

@Adam: Well, as you can see by my sporadic posts and the time gap sometimes before I reply to comments ...it's a challenge! I typically listen to podcasts of Democracy Now and other news while on the treadmill or driving, try to read the paper a little, use RSS readers to scan blogs and other news sources. But time is definitely in short supply.

Cheers :)

[Jim]

EnviroFuels has several problems: but there is a ethanol plant in Minnesota that use 1 gal of fossel fuel to produce 6 gal of ethanol the highest anywhere. They have the lowest production cost per gal of any plant in the world. I hope they look into this.