New EPA Rules Could Be Bad News for Biodiesel

John Davis

epasealWhile the new Environmental Protection Agency rules regarding the Renewable Fuels Standard have been welcomed by some renewable fuel advocates (see Cindy’s post from earlier today), the news is not as bright for backers of biodiesel.

According to this story in the Des Moines (IA) Register, biodiesel made from soybeans… very popular in the Midwest… won’t meet the new requirements for reducing greenhouse gases. And industry officials say that if the soy-biodiesel isn’t counted, it will be extremely hard to meet the 1-billion-gallons a year biodiesel requirement by 2012:

To qualify toward the annual targets, the 2007 energy law says biodiesel must reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent compared with conventional diesel. The EPA is crediting biodiesel made from soybean oil with only a 22 percent reduction.

Congress required the EPA to assess the carbon footprint of biofuels and to take into account the land-use impact of using food crops such as soybeans and corn for biofuels. The theory is that using food commodities for fuel can increase greenhouse gas emissions, because forests and grasslands will be put into cultivation to maintain adequate global food supplies.

There also are emission targets for ethanol, but existing corn ethanol plants were exempted from them, whereas existing biodiesel plants were not given a similar break.

“They’re going to have to change (the rules) unless they want to take a step backwards in producing domestically produced low-carbon diesel replacement fuel,” said Michael Frohlich, a spokesman for the National Biodiesel Board.

The article goes on to say that some experts believe that mixing soy-biodiesel with biodiesel made from animal fat or waste grease could meet the new requirements.

I’m sure we haven’t heard the last of this one. Stay tuned.

Cindy listened in on today’s press conference and has this audio from the biodiesel question Des Moines Register reporter Philip Brasher posed: [audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/domesticfuel/brasher-question.mp3]

Audio, Biodiesel

Propel and Enterprise Rent-A-Car to Educate on E85

propelPropel Fuels and Enterprise Rent-A-Car will partner to educate on Enterprise’s FFV fleet in Sacramento, Calif. Twelve Sacramento Enterprise locations will participate in the program to begin in a few months.

enterprise“We really applaud Enterprise for their commitment to E85 and their commitment to flex fuel vehicles,” said Rob Elam, president of Propel Fuels. “We think that – especially in states like California – that kind of leadership from business is very much appreciated by both the public as well as policy decision makers at the state level.”

The collaboration will include supplying Enterprise’s customers with information on E85 and provide a listing of Propel Fuels’ E85 locations. Propel Fuels recently established five “Clean Fuel Points” or, small modular fuel dispensers, in and around the Sacramento area.

Elam stated, “[The station owners] don’t need to put any money upfront to deploy any sort of infrastructure, they don’t have to manage the fuel procurement, they don’t have to do any of the customer outreach, and they also don’t have to do any of the credit card integration.” He also noted that the Enterprise partnership could expand as more Clean Fuel Points come about in additional areas of the state.

E85, Flex Fuel Vehicles, News

Ethanol Industry Pleased With White House Action

Cindy Zimmerman

The ethanol industry is unanimous in its praise for the actions announced today by the Obama administration with regard to the future development of biofuels under the Renewable Fuels Standard and the creation of a Biofuels Interagency Working Group.

RFADuring a press conference immediately following the announcement, Renewable Fuels Association president Bob Dinneen said, “The president has sent an incredibly important signal today that biofuels are going to be a key component in his strategy to address energy, economic and environmental challenges. This is a positive step forward for the industry.”

Growth EnergyGrowth Energy CEO Tom Buis says the comprehensive plan announced today will decrease dependence on foreign oil, create American jobs and cut greenhouse gas emissions. “America’s ethanol producers stand ready to help the president, and his working group, meet their ambitious goals,” said Buis.

ACEThe American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) Executive Vice President Brian Jennings said they are grateful to President Obama for outlining how biofuels will continue to play an integral role in our nation’s economic and energy security policy. “Importantly, the President’s directive will ensure that science – not politics – determine the future of biofuels, which will surely disappoint opponents of ethanol whose PR campaign has been designed to destroy public policy support for ethanol,” Jennings said.

All groups were also pleased that EPA committed to further study the controversial theory of indirect land use change before finalizing the greenhouse gas emissions scores for biofuels. Dinneen says “just comparing apples to apples” the direct effects of ethanol production show a better than 60 percent better improvement over petroleum. “Trying to evaluate indirect effects, particularly international indirect effects, is highly dependent on assumptions used and data available and there is a great deal of uncertainty about this,” said Dinneen.

Furthermore, Buis said that indirect land use change as currently proposed doesn’t allow an accurate comparison of fuels because it doesn’t include the indirect effects of other fuels. “To include indirect effects in regulations without even considering the indirect effects of other fuels would unfairly bias those regulations against biofuels,” said Buis.

Jennings said they encourage the Interagency Working Group to require fossil fuels undergo the same lifecycle analysis that has been imposed on biofuels, “an evaluation which will show that future sources of oil are going to have some serious consequences for the environment, while future sources of biofuel are going to be even better and more sustainable than they are already.”

See EPA’s proposed rule for the RFS here.

ACE, Cellulosic, Energy, Ethanol, Government, Growth Energy, RFA

Agencies Work Together for Biofuels

Cindy Zimmerman

Three government agencies have been given a presidential directive to aggressively accelerate the investment in and production of biofuels.

VilsackThe U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy, together with the Environmental Protection Agency will make up the the new Biofuels Interagency Working Group. “The president has directed us to create a comprehensive biofuel marketing development program to focus on the infrastructure that will be necessary for this industry to be a permanent part of the American economy and to do it in a sustainable way,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack during a conference call this morning with EPA administrator Lisa Jackson and Energy Secretary Steven Chu.

Lisa Jackson“In the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), Congress recognized the need for a homegrown fuel source,” said Jackson. She said EPA is today publishing a standard that establishes four categories of renewable fuels and is soliciting peer reviewed, scientific feedback to ensure that the best science available is utilized prior to implementation.

ChuSecretary Chu noted that agriculture is one of the nation’s greatest resources for energy. “We have incredible capacity not only to grow the food we need and to have dynamic exports, we can also grow a considerable amount of energy,” said Chu. He announced that $786 million will be invested through the recovery act for the development of advanced biofuels and the expansion of commercial biorefineries. Chu also said they will be creating an Algae Biofuels Consortium for the development of algae biofuels.

The working group is part of the Proposed Regulations for the Renewable Fuels Standard released by EPA today.

Listen to the press conference here:[audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/government/usda-epa-doe.mp3]

Biodiesel, biofuels, Energy, Ethanol, Government

White House Announces Interagency Biofuels Group

Cindy Zimmerman

white houseThe White House will form a working group to be chaired by the heads of three government agencies to speed the sustainable development of biofuels.

The action was announced during a press conference this morning with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who will head the new Biofuels Interagency Working Group. They pledged to work together to accelerate funding to encourage production of next-generation biofuels from biomass and other non-corn feedstocks.

biofuels, Energy, Government

Wake Forest Develops Cost-Cutting Biodiesel Catalyst

John Davis

wakeforestu2Biodiesel makers have been extending their feedstocks into the various types of oils, including waste greases and even animal fats. But the problem is converting the free fatty acids in the feedstocks into biodiesel, sometimes a long and costly process. Well, it looks like researchers at Wake Forest University have found a way to do it quicker and cheaper.

This article from PhysOrg.com says the scientists believe they have a formula for a catalyst that will speed up the biodiesel-making process so that the green fuel could provide 5 percent of the nation’s fuel needs:

“If we, as a nation, can do that, that’s enough biodiesel to replace the need for oil from a country such as Iraq,” said Abdessadek Lachgar, a chemistry professor at the university and one of two officials supervising the project along with Marcus Wright, a lab manager and investigator in the biodiesel work…

Lachgar said that the main challenge with using the waste from vegetable oil, animal fat and recycled cooking grease is the high presence of free fatty acids, which significantly impair biodiesel production.

That’s where the Terrafinity catalyst comes into play. Researchers are developing an inexpensive method for converting the free fatty acids into biodiesel with a yield greater than 98 percent in less than 15 minutes. The catalyst can be produced for 11 cents a gram in the laboratory, although Lachgar said that the per-gram cost will be significantly reduced in a commercial setting.

The project right now costs about $85,000… a small cost when you consider how much it could make for the biodiesel industry and how much it could save us from foreign oil.

Biodiesel

Louisiana Chicken Fat Biodiesel Plant Nears Completion

John Davis

syntyson2A refinery in Louisiana slated to turn chicken fat, along with beef tallow, pork lard and other greases, into high-quality biodiesel and jet fuel by next year.

This story in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette says the Dynamic Fuels LLC refining plant in Geismar, La., a partnership between Tyson Foods and Syntroleum Corp., is on time and on budget:

Bob Ames, who oversees Tyson Foods’ Renewable Energy group, said construction on the Louisiana plant remains on budget.

Equipment for the plant has been ordered and is scheduled for delivery by the second and third quarters. Staffing is expected to start this summer.

“The plant should be mechanically complete at the end of this year,” Ames said. A six-month trial period to pinpoint problems and make adjustments to the process will precede the official start of operations, he said.

Jeffrey Bigger, director of the Dynamic Fuels LLC management committee, said in October that the plant is the first such fuel production facility in the United States.

When construction on the Dynamic Fuels plant is done, the refinery will crank out 75 million gallons of biodiesel per year. It will employ 45 people and have an annual payroll of more than $4 million.

Biodiesel

NBB Warns of Dropping Biodiesel Production

John Davis

Biodiesel production in the United States has dropped sharply, and the green fuel’s biggest advocate warns of the dire consequences of that drop and urges implementation of federal environmental rules that would support biodiesel and other renewables.

nbb-logo1The National Biodiesel Board says commercial biodiesel production in the U.S. in March 2009 fell to 30 million gallons… down from 49 million gallons just a year earlier and as low as 2006 levels. In this statement from NBB CEO Joe Jobe, he says that if the trend continues, industry production will only be half of the 700 million-gallon output in 2008… putting the country “at risk of going backwards in energy security” :

“A primary reason for this dramatic downturn is the absence of the federal Renewable Fuels Standard. The RFS would initially require the use of 500 million gallons of bio-massed based diesel, which would substantially stabilize the young biodiesel industry as it struggles to compete on an uneven playing field.

“We are at risk of losing the only domestically produced homegrown fuel for diesel engines. In fact, biodiesel is the only commercially available advanced biofuel, as defined by the federal government, which is currently derived from any fat or plant oil. It is the most diverse fuel on the planet. At last count, 176 plants in the U.S. enabled production of almost 2 billion gallons of homegrown, renewable fuel per year, but many plants sit idle, and at least 20 have gone out of business. This costs jobs and increases America’s dependence on foreign oil at a time when President Obama is calling for economic investment in American renewable energy. Our industry stands ready and waiting to answer that call.

An Energy Information Administration (EIA) report blames the closing of European markets because of punitive tariffs put on American biodiesel by the Europeans earlier this year for part of the reduction in U.S. production.

Biodiesel, NBB

Administration to Announce RFS Rulemaking

Cindy Zimmerman

The long-awatied notice of proposed rulemaking on the Renewable Fuels Standard will be issued Tuesday morning at 10:00 Eastern time by the Obama administration.

The announcement will be made jointly in a press conference by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson who will discuss President Obama’s commitment to advance biofuels research and commercialization under the rule.

epaEPA is required under the 2007 Energy Bill to consider ‘significant indirect emissions’ when determining greenhouse gas emissions for fuels under the so-called RFS-2 program. The new RFS requires new corn ethanol plants and new cellulosic ethanol plants to produce a fuel that emits fewer life-cycle greenhouse gasses relative to regular gasoline and that indirect land use changes should be figured into that.

However, methods for calculating such ‘indirect land use changes’ – such as from forest or grassland to crops – are not yet adequately developed, and therefore many are arguing they should not be used in calculating the emissions. “Otherwise, we’ll exclude some good biofuels and stifle the investment that is so essential to our national renewable fuels strategy,” says Senator Tom Harkin (D-IA), who was one of a group of senators who asked the EPA not to propose regulations assuming that greater U.S. biofuels use would increase carbon dioxide emissions.

The Renewable Fuels Association has already scheduled a press conference for one hour after the administration’s formal announcement to comment on the proposed rulemaking.

Energy, Environment, Ethanol, Government, RFA

E85 Revenge Verde to Be 100 MPG

revenge_verdePeter Collorafi and Douglas Pelmear have come up with a plan that they say will revolutionize the automotive Industry. Their V-8 engine Revenge Verde will have an expected 400 horsepower, 500 foot lbs of torque and will run on E85. it also will receive 100-miles per gallon of fuel.

The vehicle, produced in Indiana, is expected to be on the streets before the end of 2009. The specifics are “top secret” but the builders know that if they produce an engine that runs on just ethanol, they’ve created an engine that can run at a higher compression ratio, creating more power using less fuel.

Collorafi says, “We’re hoping to put production plants back to work again and producing vehicles. The true winner here is the Americans going back to work putting fuel-efficient engines in production vehicles. That’s our goal.”

E85, News