Top 10 Ethanol Producing States Will Produce Nearly 90% of Required Domestic Capacity

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). According to statistical information extracted from Industrialinfo.com’s Ethanol Production Database, the ten states ranked highest in ethanol manufacturing, supply nearly 90% of the country’s ethanol capacity. And it should come as no surprise that nine out of ten of these states are in the Midwest where all the corn is grown.

Now that the historic energy bill has been signed into law requiring a renewable fuels standard of four billion gallons by 2006 and 7.5 billion gallons by 2012, you have to wonder where is all that ethanol going to come from? Well, the industry is already closer to reaching those goals than they know.

Currently, the U.S. ethanol industry has the capacity of producing about 3.9 billion gallons of the renewable fuel annually.

Click on the image at right to view a chart of the top ten states with estimated current operational capacity.

Currently, seventeen other plants are under construction in those states, which will add an additional 936 million gallons to the domestic market by the fall of 2006. Another 42 new projects are under development in the top ten states that are projected to add another 1.6 billion when built. Add up all the numbers, and we are talking about 6.1 billion gallons of ethanol pouring out of the Midwest years before the 2012 estimate of 7.5 billion. That leaves only 1.4 billion to go.

Looking outside the Midwest, where the ethanol market is relatively in its infantcy, an additional 2.4 billion of projected capacity is in the hopper in eleven different states. Ohio is looking to become a major player with 536 million gallons under development followed by Texas (341 million), California (311 million), Oregon (261 million), Montana (240 million) and North Dakota (179 million).

So what are we going to do with an extra billion gallons of ethanol lying around? The renewable fuels standard portion of the energy bill will continue to move the market forward, and as states continue to phase-out the use of MTBE, the market will open up even more. You may need a crystal ball to project just how big the domestic fuel ethanol market might be by 2012.

The race to get new ethanol plants on-line is on, not to mention the expansion activity happening at existing plants. More than likely, only another 50 or so plants will be constructed in the U.S. and capital spending to build out the industry is estimated to be in an excess of $6 billion. If you make your living providing services and equipment to the industrial process industry, the ethanol boon could help generate your company sales dollars with the ongoing build out.

Industrialinfo.com's Ethanol Production Database provides a comprehensive outline of all current development activities in the emerging synthetic fuels market. This database covers 109 ethanol plants currently in operation and 152 plants under development in North America. It also covers eleven operational biodiesel plants and sixteen biodiesel plants underdevelopment.

Industrial Information Resources (IIR) is a Marketing Information Service company that has been doing business for over 22 years. IIR is respected as a leader in providing comprehensive market intelligence pertaining to the industrial processing, heavy manufacturing, and energy-related industries throughout the world.