And Chicago’s WBEZ reported this week that Indiana Ethanol Power is now ready to go with its plan. The technology, developed by James Titmas at GeneSyst, would produce 20 million gallons of fuel-grade ethanol and other products each year.

According to Biofuels Digest, several cities, including New York, NY and Bridgeton, NJ, are on the verge of implementing such plants. Diverting municipal waste from landfills to make fuel-grade ethanol sounds like a win-win for everyone. And locating ethanol refineries near cities makes sense, because that’s where the mounds of garbage are. So what’s the holdup in Indiana? According to Indiana Ethanol Power’s Zig Resiak:

“Municipalities are very comfortable with putting it in the back of a truck and letting it go into a landfill. They don’t think about it twice. But for us to come in and say we’re going to take it cheaper and save you millions of dollars a year on your tipping fee, that’s different and that’s kind of scary, and they want to take a good, strong look at that.”

Sounds like a leadership vacuum. We hope that Indiana and Illinois (and Chicago and Gary) can get it together and follow the example of Edmonton, CA which just signed an agreement to begin production. The plant will initially produce 36 million litres of biofuels per year and reduce Alberta’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by more than 6 million tons over the next 25 years, which is the equivalent of removing 12,000 cars from the road.

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Image courtesy of user Gengiskanhg at Wikimedia Commons.