Private and public millions continue to be thrown at developing a technology which has already been developed. The real point is that the technology needs to be further tweaked to make it profitable – if that is possible. If one performs due diligence on feedstock cost, proper plant cost, pollution abatement, operating costs, etc. it is essentially impossible to develop a scenario where one could operate at a profit.

Lets move on to Generation 1.5 – the use of traditional starch fermentation technology to new feedstocks like barley, wheat, e3nergy sweet potato, sweet sorghum, and numerous others. The plant sites have to be in the right places with local advantages like utilizing waste heat from a power plant and many other special advantages to allow the next generation of ethanol plants to better ride out the inevitable up and down nature of commodity feedstock prices.