Gazette Daily News Briefing, May 16
This Stephen Schmidt from the Gazette Digital News Desk, and I’m here with your update for Tuesday, May 16.
According to the National Weather Service it will be mostly sunny in the Cedar Rapids area on Tuesday with a high near 80 degrees. On Tuesday night it will be mostly clear, with a low of around 52 degrees.
A Cedar Rapids man, killed Friday in Cedar County when the semi-trailer truck he was driving was hit by a train, has been identified as Todd W. Evans, 47.
An Iowa State Patrol crash report initially stated that two people had died in the crash, but the report has since been updated to say Evans was the only fatality.
The crash happened shortly after 1:30 p.m. in the 120 block of 115th Street near Lisbon. An eastbound Union Pacific freight train hit the driver’s side of the truck as it attempted to cross the tracks, the report states.
Lisbon/Mount Vernon Police, Fire and Ambulance assisted at the scene, as did the Mechanicsville Fire Department and Iowa Department of Natural Resources.
The rural crossing — which is positioned on a gentle curve in the track — does not have crossing gates or warning lights.
Honeywell and Iowa-based Summit Agricultural are partnering to build the world's largest plant making ethanol-based aviation fuel — a project that is likely to become a $1 billion facility and expected to open in 2025.
The plant eventually will produce enough jet fuel to power thousands of flights per year, according to Summit Agricultural. The facility will be located on the U.S. Gulf Coast and use Honeywell's technology to transform ethanol into sustainable aviation fuel, known as SAF, the companies said Monday.
The global aviation market demands more than 100 billion gallons of jet fuel annually, with Summit estimating that figure will double in the next 20 years.
At the same time, airlines across the globe are coming under increasing pressure to decrease their carbon dioxide emissions. The Biden administration has announced a goal for SAF to meet 100 percent of aviation fuel demand by 2050. But annual production in the United States was just 15 million gallons in 2022.
Monday’s announcement marks one of many steps private companies and governments have taken recently to bolster the market for the corn-based biofuel, which the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association said in 2021 accounted for over $5 billion of Iowa GDP.
