Burning Bio News

University of Florida officials held a groundbreaking Monday for the pilot plant at the site of the Buckeye Technologies pulp mill in Taylor County. The plant will test a process that uses genetically engineered E. coli bacteria to convert wood and crops into ethanol.

New renewable fuel standards could lead to more than $13 billion increase in net farm income, according to a new study by researchers at RTI International and Texas A & M University. The study, “RFS2 Final Rule Life Cycle Analysis Supplemental Materials,” funded by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, analyzed the economic impacts of new EPA renewable fuels standards (RFS). – mj: The press release also mentioned and increase in food prices by about $10 per person annually by 2022. Inflation will increase food prices more than that in the next 12 years. Looks more like a news ‘grabber’ than a useful finding.

S4 Energy Solutions LLC, a joint venture of Waste Management and InEnTec, has announced plans to develop a plasma gasification facility at the Columbia Ridge Landfill in Arlington, OR. Waste Management owns the landfill. The facility will convert waste materials into a synthetic gas that can then be converted into transportation fuels such as ethanol and diesel. The gas also can be used as a substitute for natural gas in heating or electricity generation.

A large number of advanced biofuel industry members are urging Congress to grant an investment tax credit to advanced biofuel producers in order to help overcome financial barriers associated with the timely development of commercial-scale projects. Advanced biofuel producers are currently eligible for a federal production tax credit of 30 percent, but the incentive is unused because there are no operating commercial-scale facilities.

The Board of Trustees for Southern Illinois University approved a request for a $4.7 million contribution to upgrade the National Corn-to-Ethanol Research Center located near Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. The money will be used for a corn fractionation system.

With the uncertainty of how future United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations might affect industrial boiler emissions, Georgia Power has decided to delay the conversion of coal-fueled Plant Mitchell in Albany, Georgia to biomass until the EPA rules are better defined in April 2010.

New York Gov. David Paterson says the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money will support 118 energy conservation projects. Local governments, public schools, colleges, hospitals and others across New York will get help conserving energy and cutting costs thanks to $40 million in stimulus funds.

UOP, a Honeywell company, announced that it has been awarded a $1.5 million cooperative agreement from the U.S. Department of Energy for a project to demonstrate technology to capture carbon dioxide and produce algae for use in biofuel and energy production. A demonstration system will capture carbon dioxide from exhaust stacks at Honeywell’s manufacturing facility in Hopewell, VA, and deliver the captured CO2 to a cultivation system for algae. Algal oil can then be extracted from the algae for conversion to biofuels, and the algae residual can be converted to pyrolysis oil, which can be burned to generate renewable electricity.

Range Fuels, Inc., announced that it had received a loan note guarantee from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and closed its related $80 million bond issuance. The proceeds from the $80 million bond will be used to partially finance the first two phases of construction of Range Fuels’ first commercial cellulosic biofuels plant using renewable and sustainable supplies of non-food biomass near Soperton, Georgia.

James Dumesic, a chemical engineer at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, has found catalysts that will convert gamma-valerolactone (GVL) extremely efficiently to liquid hydrocarbons. The hydrocarbons can be used directly in petrol (gasoline) or jet fuel – no ethanol-style ‘blending’ required. GVL itself is created from two acids which are formed when other acids are used to break down cellulose into sugars.

GreenShift Corporation has simultaneously announced that it has filed for its third patent on its corn-oil extraction technologies while at the same time, commencing legal action against Big River Resources Galva, Big River Resources West Burlington and Cardinal Ethanol for infringing on GreenShift’s U.S. patent covering its corn oil extraction technology.

Electricity customers will have to cough up 1 percent more to pay for a new plant that is designed to help lessen Hawaii’s dependency on imported fuel. The state Public Utilities Commission approved the increase Saturday, and it became effective that day, Hawaiian Electric Co. said. With the increase, a typical customer using 600 kilowatt-hours a month will see a $1.34 increase on a total bill of $149.57. – mj: This rate is 24.9 cents/kWh. The average for the US is 10 cents/kWh.

The $90 million plant that produces biodiesel from soybeans was effectively taken over by the Missouri Department of Agriculture, which suspended Prairie Pride’s grain dealer license. That action was announced Wednesday by the state agency. The department was named trustee of the Prairie Pride plant in an action approved Wednesday in Vernon County Circuit Court. More than 1,000 area farmer-investors committed at least $20,000 each to the plant’s construction during 100 equity-drive meetings held around the region several years ago.

Bloom Energy launched its 100,000 kW fuel cell last week which sells for $700,000 to $800,000 - That is about $7,500/kW. Price per kWh without subsidies: Lux writes that: “Without incentives, we calculate electricity would cost $0.13/kWh to $0.14/kWh, with about $0.09/kWh from system cost and about $0.05/kWh coming from fuel cost. Note that this is high compared to average retail U.S. electricity costs of roughly $0.11/kWh.”

On Feb. 2, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized its regulations for the national Renewable Fuel Standard. The bottom line is that the EPA determined that corn grain ethanol reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 20 percent and qualifies it as a conventional biofuel. The ethanol industry hailed this finding as a significant victory and a new market opportunity, while the livestock sectors stated that not much was new. Cole Gustafson, Biofuels Economist from NDSU cautions that as long as the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is backing a more restrictive use of ethanol policy ethanol use will be constrained.

The chairman of the Iowa Corn Promotion Board is expressing concern about the USDA’s shift in emphasis toward locally grown and organic foods. Tim Burrack of Arlington, Iowa is attending USDA’s annual outlook conference in Washington this week. He says modern agriculture has come under attack from many conference speakers and attendees. “I’ve farmed for 37 years and what I’m hearing out here is radically different than what has taken place in the first 36 years of my career,” Burrack says.

Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley announced today a $1.6 M investment in clean energy economic development and job creation, marking another step forward in Maryland’s goal of building a vibrant clean energy sector. These awards mark the first round of the Clean Energy Economic Development Initiative (CEEDI), with applications for the second round of funding being accepted until April 30, 2010.

A recent report from the North American Wood Fiber Review confirms what many livestock producers already know. The market for wood fuel pellets is smoking hot. It has dramatically reduced local availability of sawdust and wood chips and fueled the market for one-time cheap bedding. Average sawdust prices in the U.S. Northwest were $28 per oven-dry metric ton (ODMT) in 2004, peaked at $74 per ODMT in late 2008, then declined to $64 during third-quarter 2009. Prices in other U.S. regions have followed a similar pattern.

With the launch of the most recent space shuttle, the Endeavour, took with it a biofuel experiment. Part of the payload is a study of the Jatropha curcas plant, used for producing biofuel, to see if the breeding process can be speeded up for commercial use.

The Obama administration announced that it has drafted rules that would require federal government to take climate change into consideration for the first time when judging actions under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). According to the statement, any proposed activity would have to emit the equivalent of 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide “to trigger a quantitative analysis.” The Statement can be viewed at: http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/post-carbon/NEPA-Guidance-FINAL-02182010.pdf