Bumpy Road to Energy Independence Lies Ahead

In every enterprise, there are gainers and losers, and Frank Dooley, a Purdue University agricultural economist who specializes in transportation, foresees potential losers in the global race for ethanol production. According to Dooley, ethanol plants are going up faster than the transportation infrastructure that support them, and this would require dramatic changes in transportation industries to accommodate the expanding ethanol business. One of the biggest losers being considered by Dooley is the rail industry, which he thinks will not be able to replace their outbound corn shipments with outbound ethanol or DDGS (distillers dried grains with solubles).

"The state could be a potential loser if it doesn't monitor changing traffic patterns and roads," Dooley said. "For example, are we going to need to build more interchanges on the interstates? Let's say an ethanol plant pops up. How are we going to get corn off the interstate and over to that plant? The state could have bills coming in that it hadn't anticipated."

The news article can be read at http://news.uns.purdue.edu/UNS/html3month/2007/070110DooleyEthanol.html.