Burning Bio News

Through EPA’s Green Power Partnership, a number of industry, university and municipality green power generators and users are coordinated. Organizations can meet EPA purchase requirements using any combination of three different product options (1) Renewable Energy Certificates, (2) On-site generation, and (3) Utility green power products. The link here will take you to EPA’s Green Power, Top 20 On-site Generators. While this list is impressive, I do not think it is everyone. If you are not registered in the program, they are not aware of the contribution. The top entities on this list are the cities of Los Angeles and San Jose, CA who are both supplying over 50% of their power from green sources. It is interesting to click around on the other categories on this site (more than just the on-site generators).

Eastern Kentucky University (EKY) is seeking the KY Agriculture Development Board to support its research on algae as an alternative fuel. EKU, in partnership with General Atomics in California, is seeking $220,000 from the ag board. The concept of our biofuels project is to take biomass — dedicated crops like switchgrass and biomass waste from crop residue and the wood industry — and digest the sugars to be used to feed heterotrophic algae. Heterotrophic algae is grown without sunlight. The objective is to produce algae for oil, which can then be used for conversion into biodiesel or even JP8 Jet Fuel. – mj: heterotrophic algae… Most photosynthesizing algae has a constraint on how much solar energy it can absorb. This wouldn’t constrain heterotrophs.

Aiming to extend the life of the its landfill, Dane County is preparing to build a $4 million transfer station to recycle construction waste. The transfer station would be at the landfill and divert construction material such as concrete and wood to recycling centers in other areas. Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk said that in addition to helping keep the landfill open at least another 10 years, the station will allow more organic municipal waste to enter the landfill. Unlike construction material, organic waste produces energy-rich methane, which the county harnesses to sell to Madison Gas & Electric for about $3 million a year. – mj: I agree that taking the C & D material out of the landfill is a good idea, but using biomass to feed a landfill generator is pretty short sighted. Landfill power plants are excellent uses for existing landfill masses, but there are more efficient conversion technologies the landfills to make power from new materials.

In February 2008, the Gundersen Lutheran Hospital, in La Crosse, WI set a goal to reduce energy consumption 20 percent by 2009 and to generate 100 percent of its electricity using renewable energy by 2014. The largest health care provider in its area, Gundersen Lutheran has an energy bill of about $6 million a year and an operating margin of 4 percent. Its energy costs have been increasing at a clip of about $350,000 a year. To Jerry Arndt, Senior Vice President of Business Services, going for 100 percent energy self-reliance is a no-brainer. “In order to get $6 million off the bottom line, it would take $150 million in revenue growth at 4 percent to get achieve the same bottom line,”

UC San Diego is getting $11 million in incentives from California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program for the installation of an innovative fuel cell energy generation and storage system on the La Jolla campus. The school says the money is the largest amount ever awarded by the California Public Utilities Commission for a renewable energy project and is the nation’s first advanced energy storage project to receive state incentive funds.

Nearly 300 people came to the 2009 Missouri Dairy Grazing Conference, July 8-10, to hear researchers and farmers tell the advantages of management-intensive grazing. Charles Fletcher of Purdy, Mo., an early adopter of dairy grazing, said grazing has kept him in the dairy business. Fletcher doubled and then redoubled the size of his milking herd as he improved his Ozarks pastures and refined his grazing methods. – mj: My PhD research was on rotational grazing of beef in Missouri. I was stunned that increasing management intensity improved output, forage species diversity, water quality, and revenue. Efficienty, economics, and the environment are all directly related.

The epidemiological study that came out two years ago and declared that there was “convincing” evidence to link consuming red meat with cancer, specifically colorectal cancer, was flawed, and now, the author of the report has admitted it and has promised to write a letter to the U.S. Department of Agriculture saying so. The study, an intense literature review of previous studies — a study of studies — was conducted by the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) and American Institute of Cancer Research (AICR) and recommended that the consumption of red meat (beef, pork, lamb) and processed meats should be limited to 18 oz. per week due to the cancer link. The National Cattlemans Beef Association commissioned Dr. Dominik D. Alexander, in a letter to the co-executive secretary of USDA’s advisory committee, noted that the “totality” of available epidemiological evidence does not support “a causal association” between consumption of red meat and cancer, including colorectal cancer. He said findings from cohort studies, i.e., other studies like WCRF/AICR’s, have shown “weak” associations that are not statistically significant, that vary by anatomic sites within the colorectum and by gender and that are subject to diverse definitions of categories of meat and measures of intake. – mj: Last week, three NJ residents filed a class action lawsuit against US hot dog makers for selling carcinogens without a label like cigarettes — oops. It is important to understand the boundaries/significance of numbers, especially when it comes to law.

A Purdue University study has found carbon in land applied swine manure is not polluting nearby water. Manure carbon is staying out of nearby streams after manure is applied as a fertilizer to fields that are underlaid by drainage tiles. The study will next look at nitrogen loss at this specific study site.

Dairy Farmer, Dave Kyle, has added value to his dairy manure by composting it with a neighboring Landscape and Design company in Lafayette County, WI. They are able to sell the dairy manure compost through the landscaping operation. They plan to add a bagging plant for retail sales in the future.

New York State has been selected to host a Dairy Power Project, promoting methane digester use on dairy farms as a means of creating electricity. The pilot project is coordinated by the Innovation Center for U.S. Dairy. This is an industry funded effort to reduce the dairy industry carbon footprint. Also see: (Read a .pdf summary of the Dairy Power Project.)

Volume 3, Issue Number 4 of Burning Bio News has been posted on www.biomassrules.com. This issue includes a biopolicy article clarifying the boundaries between the law and science regarding applied mathematics. It seems a legal mandate for a number allows the fundamental principles of mathematics to be ignored or relaxed. Also in this issue, algae projects are updated, energy values for 12 months of ethanol/gasoline energy values are compared, and recently announced modular conversion technologies are reviewed.

Biofuels sustainability can be addressed by considering the agricultural, energy and environmental sectors as one large system, according to ‘Biofuels, Land and Water: A Systems Approach to Sustainability,’ a recent study by researchers at the Argonne National Laboratory. A problem for one sector could be a resource for another. The study found that using marginal land and degraded water resources in Nebraska can increase biomass feedstock production to meet 22 percent of the state’s energy requirements, compared with the current 2 percent. Marginal land resources include riparian and roadway buffer strips, brownfield sites and marginal agricultural land. Degraded water resources used in the study include nitrate-contaminated groundwater and wastewater. – mj: If a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) is a 2-dimensional cradle to grave analysis, a systems approach is a 3-dimensional analysis. A systems approach allows far more policy boundaries to be crossed than an LCA analysis. Unfortunately, the currency in carbon policy analysis is the more limiting LCA.

The Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability, Infrastructure Security and Energy Restoration have submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for clearance, a proposal for collection of information under the provisions of the Paper Work Reduction Act of 1995. The proposed collection will assist in identifying systemic problems and dependency issues impacting the energy sector’s system-wide reliability, survivability and resiliency. Comments regarding this collection must be received on or before August 21, 2009.

A new tool to help biodiesel producers analyze biodiesel economics is available online at The Ag Marketing Resource Center. Don Hofstrand and Bob Wisner, Iowa State University agricultural economists, have developed a set of spreadsheets that are updated monthly. The newest is a biodiesel profitability spreadsheets launched in June. The Biodiesel Profitability Chart is available for downloading at www.agmrc.org, under the renewable energy heading for biodiesel.

It is a happy time for the community of Welcome, Minnesota as their corn ethanol plant is finally producing ethanol. The plant has been idle for more than a year due to VeraSun Energy’s bankruptcy. The halt in bringing the plant online caused the community to feel a significant economic loss. The plant was one of seven purchased by Valero Energy this past March.

A newly discovered gene may be the key to producing fuel ethanol more efficiently from trees, and the University of Florida researchers who identified it have received a prestigious federal grant ($643.000) to investigate further. Eventually, they will create genetically engineered trees that overexpress or underexpress the gene, to study resulting changes in wood composition and biomass growth.

Virent Energy Systems, Madison WI, is commercializing a biomass to gasoline technology. Virent calls their process ‘bioforming.’ Sugar water goes in and goes through a series of fixed-bed catalytic reactors, which break down the molecules of sugar and react them over the catalyst so that they recombine. It’s a self-sustaining, continuous reaction — gasoline from sugar water with a catalytic reaction process that is really unique chemistry. So far, the company has raised $70 million and boasts investors, including Honda (HMC) and Cargill. It also has a collaborative partnership deal with oil giant Shell (RDSA).

Xenia Rural Water District (Bouton, IA) is facing financial difficulties that may cause user rates to rise 60 percent. One of the challenges was extending service to a an ethanol plant in Menlo, IA. The issue is not a lack of water, but managing, among other cost overruns an additional $3.5 million cost that needed to be born by the water district.

Aquaculture producers who suffered losses associated with high feed costs in 2008 can apply to the Idaho State Department of Agriculture for stimulus money under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Recovery Act provided $50 million for a 2008 Aquaculture Grant Program. Idaho’s share is a little over $1.25 million. The funding comes with a $100,000 cap per producer. – mj: This is not directly related to biofuels, but I still bare some scars from shepherding US aquaculture issues for about 10 years. Not unlike bioenergy, to be successful in aquaculture one needed a passion that transcended some pretty goofy federal and state laws and regulations.

Discussions are underway between Algenol and the local leadership of Lee County, FL to site a 500 acre algae farm. At their reported rate of conversion, 6,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year, that will produce about 3 million gallons of ethanol per year. Algenol recently announced a 24 acre facility in Freeport, TX with Dow Chemical. They are also working on a 180,000 acre facility in the Sonora desert of Mexico that is expected to yield a billion gallons of fuel per year. Algenol incorporates CO2 and wastewater remediation into their systems.