Source: news.bbc.co.uk
UNITED KINGDOM, June 22, 2009: In Hereford, Texas, the Panda Energy Company, which has a series of successful plants across the United States, wanted to use the town’s plentiful supply of manure–courtesy of the hundreds of thousands of cattle that use its massive feed yards–to power the process of extracting ethanol from corn. Hereford’s feed yards would lose their excess waste and the town’s economy would become a renewable energy center.
Today, the plant is only 95% built and it’s never produced a drop of ethanol. Almost all of the employees who were working on the ethanol trials have been laid off.
After a series of problems, the $200m facility is in the bankruptcy courts and is reportedly worth around a tenth of the amount it cost to build.
Panda Energy has told the BBC that, because of the legal situation, it is unable to comment on what went wrong, but it’s clear there have been a number of issues with the plant’s construction.
They range from structural problems with the foundations, to the health problems of the construction workers who contracted a virus — q-fever — which, allegedly, may have originated in local cattle.
Add to that the fact that corn-based ethanol’s economic and environmental credentials have been increasingly called into question in recent years, and the general economic downturn, and it is clear that the company has been battling against the odds.