Alternative Energy / Biofuels

• Biorefineries have big role in fight against climate change – WEF

  Biorefineries – facilities that convert biomass into fuel, energy, chemicals and materials – have a major role to play in combating climate change, says a World Economic Forum (WEF) report. Professor David King, author of The Future of Industrial Biorefineries report, says “the growth of the bio-based economy could create significant economic growth and job creation opportunities, particularly in rural areas … and in advanced manufacturing.” The report estimates that a ‘biomass value chain’ could create potential revenues by 2030 of $15 billion for agricultural inputs; $89 billion for biomass production; $30 billion for biomass trading; $10 billion for biorefining…

• Ethanol: The latest Incarnation of Snake Oil

  You may never have never heard of Patricia Woertz, or Archer Daniels Midland. Woertz is the CEO of ADM, America’s 27th largest company, and it’s the largest company headed by a female in the US. The reason you ought to care is that Woertz and ADM have the power to make your life more expensive – much more expensive. And they have been aggressively exercising that power for over 30 years. ADM is the largest primary food processor in the country – it turns corn and soybeans (among other products) into a host of consumer products: corn flakes, cornstarch, corn…

• Ethanol Industry Produces a Top Ten Enemies List

  Richard Nixon had an enemies list. And now, so, too, do the corn ethanol scammers. Last week, Tom Waterman, the editor and publisher of The Ethanol Monitor, published a list of the top ten enemies of ethanol. Here’s the list: #10: Business Week/Ed Wallace (Bloomberg) #9: GRIST #8: “Big Oil” #7: Grocery Manufacturers Association #6: David Pimentel #5: Robert Rapier #4: Tim Searchinger #3: Wall Street Journal (editorial board) #2: California Air Resources Board #1: Time Magazine (Michael Grunwald) Of course, Waterman can write whatever he likes, but the fact that the ethanol boosters would produce a list of enemies…

• Next Generation Biofuels: 5 Near-Term Challenges

  The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has just issued a report detailing the outlook and challenges of next generation biofuels. I provided some input during the drafting of the report, which hopefully was of some use. Here I select five pessimistic projections from the report. In the next essay I will select five optimistic projections.The report is: Next-Generation Biofuels: Near-Term Challenges and Implications for AgricultureHere are five findings from the report that promise to strongly influence the country’s direction on next generation fuels. 1. Production and Capital Costs “Estimated production and capital costs for next-generation biofuel production are significantly higher…

• Ethanol Growing in Popularity Due to Gulf Oil Spill

  The implications for the oil industry from the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil spill are already taking shape, with the administration calling for a Challenger-style investigation and rewriting the playbook for oil & gas leasing and the issuance of safety and environmental permits for offshore drilling. It's less clear how the spill might affect other aspects of energy, beyond boosting the public's interest in pursuing clean energy options. However, it would be ironic if a problem perceived to have arisen because of a "cozy relationship" between oil companies and regulators resulted in an even cozier relationship between the government and…

• Biomass Energy Plantations "Worsen Climate Change" - NGO

  The bioenergy industry has defended the use of forest plantations to create fuel for power plants, following claims by NGO Biofuelwatch that expanding wood biomass production to meet EU renewable energy targets will make climate change worse, not better. Deepak Rughani, co-director of the NGO, told Environmental Finance: “As we risk triggering irreversible climate feedbacks in the next 10 years, the least safe way forward is to licence the conversion of stable carbon in living biomass into atmospheric carbon. Felling one 50-year-old tree would require a real-time replacement with 100,000 one-year old saplings to be carbon neutral. Ignoring this is…

• 5 Issues with Algae Fuels

  Here are 5 issues with Algae fuels that are covered in my new book on jatropha and algae as fuel sources. 1. The present cost of algae production from open ponds is too high to make fuel production economically viable. There are a number of commercial algae operations around the world today, and costs per ton are well known in the U.S. It costs at least $5,000 to produce 1 ton of algae. If you optimistically presume that there is 30% oil embedded in that ton, then that translates into around $50 per gallon of oil, before it has been…

• Turning Biomass into Crude Oil

  University of Michigan professors are heating and squishing algae in a pressure-cooker that fast-forwards the crude oil making process from millennia to just minutes.  It doesn’t have to be algae it could be any wet biomass. Phillip Savage, an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the U-M Department of Chemical Engineering is principal investigator on the $2-million National Science Foundation grant that supports the project.  The grant is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This method is the raw and brutal way to take biomass to oil products.  Savage says, “We’re trying to do what nature does when it…

• Rising Gas Prices, Falling Corn Prices Could Mean Comeback for Ethanol

  Amid rising gasoline prices and falling corn prices, ethanol may be poised for a comeback of sorts, even if only a temporary one. Even though conventional wisdom is that crude has to reach about $100 a barrel before ethanol is economical, compared to current prices of about $80 a barrel, ample supplies of ethanol have widened the price differential between gasoline and ethanol to more than 60 cents a gallon. When combined with the 45-cent-a-gallon excise tax credit for blending ethanol into gasoline, that creates a differential well above $1 a gallon, and has boosted recent blending volumes by some…

• The Truth About Biofuels!

  Just a few decades ago, “biofuels” were all the rage in the media, as many well respected “power pundits’ predicted that they would eventually prove to be a leading “vanguard” movement amongst a variety of well touted alternate energy options. Then recently, over the past 2 years, as the prices of crude oil began to rise to historically elevated levels and even the most dedicated “oil optimists” began to worry when or if the ascent would top off , ‘biofuels” where once again purported to be our “Super Saviors” that would eventually satisfy a great deal of our energy needs. Now…