Mendota Bioenergy revitalizes California sugar beet industry

In California, the sugar beet industry may have a future as ethanol producers Mendota Bioenergy looks into the possibility of retrofitting sugar mills to produce ethanol with a $5M grant from the California Energy Commission. This procedure has been done in Europe several times, but not yet in the United States. California sugar beet farms, and in turn the state’s sugar mills, have suffered from severe closures and underproduction in the past few years.

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