Crist endorses building ethanol plant at U.S. Sugar mill being bought for Everglades restoration

Gov. Charlie Crist has endorsed a plan to build an ethanol plant on land that the state is trying to buy from U.S. Sugar for Everglades restoration.

Because he’s concerned about the fate of the 1,800 U.S. Sugar employees who depend on the company to survive, converting that land to ethanol production “is one of the things I’d like to see,” Crist said Wednesday in an interview with the St. Petersburg Times.

Although Crist did not endorse a project by a specific company, an ethanol manufacturer backed by General Motors has already spent several months negotiating with U.S. Sugar to build a plant on its land.

Negotiations with the ethanol company, Coskata, have been on hold while talks about the buyout proceed, said Robert Coker of U.S. Sugar, “but depending on what happens in the next month or so, we’ll probably be sitting back down with them.”

Most ethanol manufacturing plants are built to produce 50 million gallons a year, Coker said. “We were talking about a facility that was substantially larger,” the sugar executive said.

Coskata, an Illinois-based firm, is backed not only by GM but also by Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, who was one of the keynote speakers at Crist's 2007 climate change summit in Miami. The company specializes in turning waste products such as sugar cane leaves into ethanol, and its executives boast that when their demonstration plant in Madison, Penn., opens next year they will be able to produce ethanol for about $1 a gallon.

[AP photo of U.S. Sugar's mill in Clewiston]

--Craig Pittman and Steve Bousquet

Comments

I thought the most of the sugar fields Crist was buying were being turned into a flow-way for the Everglades?

Where will they get the land to grow the crops to make the ethanol?

Doesn't make sense to me?

What happened to the notion of Everglades restoration -- which was Gov. Crist's reason for the buy-out from U.S. Sugar?

[John]

Why doesn't this country wake up and convert all out cars and trucks to natural gas which is both plentiful and clean. As an aside, Iran is converting all their vehicles to natural gas.

[Tom]

Thanks, Chuck, not only have you let us down on insurance, and the lottery, and medical (medicare), but now you give the land away to something that is 70 times more costly to produce than regular gasoline....I think we see where your prioities lie, certainly not with the people of Florida!

Keep on on going, "christ", you'll get away with it for now, but doesn't your conscience bother you, knowing that you are literally hurting many. many families in the state that you profess to "love" so much?????!!!!!

No, I guess it doesn't matter to you---you're well above the "average" citizen, so you don't have to worry about the next paycheck.......

[TJL]

WOW! The guv is on crack! Ethanol / E85 costs much more to produce and is much LESS fuel efficient than gasoline.