POET's Project LIBERTY will generate as much as $37.8 billion in economic activity over 20 years and could employ more than 2,800 people, an independent analysis claims.
A report done by Impact DataSource of Austin, Texas outlines short-term and long-term impacts of various projects receiving grants from the Iowa Power Fund. Project LIBERTY is POET's planned 25 million-gallon-per-year cellulosic ethanol plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa.
The analysis includes three scenarios of low, medium and high long-term impacts from the project and replication of the technology at other Iowa ethanol plants.
– Economic Output: low of $11.8 billion, mid of $24.4 billion, high of $37.8 billion.
– Jobs: low of 861, mid of 1,807, high of 2,846
– Worker Earnings: low of $394 million, mid of $815 million, high of $1.3 billion
The Iowa Power Fund released the full report at a press conference in Des Moines, Iowa Thursday.
About POET
POET, the largest ethanol producer in the world, is a leader in biorefining through its efficient, vertically integrated approach to production. The 23-year-old company has a production capacity of more than 1.7 billion gallons of ethanol and 9 billion pounds of high-protein animal feed annually from 27 production facilities nationwide. POET also operates a pilot-scale cellulosic ethanol plant, which uses corn cobs and light stover as feedstock, and will commercialize the process in Emmetsburg, Iowa.
