The Time is Now to Apply for a USDA Loan Guarantee

Joanna Schroeder

TonsagerFor the past several months, grants and incentives have been released to help keep the biofuels industry moving forward and successful. One set of programs that were launched through the stimulus package gave $1.7 billion dollars for business and industry loan guarantees – but very few are taking advantage of this program. This according to Dallas Tonsager, keynote speaker during the 22nd Ethanol Conference & Trade Show, and Under Secretary for Rural Development with the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development (USDA).

Under this program businesses are eligible for working capital refinancing, machinery and equipment, real estate and construction, business development, and expansion. Also under this initiative, USDA Rural Development will consider loan term adjustments as part of a comprehensive business stabilization strategy including adjustments in interest rates, principal reduction and loan terms.

According to Tonsager, another action item of his department is to implement the renewable energy provisions of the 2008 Farm Bill. In addition to the $1.7 billion mentioned above, these provisions provide another $1 billion in funding. In addition, the American Recovery Act funding provides $11 billion to develop a smarter grid, $6.3 billion for state and local renewable energy and energy efficiency efforts, and $600 million in green job training. Tonsager pointed out that updating technologies at current ethanol plants that will increase the plants energy efficiencies qualify for this funding.

The funds will expire on September 30, 2010 so the time is now to learn more about them, and Tonsager encourages people to contact their local state office. You can see pictures from Tonsager’s presentation as well as pictures from the entire conference in our Flickr photo album.

ACE, biofuels, conferences, Ethanol News

Wisconsin School to Hold Biofuels Symposium

John Davis

BEIS2009The University of Wisconsin-Superior will play host to the upcoming Bio-Fuels and Energy Independence Symposium, bringing together researchers from laboratories, universities and businesses around the Midwest to talk about the latest work in biofuels technology.

This story from KBJR-TV in Duluth, Minnesota says the symposium runs from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 3, at UW-Superior’s Rothwell Student Center:

The symposium is organized by American Science and Technology, based in Chicago.

Scientists from AST and UW-Superior are working collaboratively on federally funded research to develop cold-tolerant bio-fuels using plants from northern Wisconsin and northern Minnesota.

Lt. Gov. Barbara Lawton will deliver the symposium’s keynote address.

The symposium will be held in the Rothwell Student Center Ballroom and rooms 217 and 218.

The event is free and open to the public.

Go to the meeting’s Web site, www.amsnt.com/BEIS.htm, for more information.

biofuels, Research

Advanced Biofuels Group Tax Exempt

Cindy Zimmerman

advance biofuelsAdvanced Biofuels USA is now officially recognized as exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue code making the organization qualified to receive tax deductible donations.

The purpose of the organizations is to promote public understanding, acceptance, and use of advanced biofuels; to promote research, development and improvement of production, marketing and delivery of advanced biofuels; and to improve advanced biofuels crops and products.

The organization is in the process of fundraising for a number of special projects, including the development of a curriculum-based educational series for K-12 science classes to help students and teachers understand the basics of plants, algae and other organic materials and how they can be converted to advanced biofuels, as well as expanded online educational products such as webinars and educational videos on advanced biofuels.

biofuels, Energy

ACE Announces 2009 Awards

Joanna Schroeder

If you missed the 22nd Ethanol Conference & Trade Show hosted by the American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) then you probably haven’t heard who won the 2009 awards. So I’ll fill you in.

Award Winners

The Merle Anderson Award went to David Hallberg who formed the Renewable Fuels Association in 1981. In addition, he is a director of the Nebraska Ethanol Board and a former director of ACE.

The Policy & Legislative Leadership Award went to Undersecretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack. Vilsack is the former Governor of Iowa.

The Grassroots Award went to Chippewa Valley Ethanol Company. Based in Benson, Minn., the plant is one of the longest-tenured of the cooperative ethanol facilities in the country.

The Media Excellence Award went to Peter Rohde, editor of Kiplinger’s Biofuels Market Alert based in Washington, D.C.

The Paul Dana Marketing Vision Award was given to Kwik Trip, Inc. They were one of the first to offer E85 in Minnesota and today have 60 E85 stations and counting.

The 2009 ACE Scholarship Winners and the ACE Scholarship Fund was awarded to: Jordyn Mallo, Tony Newman, Ryan Truax, and Jessica Weitgenant.

Congrats to all the winners!

You can see all the photos from the conference in our Flickr photo album.

ACE, conferences, Ethanol, News

Barley Ethanol Business Building

Cindy Zimmerman

Osage Bio Energy has a barley business partner and a winning bin builder.

Osage PerdueThe Virginia-based company just announced an agreement with Perdue AgriBusiness to source barley to operate its first barley-to-ethanol bioprocessing facility. Perdue, a leading grain supplier in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic, is committed to working with local farmers to supply Osage Bio Energy with its barley needs for the Appomattox Bio Energy plant in Hopewell, Va., the first of its kind on the East Coast.

Osage barley winnerOsage Bio Energy, with co-sponsors Perdue AgriBusiness, the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation and General Motors, also announced the overall grand prize winner of the 2009 Barley Bin Builder Yield Contest. Bobby Hutchison of Hutchison Brothers Farms in Cordova, MD, won the grand prize of a brand new GM Flex Fuel pickup truck with his yield of 130 bushels per acre. Cash prizes of between $500 and $1000 were also awarded to the top-yielding farmers in Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, North Carolina and Virginia.

“We are thrilled to reward these leading farmers for their outstanding barley yields in what was a tough year for small grains in the Mid-Atlantic,” said Craig Shealy, president and CEO of Osage Bio Energy. “The average yield per acre among all entrants to the yield contest was over 100 bushels an acre, with an average yield in Virginia of approximately 109 bushels an acre. These are nice results, especially considering the weather prior to harvest.”

Osage Bio Energy plans to sponsor another yield contest next year. Details will be available this fall through the company’s Web site, www.osagebioenergy.com, and through local extension agents.

Ethanol, Ethanol News, Farming, feedstocks

Ma Bell Uses Alternatives to Cut 300 Tons of Emissions

John Davis

AT&TEfforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions are paying off for AT&T.

This story posted on EnvironmentalLeader.com says the telephone behemoth’s conversion of some of its fleet vehicles in California to alternative fuels are part of a bigger plan that also includes solar panels and recycling scrap metals:

AT&T also introduced a new fleet of alternative-fuel vehicles that will lower its vehicle operating costs while reducing emissions. In 2008, the roll out of more that 105 alternative-fuel vehicles saved the company nearly 34,395 gallons of fuel, and reduced emissions by more than 300 metric tons.

The communications company expects to roll out 43 alternative-fuel vehicles in 14 California cities in 2009. This is part of a company-wide plan announced in March, to invest up to $565 million nationally over the next 10 years on alternative-fuel vehicles, reaching more than 15,000 by 2019.

AT&T is also planning to install and operate a 1-megawatt solar power system at its San Ramon campus, producing power equal up to 25 percent of peak power and 5.5 percent of the facility’s annual electricity consumption… about the same amount of energy to power more than 165 California homes each year.

Miscellaneous, Solar

Greener Tires

Cindy Zimmerman

Reducing our dependence on foreign oil means looking at alternatives for all kinds of products that use oil as an ingredient – like tires, for example.

Wood science researchers at Oregon State University have found that microcrystalline cellulose, which can be made easily from almost any type of plant fibers, could replace silica as a reinforcing filler in the manufacture of rubber tires.

Cellulose fiber has been used for some time as reinforcement in some types of rubber and automotive products, such as belts, hoses and insulation – but never in tires, where the preferred fillers are carbon black and silica. Carbon black, however, is made from increasingly expensive oil, and the processing of silica is energy-intensive. Both products are very dense and reduce the fuel efficiency of automobiles.

In the search for new types of reinforcing fillers that are inexpensive, easily available, light and renewable, OSU experts turned to microcrystalline cellulose – a micrometer-sized type of crystalline cellulose with an extremely well-organized structure. It is produced in a low-cost process of acid hydrolysis using nature’s most abundant and sustainable natural polymer – cellulose – that comprises about 40-50 percent of wood.

In this study, OSU researchers replaced up to about 12 percent of the silica used in conventional tire manufacture. This decreased the amount of energy needed to compound the rubber composite, improved the heat resistance of the product, and retained tensile strength.

Traction is always a key issue with tire performance, and the study showed that the traction of the new product was comparable to existing rubber tire technology in a wet, rainy environment. However, at high temperatures such as in summer, the partial replacement of silica decreased the rolling resistance of the product, which would improve fuel efficiency of rubber tires made with the new approach.

Cellulosic, Energy

Sustainable Biodiesel Maker to Distribute in Rockies

John Davis

RMSEA maker of sustainable biodiesel in Colorado has inked a deal to supply biodiesel to a distributor for three years.

This press release from Rocky Mountain Sustainable Enterprises says the company will supply up to 4.5 million gallons of biodiesel a year for the next three years to fuel distributor Gray Oil Company, Inc.:

The biodiesel will be supplied from RMSE’s Colorado bioXchange refinery, a $5 million plant that breaks ground this fall and will be the state’s only producer of premium biodiesel from sustainable resources, producing fuel that meets federal ASTM standards.

“We are excited to be working with Gray Oil, a premier fuel distributor in the Rocky Mountain region, and market leader in the adoption and promotion of biofuels,” said [RMSE CEO Aaron] Perry. “This agreement helps us close the loop on truly sustainable biodiesel supplies that are regionally sourced, produced and used, while delivering highest value to our restaurant and commercial facility customers.”

Gray Oil chose to work with Rocky Mountain Sustainable Enterprises because RMSE’s product delivers much higher value than other biodiesel fuels on the market.

“The fact that RMSE is deploying state of the art biodiesel production technology that can produce the fuel from recycled feedstocks such as used cooking oil while maintaining the highest quality and fuel performance specifications, allows us to deliver a premium biodiesel fuel product to our customers at price points much more competitive with petroleum diesel,” said Tom Gray, CFO of Gray Oil.

The press release goes on to say that RSME will be using a European multi-feedstock technology at its Colorado bioXchange plant.

Biodiesel

NREL – Launches Mobile Alternative Fueling Station Locator

Joanna Schroeder

Drivers now can take a popular tool on the road thanks to the staff at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The Mobile Alternative Fueling Station Locator (MAFSL) helps on-the-go drivers find the five closest biodiesel, electricity, E85 (ethanol), hydrogen, natural gas, and propane fueling sites using any mobile device with Internet access.

image001Before launching the device, NREL said that their Alternative Fueling Station Locator was among the top five applications used on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels and Advanced Vehicles Data Center (AFDC) website. The station locator was developed by NREL which manages AFDC.

The mobile station locator works through well-known, easy to use applications such as Google Maps, which generates maps to fueling sites. In addition to the location, the locator will also give the user the contact information, including phone number and business hours for the station.

NREL says that it is taking some changes into consideration due to consumer feedback. In the past, private fueling stations were not included but they have been added. In addition, they are considering adding automatic location detetection using GPS installed in the device, a special applicaton for the iPhone and creating a similar application for truck stop electrification sites. In addition, the database will be updated continously.

Biodiesel, Education, Electric Vehicles, Ethanol, Hydrogen, Miscellaneous, Natural Gas, News, Propane

Is Cash for Clunker’s Program A Clunker?

Joanna Schroeder

large_cash4clunkersThe Cash for Clunker’s program is in full swing yet keeps hitting potholes. Less than one week after it was launched, it ran out of money and the Senate/Congress passed another $2 billion for the program but to get the money, took it from current biofuels programs that were designated as part of the Recovery & Reinvestment Act. Now, the latest issue: researchers are saying that it is a very expensive way to cut carbon emissions.

A new UC Davis study, “The Implied Cost of Carbon Dioxide Under the Cash for Clunkers Program,” estimates that the Cash for Clunkers program is paying at least 10 times the ‘sticker price’ to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases including CO2. With carbon credit programs still under development, they are currently predicted to sell for about $28 per ton. However, in the best-case scenario, the calculated per ton cost of the rebate (either $3,500 or $4,500) would be around $237 per ton, this according to UC Davis transportation economist Christopher Knittel.

“When burned, a gallon of gasoline creates roughly 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. I combined that known value with an average rebate of $4,200 and a range of assumptions about the fuel economy of the new vehicles purchased and how long the clunkers would have been on the road if not for the program,” Knittel said. “I even assumed drivers didn’t change their habits, although some analysts have suggested that the owners of new vehicles will drive more than they would have with their old cars.”

Apparently, the researcher was being generous, as Knittel notes that more likely scenarios would produce a cost of more than $500 per ton. Ouch. Can we say not an economical way to reduce CO2? But hey – everyone knows that while the “public” agenda was to help the environment, we all know if was really to help the bankrupt auto industry move cars. I think the government needs to get a speeding ticket for this program.

Car Makers, Environment, Government, News, politics