Environmental News For The Week Ending 09 May 2019
This is a collection of interesting news articles about the environment and related topics published last week. This is usually a Tuesday evening regular post at
GEI (but can be posted at other times).
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Note: Because of the high volume of news regarding the coronavirus outbreak, that news has been published separately:
Major coronavirus metrics continue to head lower in the US, and now also globally. New cases in the US during the week ending May 8th were down 18.6% from new cases during the week ending May 1st, and are now down 83.3% from the January peak; this week also saw fewer new cases than any week since September. This week s US deaths attributed to Covid were 6.8% lower than the prior week s, and down 80.5% from the January high; US Covid deaths are now at the lowest rate since since the second week of July.
by Tim McDonnell (Quartz) … A year later, American drivers are back at the gas pump, and ethanol plants are back online. ADM re-opened its plants in early April; POET’s plants re-opened in August 2020 but only hit full production capacity in April. Then, just as ethanol’s road ahead was beginning to look clear, another unanticipated obstacle emerged: the spot price of its key ingredient corn surged to its highest levels in a decade in May.
Between April 1 and May 4, the price of corn jumped 28% to $7.30 per bushel, the biggest monthly gain in a decade. The resurgence of ethanol refining is only part of the reason (30%-40% of US corn ends up as ethanol). An even bigger reason is that corn imports by China are now hitting record highs as the country’s economy recovers from the pandemic.
May 6, 2021
In late April, 2020, as the pandemic descended on the US, demand for gasoline crashed to historic lows. Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the agricultural commodities giant, decided to idle two of the country’s biggest plants producing corn-based ethanol mixed into oil-based fuels to reduce their carbon intensity. ADM’s chief biofuels rival, POET Inc., also shut down several plants. Overall, the bio-fuel accounts for about 10% of every gallon of gas pumped in the US.
A year later, American drivers are back at the gas pump, and ethanol plants are back online. ADM re-opened its plants in early April; POET’s plants re-opened in August 2020 but only hit full production capacity in April. Then, just as ethanol’s road ahead was beginning to look clear, another unanticipated obstacle emerged: the spot price of its key ingredient corn surged to its highest levels in a decade in May.