Pacific Ethanol Inc. Monday announced that it had launched production at its new Stockton facility.
The project financing included a private-activity bond volume cap allocation from the California Debt Limit Allocation Committee.
“The start-up of our Stockton plant marks the achievement of our goal of 220 million gallons of annual production capacity and dramatically increases the availability of renewable fuels produced in the state of California,” Neil Koehler, Pacific Ethanol’s president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. “As the largest fuel market in the United States, California will benefit from locally produced ethanol and its feed co-products.”
The Sacramento-based company received a $35 million tax-exempt bond volume cap allocation in December, after promising to CDLAC staff it would make an eventual transition from a corn-based ethanol manufacturing process to a process based on lignocellulosic feedstocks, which are based on inedible plant components, viewed by CDLAC as preferable from an environmental and food-supply perspective. Pacific Ethanol later told CDLAC that it only needed a $30 million allocation, which it sold in a private placement.
