Ethanol Boom bound for California

Although ethanol used to only be considered in the context of Presidential campaigns (Iowa grows corn), the alt-fuel is getting a second look in the Golden State.

California has lagged in the national ethanol boom, but that is changing in a big way. If cars and trucks that can run largely on ethanol get a toehold in the state, advocates say, the sky's the limit for the market of the fuel additive.

"Ethanol production looks really, really bright in California,'' said Tom Koehler, vice president of Fresno-based Pacific Ethanol Inc., a publicly traded company that's nearing completion on a 35 million-gallon-a-year corn-based ethanol plant in Madera in the Central Valley.

The new plant will more than double the state's existing output. Three plants with a capacity of 33.5 million gallons a year are producing ethanol from corn or from food and beverage waste material, but that's a drop in the bucket of the 900 million gallons used in California annually, according to state Energy Commission data.