Burning Bio News

Project Apollo, a 25-megawatt biomass power plant to be built in Milwaukee, WI, should be operational in late 2013. Developer Alliance Federated Energy (AFE) plans to use Westinghouse Plasma Corp.’s plasma gasification technology to convert municipal and industrial wastes into syngas for energy.

In response to the technical and financial problems that cellulosic ethanol producers have been facing, the Environmental Protection Agency revised its 2010 mandate for next generation fuels from 100 million gallons to 6.5 million gallons – a 93.5% decrease in production requirements.

Scandals keep pouring from the laboratories. This Wall Street Journal editorial highlights three recent science scandals regarding science and politics. A British case of a medical journal retraction of a landmark article about association between vaccines and autism, the exposure of the Climategate emails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, and guilty plea from the Massachusetts pain researcher that admitted to fabricating research in as many as 21 journal articles. –mj: While this is an editorial, it is a difficult reality of our current times. As I have noted frequently, the future horizons in green economic projections are based on technologies that do not exist commercially yet. While this works for economics, the same numbers do not work for regulatory law.

The California Public Utilities Commission gave its approval Thursday for Pacific Gas and Electric Co. to purchase renewable energy from Mt. Poso Cogeneration Co. LLC. Under the 15-year pact, the Mt. Poso Cogeneration plant will be converted to a facility powered with urban and agricultural wood waste. The plant currently generates electricity from coal, petroleum coke and tire-derived fuel. The proposed 44 megawatt biomass facility will be located in Bakersfield, CA.

The “Jobs Impact of a National Renewable Electricity Standard” study, conducted by Navigant Consulting, Inc., found that a 25% by 2025 national RES would result in 274,000 more renewable energy jobs over no-national RES policy. This additional employment is equivalent to 2.36 million additional job-years by 2025.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will no longer consider corn-based ethanol as damaging to the atmosphere as gasoline in their revised Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) rules. EPA said new data showed that, even after taking into account increased fertilizer and land use, corn-based ethanol can yield significant climate benefits by displacing conventional gasoline or diesel fuel. –mj: While I am not directly part of the corn ethanol industry, EPAs earlier position on ethanol made no sense.

USDA released their Rules on the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP). The Biomass Crop Assistance Program, which began last month with an initial appropriation of $517 million, is aimed at providing incentives for channeling previously unmarketable wood and farm crop wastes, such as corn cobs, into energy production. The article in the attached link has an unusual twist to it. The forest products industry is reportedly worried it will drive their prices up. –mj: The expansive fuel pellet growth is driven by an equally massive demand for fuel pellets, not the opportunity to participate in a government program.

Amidst the worst economic times in the biodiesel industry’s short history, a new refinery, built around the cooperative model, is starting production in Temecula, California. Promethean Biofuels Cooperative Corp., a 1.5 million gallon production facility transesterifying used cooking oils into quality methyl esters, is holding its grand opening ceremony on Feb. 19 at 10 a.m.

California is preparing to introduce the first statewide system of monitoring devices to detect global-warming emissions, installing them on towers throughout the state. The monitoring network, which is expected to grow, will initially focus on pinpointing the sources and concentrations of methane, a potent contributor to climate change. The air resources board has bought seven portable analyzers made by Picarro, a company in Silicon Valley that also supplies the machines to the federal government and academic scientists. A Picarro analyzer costs $50,000. It is about the size of a desktop PC and takes precise, real-time measurements of greenhouse gases.

The distiller’s grain byproduct of ethanol production accounting for up to 25 percent of a typical ethanol plant’s revenues has always been the safety valve for the volatile biofuels industry. This was never more so than in 2009 when ethanol producers spent the first half of the year bathing in red ink. China in particular was a big buyer of DDGs from the U.S., increasing their tonnage from 8,000 in 2008 to more than 400,000 tons of DDGs in 2009 to feed China’s growing cattle population.

While soybean-based biodiesel has been unfairly knocked at times for not being as environmentally friendly as it should be, a new study shows just how green fuel from the bean really is. A new peer-reviewed life cycle profile released by the United Soybean Board (USB) documents multiple energy and environmental benefits of U.S. soybean farming and processing, including biodiesel.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency could be blocked by Congress from developing its own greenhouse gas regulations, under legislation announced Tuesday. The bipartisan-sponsored legislation was introduced by U.S. Reps. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., Collin Peterson, D-Minn., and Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo.

The United States used more gasoline than ever in 2007 and far more than any other country. Gasoline consumption has been down the last two years, in part because of the recession. Even when the economy picks up, three underlying trends mean the U.S. might never use as much gas again:
•New standards for cars and light trucks, including SUVs, will make U.S. vehicles more fuel-efficient.
•The growth in the number of U.S. vehicles, after surging the last 30 years, is likely to plateau. The country now has more than four vehicles for every five people, including children.
•Alternative fuels will grow enough to cover increased fuel needs.
“We’re on a slow but inexorable path away from petroleum. This is a big deal,” said James Williams, an analyst with WTRG Economics, an oil and gas consultancy.

A smart electrical power grid could decrease annual electric energy use and utility sector carbon emissions at least 12 percent by 2030, according to a new report from the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The report, The Smart Grid: An Estimation of the Energy and CO2 Benefits, shows a direct link between the smart grid and carbon emissions. It evaluates how different functions of the smart grid could provide substantial reduction in energy use and carbon emissions - both directly by using new technology and indirectly by making renewable energy and efficiency programs more affordable and potentially larger.

A collaboration led by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) has developed a microbe that can produce an advanced biofuel directly from biomass. Deploying the tools of synthetic biology, the JBEI researchers engineered a strain of Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria to produce biodiesel fuel and other important chemicals derived from fatty acids.

In agriculture, few questions hold as much weight as discussions on planting intentions in the forthcoming year. The intensity only increased with the run-up and crash of the markets in 2007-2008. In 2009, farmers could not get the crops into the fields in the spring and then could not get them out in the fall. Still the corn came. Darrel Good, University of Illinois, sets the forecast of the new year’s crops in context of last year’s carry over. Follow the hyperlink in the first sentence to read the future.

Joule Biotechnologies Inc. is moving ahead with plans for its first pilot plant to use its trademarked Helioculture technology to produce ethanol to produce ethanol from microorganisms in Leander, Texas. The technology developed by Joule uses a highly-engineered photosynthetic organism, sunlight and carbon dioxide (CO2) to produce ethanol and other biobased products. The modular process doesn’t use drinking water or agricultural land. The company has set a commercial production target of 25,000 gallons per acre, per year of ethanol.

Longview Fibre Paper and Packaging Inc. (Washington) announced it will build a $100 million power plant to convert waste wood into renewable energy. Fibre officials said the 65-megawatt biomass plant will burn some 38,000 tons of mill waste, including wood chips, sawdust and hog fuel each month.

A $10.5-million-US research project aimed at mapping the DNA sequence of sunflowers could one day yield a towering new variety for both food and fuel. The wild, drought-resistant Silverleaf is known for its woody stalks, which can grow up to 4.5 metres tall and 10 centimetres in diameter. “Since it’s the closest relative of the cultivated sunflower, it should be perhaps reasonably straightforward to move some of the traits,” said Loren Rieseberg, a University of British Columbia botany professor and leader of the DNA sequencing project.

The 55 million gallon, former Cilion Inc. ethanol plant in Keyes, California, is expected to be in operation again by the end of March. AE Biofuels Inc. of Cupertino is leasing the corn ethanol plant for $250,000 a month and plans to install its proprietary cellulosic ethanol technology so other material, such as wheat straw, corn stalks ad other agricultural waste can be used to make the fuel. Under the terms of the project agreement, AE Biofuels is spending about $1.6 million to repair and restart the plant. In addition, the original contractor of the Keyes plant will contribute $1 million to the plant repair and restart project.