Biodiesel Cop Car to Debut

John Davis

A police car, designed from the ground up specifically for law enforcement officers and will run on biodiesel, will debut during a nationwide tour starting tomorrow (Oct. 14th).

The Carbon ‘E7’ built by Carbon Motors Corporation will be shown during the nine-city 2008 Pure Justice Tour starting in Chicago, heading to the West Coast and finishing in Florida in the middle of December:

The vehicle will display a robust collection of world-class technological and design enhancements, including an ergonomically correct cockpit inspired by jet fighters and helicopters, a high powered clean-diesel engine capable of running on biodiesel (that will provide 40 percent improvement in fuel efficiency and will meet or exceed the driving performance of current vehicles), integrated external and internal surveillance capabilities, radar, LoJack, an automatic license plate recognition system, radiation and biological threat detectors and 360 degree, high conspicuity built-in LED emergency lighting.

You can read more about Carbon Motors on the company web site: www.carbonmotors.com.

Biodiesel

Transitioning to St. Louis

John Davis

The latest in a series of conferences sponsored by the Farm Foundation on how this country can transition to a bioeconomy takes place this week in St. Louis, Mo.

Transition to a Bioeconomy: Environmental and Rural Development Impacts brings together government officials… featuring USDA chief Ed Schafer…, bioenergy experts and leaders in the private industry to discuss environmental and rural development issues in that transition:

The conference program will examine how the emerging bioeconomy may impact such things as domestic and global land use, water quality, jobs and local economies. Other sessions will focus on how this emerging bioeconomy may be shaped by green technologies, public policies or public attitudes.

This conference is a collaboration of Farm Foundation, and USDA’s Office of Energy Policy and New Uses, Economic Research Service, Rural Development, Natural Resources Conservation Service and the U.S. Forest Service.

The nation’s rapid transition to a bioeconomy has significant implications for agriculture, the food system, rural communities and the global economy. This series of conferences are deisgned to inventory current knowledge, highlight lessons learned to date, identify future possibilities and determine future information needs. These conferences and the products produced from them will provide government, industry, academic and community leaders with objective information and analysis they can use to make more informed decisions related to the bioeconomy in the next decade.

There are at least two more conferences planned by Farm Foundation over the next couple of years to include implications of a global bioeconomy and extension education for a bioeconomy.

I’ll be in St. Louis to cover the events for Domestic Fuel and our sister web site, AgWired.com. See you there!

Biodiesel, Ethanol, Farm Foundation, News

E85 Stations Exceed 1,800

The National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition (NEVC) announced today that the number of E85 stations has now exceeded 1,800. There are currently 1,802 private and public refueling stations across the U.S. The number of facilities have grown 28 percent since October 2007.

“It’s exciting to see E85 stations grow so rapidly within the past year,” noted Executive Director of the National Ethanol Vehicle Coalition, Phil Lampert.

Currently, the states with the highest number of E85 sites are: Minnesota with 357, Illinois with 188 and Missouri with 112. Unfortunately, seven states do not offer E85 including: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Alaska and Hawaii.

Lampert added, “Fuel retailers have many incentives to add this clean, renewable product to their facilities. The spike in E85 fueling facilities is a direct reflection of the Federal income tax credit that the NEVC and our partners worked hard to implement in 2005. Additionally, the provisions of the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007 that allowed franchise operators to install E85 fueling sites are two of the most significant Federal actions that have been implemented to address the growth of E85 fueling nationally. We are hopeful that future federal actions will appropriate at least a part of the $200 million that was authorized in EISA to assist with continuing to expand the E85 fueling infrastructure.”

E85, Facilities, News

Distillers Grains Conference

Cindy Zimmerman

A major by-product of ethanol production will be the focus of an international conference next week in Indianapolis.

The U.S. Grains Council and USDA’s Foreign Agriculture Service are co-sponsoring the International Distillers Grains Conference with approximately 140 major foreign buyers, nutritionists, and feed ingredient importers expected to attend. The meeting will be held October 19-21 at the Indianapolis Marriott Downtown.

Exports of DDGs expected to hit 3 million metric tons valued at an estimated $600 million this marketing year and next year they are projected to reach at least 4 million metric tons at $800 million, making this a major value-added commodity for the United States.

Registration for the conference is still open on-line at distillersgrainsconference.com.

conferences, Distillers Grains

Panda Ethanol Restructures

Cindy Zimmerman

Panda Ethanol has announced the successful restructuring of funding arrangements on a 115-million gallon-per-year, biomass-fueled ethanol refinery in Hereford, Texas.

The restructuring was made with the support of the project’s lenders and will allow for the completion of construction and startup of the facility.

“The successful restructuring of the Hereford project’s funding arrangements represents a vote of confidence in our ability to manage the remaining construction at the Hereford facility,” said Darol Lindloff, chief executive officer of Panda Ethanol. “We continue to believe that, once completed, the Hereford refinery will be one of the most cost-efficient ethanol production facilities in the United States.”

Panda Ethanol expects to complete construction of the Hereford refinery by January 30, 2009. The company has disclosed that it may need to obtain additional working capital for the future operation of the facility depending on future market conditions and commodity pricing.

Ethanol, Facilities, News

Ethanol Benefits Outweigh Costs

Cindy Zimmerman

A senior economist with the nation’s largest general farm organization says the benefits of ethanol outweigh the costs.

AEM Terry FranclDuring the Association of Equipment Manufacturers AgExecutive forum in St. Louis last week, American Farm Bureau senior economist Terry Francl said that the consumer is seeing a benefit from ethanol.

“The bottom line on the ethanol side is that although it has driven up the cost of things such as feed and food to a certain extent, for every extra dollar that consumers spend for food, they have reduced gasoline costs approximately $2. So it’s a win-win situation for consumers, and for that matter, taxpayers,” Francl said.

The economist says people involved in agriculture and ethanol need to work harder to try and get this message out in the media and to the general public. “It’s not something that is easy because there are a lot of anti-ethanol people that provide a lot of misinformation but we just have to be vigilant and try and address those issues when they come up.”

While the American Farm Bureau is a general farm organization with equal representation from both the crop and livestock sectors, they have continued to support the development of ethanol and biodiesel because of the benefits they offer to the farm sector in general. Francl also points out that the farm equipment sector plays a vital role in helping to increase productivity so that producers can supply both food and fuel for the world.

Lots of good stuff in their presentations, which you can listen to here:
[audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/AEM/aem-forum-08-francl.MP3]

Audio, Ethanol, food and fuel

Wind Is Energy ‘Gift’ For Native Americans

John Davis

“The buffalo were a gift,” [Tribal official Ken Haukaas] continued. “The wind is a gift.”

Native Americans on the Great Plains are harvesting a new gift these days… wind power. This story in the New York Times says tribes such as the Rosebud Sioux on the border of Nebraska and South Dakota are builidng wind turbine farms, which could give an economic boost to the tribes’ 29,000 members:

“We’re broke here,” Mr. Haukaas said. “We’re poor.” But, he added: “The wind is free. There’s energy here all the time.”

Mr. Haukaas believes that “the same thing that brought the buffalo brings the wind.”

“The buffalo were a gift,” he continued. “The wind is a gift.”

In 2003, after erecting a 750-kilowatt turbine that powers the Rosebud Casino near the Nebraska border, the Rosebud Sioux tribal council set its sights on building the Owl Feather War Bonnet wind farm, a 30-megawatt project that could power about 12,000 homes, each about 1,200 square feet.

After five years of negotiations with a non-Indian developer, Distributed Generation Systems Inc. of Colorado, the tribal council president, Rodney M. Bordeaux, said Thursday that he expected to sign a construction deal that would bring in some $5 million to the tribe over 20 years.

The article goes on to say that federal officials believe that wind energy could revitalize sagging Native American economies, but they admit that wind energy deals on Indian lands are few and far between… in fact, there’s just one… a 50-megawatt project on the Campo reservation near San Diego. But this latest deal could be a sign a new wind is blowing.

Wind

Mo Gov Candidates Debate But Agree on Alternative Energy

John Davis

Candidates for governor in Missouri aren’t seeing eye-to-eye on much these days (and trust me… we’re hearing and seeing plenty of tit-for-tat attack ads here in Central Missouri), but Republican Kenny Hulshof and Democrat Jay Nixon did seem to agree on the importance of renewable energy during their debate this week in Kansas City.

According to this story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, both men see alternatives as key for the economy:

With pocketbook issues uppermost in voters’ minds, both men promised to create jobs by beefing up job training and aggressively marketing the state to employers.

Asked for specifics, Nixon said the state should encourage construction of a windmill plant and an auto assembly plant for flex-fuel vehicles. Hulshof called for an oil refinery and research funding to turn algae into biodiesel.

But just in case you thought this debate was any kind of love fest, it was the ONLY thing the two seemed to agree upon. Oh well… back to the attack ads.

algae, Biodiesel, Wind

Cellulosic Ethanol Company Goes Public

Cindy Zimmerman

A South Dakota-based cellulosic ethanol company has gone public and changed its name.

KL EnergyKL Process Design Group is now KL Energy Corp, a move that will help the company generate funding to develop its second commercial scale cellulosic ethanol production facility.

Since January of 2008, the KL has been producing cellulosic ethanol using waste wood as feedstock, at a commercial scale facility near Upton, Wyoming. The plant has been supplying fuel grade ethanol this year for the American LeMans Series.

Cellulosic, Ethanol

FEMA Buys Biodiesel Buses for New Orleans

John Davis

New Orleans is getting some biodiesel buses… thanks to some money from the federal government.

This press release from Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu says the Federal Emergency Management Agency has given the city the New Orleans Regional Transit Authority (RTA) $44 million to replace… and to upgrade… 204 buses and 31 vans that were destroyed by flooding during Hurricane Katrina:

The standing FEMA policy would have resulted in RTA receiving 204 buses that were 12 years old, to match the age of the vehicles they were replacing. Instead, FEMA has agreed to obligate the money for as many as 115 new biodiesel buses, which cost about $380,000 each…

“I am so glad that FEMA has agreed to replace the RTA fleet with the type of buses that are needed,” Sen. Landrieu said. “The existing FEMA policy was not designed to handle the loss of an entire transit fleet, and putting forward millions of taxpayer dollars to find and purchase 10-year-old buses that would have required combined maintenance and replacement within a couple of years would not have been an effective use of government funds.

Landrieu had been a longtime advocate of changing the FEMA policy.

Biodiesel, Government