DowDuPont ethanol plant’s demise may be linked to RIN policy

In Iowa, there is speculation that a key reason for the failure of DowDuPont’s Nevada cellulosic ethanol plant is that significantly cheaper to produce methane mined from landfills counts for the same RINs as cellulosic ethanol, significantly reducing the demand for the ethanol that would be produced at the 2G plant or the willingness of the market to pay higher prices for it. Potential breakthroughs that could make the technology economically viable such as the one recently announced by POET-DSM may mean that holding out just a bit longer could have kept the plant running. Or maybe not.