Daniel Englander

The Morning Feedstock: June 5, 2008 June 5, 2008 at 4:42 AM

Agriculture giant Monsanto will develop seeds that promise to double the output of crops like cotton, corn, and soy by 2030. Importantly, the Sustainable Yield Initiative, as the company is calling its latest effort, will also reduce the number of inputs required to grow the crops, such as water and chemical fertilizer, by more than 30 percent. Monsanto’s Chairman and CEO Hugh Grant said the company has worked on this project for more than a year, before the extent of the current global food crisis became apparent, as a response to increases in the price and decreases in the supply of fuel for rural farmers in developing countries. Grant said, “we had an energy crisis before we had a food crisis. One of the key drivers to food prices is fuel prices. It’s shortsighted to sacrifice one for the other right now.” Monsanto has come under criticism in the past for its championing of genetically modified food, which are largely rejected in Europe, and for the patents it holds on certain traditionally grown crops like Basmati rice.

There’s one more acronym to keep track of. Électricité de France and its renewables subsidiary EDF Energies Nouvelles have announced the creation of a joint venture, EDF Energy Renewables, to expand renewables capacity in the UK. Under the JV’s terms, parent company EDF will all the electricity created through EDF Energy Renewables’s projects under extended power purchase agreements. The EDF Group plans to develop 1,000 MW of renewables capacity in the UK by 2020, the majority of which will be come from wind power. EDF currently has 250 MW of renewables capacity under management, while subsidiary EDF Energies Nouvelles has a 2,500 MW portfolio. The creation of EDF Energy Renewables will let the company bring its disparate renewables portfolios under single company control while limiting the number of outside contracts the company would have to purchase otherwise. EDF’s UK renewables expansion comes as the company slogs through an ongoing bidding war for nuclear giant British Energy. On Monday the markets were buzzing after Iberdrola reportedly lodged a 885 pence per share bid for the state power company, blowing away estimates on EDF’s previous bid that many thought hovered around 680 pence per share.

Dow Chemical has partnered with Brazil’s Crystsalsev to produce polyethylene from sugar cane-based ethanol. Polyethylene, which Dow markets as Dowlex, is a hydrocarbon-based plastic that is becoming increasingly expensive to produce because of the high price of oil. Dow has purchased farmland in Brazil sufficient to produce 8 million tons of sugarcane, which will let the company make close to 350,000 tons of Dowlex beginning in 2011. This will be the company’s first plastics-based operation in Brazil. Dow Corning already operates a solar grade metallurgical silicon plant at the company’s Solar Solutions Group division in Brazil. Brazil was also in the news this morning for the announcement that the country’s Sugar Cane Technology Center will begin work on a commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant using sugar cane bagasse as feedstock. The SCTC plans to have the refinery online within three to five years.

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