'Energy Beet' Power Is Coming To America 238
Hugh Pickens writes writes "Gosia Wonzniacka reports that farmers in Fresno County, California, supported by university experts and a $5 million state grant, are set to start construction of the nation's first commercial-scale bio-refinery to turn beets into biofuel with farmers saying the so-called 'energy beets' can deliver ethanol yields more than twice those of corn per acre because beets have a higher sugar content per ton than corn. 'We're trying to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to shift our transportation fuels to a lower carbon content,' says Robert Weisenmiller. 'The beets have the potential to provide that.' Europe already has more than a dozen such plants, so the bio-refinery would resurrect a crop that has nearly vanished. The birthplace of the sugar beet industry, California once grew over 330,000 acres of the gnarly root vegetable (PDF), with 11 sugar mills processing the beets but as sugar prices collapsed, the mills shut down. So what's the difference between sugar beets and energy beets? To produce table sugar, producers are looking for sucrose, sucrose and more sucrose. Energy beets, on the other hand, contain multiple sugars, meaning sucrose as well as glucose, fructose and other minor sugars, called invert sugars. To create energy beet hybrids, plant breeders select for traits such as high sugar yield, not just sucrose production. America's first commercial energy beet bio-refinery will be capable of producing 40 million gallons of ethanol annually but the bio-refinery will also bring jobs and investment, putting about 80 beet growers and 35,000 acres back into production."
What it needs is a good theme song (Score:5, Funny)
With apologies to the aptly named Go-Gos
See the people driving down the street
Fall in line just waiting for their beet
They don't know where they wanna go
But they're in the fill-up line
They got the beet
They got the beet
Yeah
They got the beet
Re:What it needs is a good theme song (Score:1, Funny)
(And I'll pick it up from there, with apologies to Elon Musk and anyone with the misfortune to see me dance.)
Go to job, drop the kids off at their school,
Bought a Tesla, don't need no fossil fuels,
Won't be charged 'til quarter after twelve,
That's when they get in line...
They got the beet
They got the beet
Yeah!
They got the beet
Takes a lot of beer to make us dance,
Drink enough, it puts us in a trance,
Ethanol, just give it a chance,
That's when we fall in line!
We got the beet
We got the beet
Yeah!
We got the beet!