By MIKE PERKINS, Huntington Herald-Press Editor
The president of NuFuels says the bioenergy facility the company plans for Huntington will use "different technologies" to produce fuel in a unique way.
Joe Bellavance told an Indianapolis biofuels roundtable recently that the company will refine ethanol and biodiesel fuels in Huntington in a way "that has not been done before that we're aware of domestically, and perhaps not even internationally."
A video clip of Bellavance's remark, which appeared Wednesday on the Web site insideindianabusiness.com, did not contain any details about what would make the NuFuels plant different from other biofuels projects.
Bellavance's remarks came at a discussion hosted by Ice Miller, a Indianapolis law and business consulting firm.
NuFuels announced last May that it is considering Huntington for a complex that would produce ethanol and biodiesel and house a research and development facility. In March, a company owned by a NuFuels partner, Fort Wayne businessman Jerry Henry, bought 114 acres in and adjacent to Park 24 industrial park on U.S.-24 at Thurman Poe Way. At that time, Bellavance said NuFuels plans to invest $192 million in a facility that would create 81 jobs.
The company has been tight-lipped with details on the plant while opponents of the project have complained that a fuels plant could create health, environmental, and infrastructure problems and harm nearby property values.
In the roundtable video, Bellavance says NuFuels' plan "employs a number of different technologies" at the proposed plant, which he said would help "answer (Gov. Mitch Daniels') call to make Indiana the Texas of biofuels."
Bellavance said a major concern now is financing for the plant and hinted that high prices prices for raw materials could be making biofuels investors leery.
He said he hopes the market, "will take a deep breath and realize that feedstock prices we're seeing right now are not going to be around forever."
Bellavance also said he believes federal and state subsidies for biofuels should continue.
"People have heard me pontificate that I'll be happy to surrender those subsidies for biofuels when the oil industry surrenders its subsidies for national defense in the Middle East," he said.