WASHINGTON — Michigan will get at least 100 new jobs — with the potential for thousands more — as a result of $50 million in federal ethanol research money Michigan State University was awarded Tuesday.
The money puts MSU at the center of a major federal effort to turn common plants into ethanol that could replace gasoline in the nation’s cars and trucks — an effort whose “Holy Grail,” one MSU official said, is a Michigan economy fed by fuel from plants.