Importance of Biofuels in Rural Revitalization

Cindy Zimmerman

The expansion of biofuels will play a significant role in the revitalization of rural America, according to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.

“Why not create biofuel refineries and renewable energy plants that create jobs and markets for a product that otherwise might not be valued as much,” said Vilsack during a Rural Summit in Missouri on Thursday. “Why not create opportunities for the bioeconomy to respond to challenges like we have down in the Gulf.”

Vilsack says we need to build both the production and distribution systems for renewable fuels. “We’re working hard to get that long term commitment for the financial support. We want to figure out ways to make sure that we get the credit that is necessary to build these biorefineries and maintain them through tough times. We want to increase research and development in advanced biofuels and feedstocks and figure out how to do things more efficiently,” said Vilsack.

The National Summit, held in Hillsboro, Mo., culminates the Rural Tour Secretary Vilsack led last year to 22 states.

biofuels, Ethanol, Ethanol News, USDA

E85 Now Available in Tullahoma, TN

Edwards Oil Company has opened the first E85 station in Coffe County, Tennessee. According to WDEF.com, the Shell Quik Mart on the corner of 41A and Hwy 55 in Tullahoma is now available for flexible fuel vehicle (FFV) owners.

“We are pleased and excited to be the first and only station in Coffee County. Our customers who own flexible-fuel vehicles have been asking for it, and now they have a choice to refuel their vehicles with a product that reduces air pollution, lowers our dependence on foreign oil, and helps support American farmers,” said Edwards Oil Company President Jonathan Edwards.

In 2008, Edwards Oil opened their first E85 fueling location at the Quik Mart #14 on Nashville Highway Columbia and at Quik Mart #10 on North Ellington Parkway in Lewisburg, Tennessee. Following these facilities, Edwards opened a third E85 site in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

“More and more stations across Tennessee are offering their customers a choice of E85 and B-20. We are excited to see Edwards Oil leading the way in Coffee, Marshall, Maury and Bedford counties by offering alternative fuels to their customers” said Atha Comiskey, Coordinator of Clean Cities of Middle Tennessee Coalition. “Seeing businesses such as Edwards Oil now offering renewable fuel choices is a good thing for those of us wanting to use alternative fuel.”

Currently, there are 33 E85 stations in the state of Tennessee.

E85, Ethanol, Ethanol News, News

How Many Wind Turbines for Leaking Gulf Oil Well?

John Davis

Found a great piece (well, with some help from some Facebook friends at Beckerman PR) on the real cost of offshore wind turbines versus offshore oil platforms in Forbes.

Karl Burkart’s piece asks, “How many offshore wind turbines could have been installed for the cost of one $10 billion Deepwater Horizon?,” the platform that sank and unleashed the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history:

How many turbines can $10 billion buy?

Assuming that the next few big offshore projects will drop in price as manufacturing and grid infrastructure improves, let’s say a 60-megawatt project will go for $200 million. Divide that into $12 billion and you get 60 60-megawatt wind projects, or about 33 billion kilowatts of power capacity per year.

How many electric cars does that power?

A typical American drives 12,000 miles per year. The latest plug-in electric vehicles (like the much-anticipated Tesla sedan) use about 370 watt-hours per mile. The U.S. driver’s 12,000 miles x .37 = 4,440 kilowatts per year. Divide 33 billion by 4,440 kilowatts and you get about 7.4 million electric vehicles that could be powered each year with a $10 billion wind investment.

Now while the piece does admit that the Deepwater Horizon well would have fueled more cars … 18.2 million vehicles per year … it does it at a higher cost per mile: 13.6 cents/mile for petroleum and only 3.7 cents/mile for electric vehicles running on wind-generated power.

If you figure that 7.4 million Americans would be saving $1,188 per year, that is about $8.8 billion going back into the U.S. economy rather than into the grubby hands of foreign oil companies like BP.

And that’s not even counting cleaning up the occasional mess created by Big Oil.

So the next time someone tries to tell you that wind energy is too expensive, just ask them: just how high of a price should we continue to pay for non-renewable oil?

Wind

Challenges Undermine Clean Energy Future

Cindy Zimmerman

“If we refuse to take into account the full costs of our fossil fuel addiction — if we don’t factor in the environmental costs and the national security costs and the true economic costs — we will have missed our best chance to seize a clean energy future.”

That is what President Obama said in his speech at Carnegie Mellon University on Wednesday. He stressed the need to fully embrace a clean energy future because “without a major change in our energy policy, our dependence on oil means that we will continue to send billions of dollars of our hard-earned wealth to other countries every month — including countries in dangerous and unstable regions. In other words, our continued dependence on fossil fuels will jeopardize our national security. It will smother our planet. And it will continue to put our economy and our environment at risk.”

Renewable Fuels Association LogoHowever, the Renewable Fuels Association notes that environmental activists continue seeking to undermine the growth of biofuels as a way to displace fossil fuels by using unproven theories like Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) and Global Rebound Effect.

RFA points to a new paper published this week in Environmental Research Letters by the originator of the ILUC theory, environmental attorney Tim Searchinger, that suggests the climatic effects of using biomass for energy are no different than using fossil fuels. “By using Searchinger’s logic, a beverage can made from recycled aluminum is the same as a can made from aluminum that was just mined from the ground,” said RFA president Bob Dinneen. “That simply doesn’t make sense, nor does it do anything to break America’s addition to oil.”

According to RFA, the latest scientific evidence clearly shows ethanol production is both environmentally responsible as well as increasingly sustainable, and they are calling on California’s Air Resources Board (ARB) to keep its promise to use the “best available science” in reevaluating its Low Carbon Fuels Standard (LCFS). RFA has written the board twice, urging the immediate adoption of new research from Purdue University that shows ARB overestimated corn ethanol’s potential land use effects by a factor of two. In a letter sent last week to the board, Dinneen expressed concern that ARB is “shirking its commitment to use the best available science and is taking the new Purdue results too lightly.” Adopting new scientific data from Purdue University would reduce corn ethanol’s potential indirect land use change (ILUC) penalty by 50 percent.

Ethanol, Ethanol News, Government, RFA

Growth Energy Takes Ethanol Message to DC Metro

Cindy Zimmerman

Capitol Hill commuters will be hard pressed to miss the message that ethanol is America’s clean fuel as they travel the DC metro system this month.

Starting at the foot of the escalator with a 10’x12′ floor mat with oil-soaked boot prints and the words “No beaches have been closed due to ETHANOL spills…. America’s CLEAN fuel,” the entire Capitol South Metro stop is saturated with positive ethanol messages from top to bottom.

Growth Energy chose the closest stop to the U.S. Capitol, the offices of the House of Representatives, and the headquarters of both the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee as the focus of a month-long advertising “take over” that includes 46 posters, banners, floor graphics, pylon wraps and posters that cover the station. Christopher Thorne, public affairs director for Growth Energy, said the group launched the station domination to increase awareness among top decision-makers of the benefits of domestic ethanol as an alternative to oil.

“For the next month, every person walking through the Capitol South Metro stop will see our message that domestic ethanol is America’s fuel because it is renewable, clean, homegrown, creates U.S. jobs and strengthens our national security,” Thorne said. “As Congress debates energy and climate legislation, we want to make sure that domestic ethanol is part of the conversation. There is no question as to ethanol’s benefits – we are just seeking to turn up the volume and target our audience at a critical time.”

An estimated 423,000 visitors are expected to travel through the Metro station during the month of June. The “take-over” coincides with a six-month, $2.5 million campaign currently airing six television spots on four cable networks: Fox, MSNBC, CNN and HLN (formerly Headline News). Each of the six spots focuses on a particular message about ethanol: Independent, Clean, Renewable, Peace, Sensible and Economic.

Ethanol, Growth Energy

Emulsified Biodiesel to be Used at Port of LA

John Davis

The Port of Los Angeles could soon be using a cleaner blend of biodiesel that actually uses some water.

This post on the BrighterEnergy.org website says Alternative Petroleum Technologies has completed the commissioning of an emulsified biodiesel blending unit near Sacramento, California:

The company, which has its US headquarters in Reno, Nevada, said the new facility has a capacity to produce 14 million liters (3.7 million gallons) each year.

It will initially be used to supply emulsified biodiesel to the Port of Los Angeles, under a deal agreed back in March 2010.

But APT said once the LA program is running on a continuous basis, it will market the fuel in California’s larger cities along major state highways.

APT’s emulsified biodiesel is a blend of water, B-20 biodiesel and an additive that the company claims can cut the nitrous oxide (NOx) emissions associated with the use of biodiesel fuel.

Company officials say the emulsified biodiesel requires no modifications to old or new diesel engines.

Biodiesel

Biodiesel Catalyst Nominated for R&D Award

John Davis


A catalyst for biodiesel production has been nominated for an award that represents the most technologically significant products introduced into the marketplace over the past year.

FavStocks.com reports that Idaho National Laboratory’s supercritical/solid catalyst that turns waste fats, oils and greases into biodiesel production is up for one of R&D Magazine’s 100 Awards:

The Supercritical/Solid Catalyst (SSC) can handle waste greases with up to 100% free fatty acid (FFA) content, more than 30% water content, and high in impurities such as sulfur, phosphorous, calcium and others.

SSC mixes fat or oil feedstock with supercritical fluid solvents and alcohols at specific temperatures and pressures to completely dissolve the materials during a single supercritical phase. This approach overcomes a key barrier—the polar liquid phase in conventional biodiesel production—which requires multiple steps.

The technology is already being tested in the field. BioFuelBox, Inc. of San Jose, Calif. has a pilot plant in American Falls, Idaho that is turning the worst waste into the cleanest of B100 biodiesel.

Biodiesel, Research, Video

SD Blender Pump Program Success

Cindy Zimmerman

South Dakota has just concluded the sign up period for a blender pump program that offers gas station owners $10,000 per blender pump they install.

The program was created by legislation from State Representative Mitch Fargen with the funding coming from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Grant applications were accepted April 1 through May 28, and more than 100 applications were submitted.

ACEThe American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) praised the grant program that will greatly enhance consumer fuel choice in South Dakota. “This is an outstanding opportunity for South Dakota gas stations, and once the station owners heard about the grant program, it basically sold itself – as evidenced by the fact that the number of grant applications exceeded the goal of the program,” said Ron Lamberty, Vice President of Market Development for ACE.

The legislation passed earlier this year approved $1 million for retailers in South Dakota to install blender pumps for ethanol up to 85 percent.

ACE, blends, Ethanol, Ethanol News

Ethanol Plants Improve Efficiency

Cindy Zimmerman

Ethanol plants continue to increase in efficiency. A new University of Illinois at Chicago study of facilities that produce most of the nation’s ethanol found that the energy needed to make a gallon of the corn-based fuel decreased on average by about 30 percent within the past decade.

The study, conducted by Dr. Steffen Mueller at the Energy Resources Center at the university and funded by the Illinois Corn Marketing Board, surveyed 90 of the 150 dry mill ethanol plants operating during 2008. Results were compared to a 2001 survey conducted by BBI International on behalf of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In 2001, ethanol plants used an average of 36,000 Btu of thermal energy and 1.09 kWh of electrical energy, per gallon of ethanol. They also produced 2.64 gallons of ethanol per bushel. Ethanol plants in 2008 used an average of 25,859 Btu of thermal energy and 0.74 kWh of electricity per gallon of ethanol produced – that’s 28 and 32 percent less than 2001, respectively. Ethanol per bushel of corn, meanwhile, increased 5.3 percent to 2.78 gallons per bushel.

The findings may prove useful to state and federal energy policy makers studying the pros and cons of fuels based on their “full life-cycle” — the total energy needed to create a fuel compared to its energy output, the greenhouse gases emitted during production, the water used in production, and other factors.

“Policy makers rightfully pay attention to life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of fuels,” said Mueller. “Biofuel refineries, including corn ethanol plants, are in a rapid innovation phase.”

He said his survey shows that adoption of new technologies reduces energy production needs since many older dry mill ethanol plants installed energy efficiency retrofits during that time period.

corn, Ethanol, Ethanol News

“Wrong” to Candidate’s Ethanol, Biodiesel Bashing

John Davis

A candidate for the U.S. Senate from Iowa has responded to one of his rivals statements calling ethanol and biodiesel subsidies “bologna, bologna” by calling the statement “wrong, wrong!”

During the recent debate on Iowa Public TV for the Democratic nomination to face presumptive Republican nominee Sen. Charles Grassley, former state Sen. Tom Fiegen bashed the support for ethanol and biodiesel, blaming the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on “drilling for natural gas because all of our ethanol plants are fired by natural gas.”

Rivals former state Rep. Bob Krause and Roxanne Conlin disagreed. In fact, Krause called Fiegen’s evaluation “wrong, wrong,” and pointed out:

Ethanol has been an important thing for Iowa because we’ve been able to keep the protein of the corn and get rid of the carbohydrates of the corn. I think that if you talk to anybody, yeah it’s an infinite industry, yeah there are some substantial subsidies but if we don’t push in that direction what else are we going to have. Are we going to go out and deep drill some more and give those subsidies or subsidize with troops in Iraq ? Are we going to do that? That’s a subsidy too.

Conlin added that the real subsidies are going to the richest industries in the world, Big Oil, and [w]e’re sending all kinds of money to people who hate us, $100 million a day to Iran .

The latest Public Policy Polling poll in the Des Moines Register has Fiegen far behind both Conklin (48 percent) and Krause (31 percent), attracting just 8 percent of potential voters.

Biodiesel, Ethanol, Ethanol News, News