E3 in the News
President's Gas Consumption Plan Has Shawnee Ties
Fox-4, Kansas City
January 24, 2007
By Rob Low
SHAWNEE, KAN. -- President Bush has laid out a blueprint he said will help the U.S. cut gasoline consumption by 20 percent over the next decade and one approach is relying more on alternative fuels such as ethanol.
A Shawnee company is working to make that a reality. The company E3 Biofuels is using cows and corn to fuel cars. Methane from cow manure powers the ethanol plant.
America may not be rich in oil but we have lots of cows, and some believe there's black gold in cow poop.
"First plant is running as we speak, it's coming on line this week and through next week," Dennis Langley CEO of E3 Biofuels said.
The company was starting with a cattlefeed lot in Mead, Neb. Methane gas from cow manure is trapped and then used to power ethanol plants. Alternative fuels for American drivers is something the President praised in his State of the Union speech.
"America is on the verge of technological breakthroughs that will enable us to live our lives less dependent on oil," President Bush said in his speech.
The remark wasn't lost on Langley.
"If we can free ourselves from the oil fields of the Middle East and return to the corn fields of the Midwest we not only help the U.S. economy, we also make ourselves much more secure geopolitically," Langley said.
Using methane gas from cows is cheaper than natural gas and more environmentally friendly than coal.
"It solves two problems, the energy dependence in the U.S. to produce very energy efficient produced ethanol and at the same time solves a solid waste disposal problem created by dairies and feedlots," Langley said.
Actually it solves more than two problems, because Langely said methane from livestock creates one third of all greenhouse gases. But when it's trapped and recycled to produced ethanol, there are no emissions.
A single feed lot will produce a quarter of million tons of manure every year, enough to power a 25 million gallon ethanol plant next door.
E3 Biofuels plans to build 15 plants over the next 5 years and other companies may follow suit.