Florida Gov. Charlie Crist (R) has endorsed a plan to build an ethanol plant on U.S. Sugar property that the state hopes to buy for an Everglades restoration project.

Crist said he is concerned about the sugar company's 1,800 employees, and using some of the property for ethanol production is "one of the things I'd like to see."

While the governor did not endorse any specific projects or companies, the Illinois-based ethanol producer Coskata has already spent several months negotiating with U.S. Sugar to build a plant next door to the company's Clewiston mill. Coskata is backed by General Motors Co. and by Sun Microsystems co-founder Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist who was one of the keynote speakers at Crist's climate change summit last year in Miami.

William Roe, Coskata's president, said his company hopes to build a $400 million facility next door to the sugar mill that would produce 100 million gallons of fuel annually and would employ at least 75 people.

Critics complain that ethanol tends to consume 3 gallons of water for every gallon of ethanol produced, but Roe said his company's process of squeezing fluid from sugarcane leaves could end up producing extra water for southern Florida (Bousquet/Pittman, St. Petersburg Times, Sept. 10). -- RB