Energy & Science
Green Fuel Plants Are Shutting Down and Some May Never Come Back
- Some U.S. plants will run out of money, Green Plains CEO says
- Virus is leaving roads empty from the Americas to Asia
A tanker truck sits outside an ethanol biorefinery in Iowa in 2019.
Photographer: Daniel Acker/BloombergThis article is for subscribers only.
The coronavirus and cheap oil are hitting the fuel business so hard that ethanol plants are shutting down. Some may never come back.
The entire biofuel industry is facing a reckoning. Long before the pandemic emptied roads and exacerbated an oil price war, producers were battling chronic oversupply and trade upheaval. Now slumping demand and prices mean smaller producers and those with heavy debt loads will struggle to ride out the losses.