While it might have a past deeply rooted in petroleum, attendees of the Oklahoma Biofuels Conference in Oklahoma City this week were told renewable energy has a huge future in the Sooner State.
This story from Forbes says a huge wind corridor in the western part of Oklahoma, along with perennial native grasses for biofuels, gives the state a great potential to be a leader in alternative energy:
“We have 40,000 megawatts of wind potential in western Oklahoma, and that industry is exploding out of the ground as we talk,” said Oklahoma Energy Secretary David Fleischaker. “The Obama administration’s attitude toward bringing wind into the grid will really benefit that industry in Oklahoma.
“In addition, to the extent we have the ability, we’ll see a lot more funding of research important to pushing the conversion of biofuels technology.”
Fleischaker said using perennial native grasses, like switchgrass, as a source for biofuel has a number of advantages over annual crops, like corn, that take much more energy to produce.
“If you have an annual, you’ve got to pull the tractor out of the barn and plant it every year, which takes a lot of energy,” Fleischaker said. “If you have a perennial, it grows back every year automatically and you can leave the tractor in the barn.”
Luxury vehicles, exotic new rides, and the latest in domestic developments are all part of any auto show. Add to that list the environmentally-friendly aspects of a new car at this year’s San Francisco Chronicle|SF Gate.com 51st Annual International Auto Show.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has published environmental regulatory rules and requirements for the construction and operation of biodiesel production facilities.
“We appreciate that the document includes EPA’s recognition that biodiesel contributes to the wellbeing of the environment by ‘significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions’ and other pollutants,” he said. “Biodiesel use is a viable part of protecting the environment, and we look forward to working closely with the agency on future mutual goals.”
One of the knocks against wind energy is that you don’t have power if you don’t have wind. Well, an energy company in the Upper Midwest might have the solution.
A Fort Collins, Colorado biofuel company will build an algae-biodiesel plant on an Indian reservation in southern Colorado.
A trip to a Patagonian forest (that’s in South America) has produced the latest development in the biodiesel game.
The amount of agricultural land required to produce 15 billion gallons of grain ethanol in the United States by 2015, as required by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), is likely to be less than 1 percent of total world cropland, according to a new report released today by the 
EPIC Executive Director Toni Nuernberg said they interviewed over 1,000 consumers nationwide for the survey. “About 73 percent of them responded that they want to see domestically produced biofuels such as ethanol to replace oil,” she said.
A California biotechnology company has opened a biodiesel plant that makes the green fuel from sugarcane.