According to a report from CNET.com, a US technology website, the U.S. government recently provided nearly 650 million U.S. dollar loan guarantees to four biofuel companies to help build factories to extract fuel from animal fats, orange peel, and garbage.
The United States uses nearly 40% of the corn crop to produce ethanol each year, which raises the price of corn-based food, which has attracted the attention of environmentalists and food organizations. To reduce the dependence of ethanol production on corn, the Ministry of Agriculture provided a $250 million loan to Koscate Corporation in Alabama to finance the construction of a plant that uses ethanol to produce ethanol. According to the U.S. industry organization Renewable Fuels Association, it is the largest amount of loan guarantees provided by the U.S. government to biofuel producers.
The extraction of fuel oil from corn and soybeans is not competitive at the commercial level. The U.S. Department of Energy and Valero Energy and Turing International have jointly invested US$241 million to build a renewable diesel plant in Louisiana, which uses animal fats, cooked oils, and other oil wastes to extract diesel. It is estimated that the project will create 700 jobs.
Once the company defaults on the loan, the federal government will pay the portion of the private loan. US Department of Energy loan planners said at the Wells Clean Energy Technology Investment Summit in California that the US Department of Energy is now facing new biofuel production challenges. To some extent, this is because financiers do not know how to operate such products in the market. In addition, the government also issued loans to finance the solar industry. The U.S. Department of Energy provided US$967 million in loan assistance to NRG Solar Energy in Arizona to help the world’s largest solar company use photovoltaic panels.