Texas is used to having companies bidding for off-shore energy rights in the Gulf of Mexico, but this time it’s the wind, not oil, fueling the process.
This story in the Dallas Morning News says its a new process for almost everyone involved:
This is the first time in the U.S. that leases for offshore wind production are being put in a competitive bid process – the process that doles out virtually all of the oil and natural gas tracts. The bids must be received no later than Oct. 2.
Producing wind energy offshore is largely untested right now. There is one company that holds a wind energy lease in Texas waters – off the coast of Galveston – but it hasn’t started generating power.
The company, Louisiana-based Wind Energy Systems Technologies LLC, is conducting meteorological tests and plans to start putting power into the grid in 2009.
Jim Suydam, press secretary of the General Land Office, said that the office doesn’t have specific revenue goals for offshore wind energy because it is a new process.
“We’re kind of waiting to see what we can get,” he said. “It’s history to even offer it up for competitive lease.”
Companies such as Wind Energy Systems Technologies and a company based in the United Kingdom have already expressed an interest.
Firefighters in Charlottesville, Virginia will be rushing off to fires, running their fire engines on biodiesel.
In a move that can only be seen as a bold one to boost renewable fuels north of the border, the Canadian government has pledged to put $500 million into development of fuels from renewable sources.
The news is being welcomed by the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, which says it will build on the environmental and economic benefits of fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.
Officials in the state of Maryland have pledged to buy more vehicles that run on ethanol and biodiesel and triple the number of hybrids in the state’s fleet by 2011. 
Ethanol producer POET is getting ready to open yet another ethanol plant… this time, a 65-million-gallon-a-year facility near Portland, Indiana.
Monsanto’s Gro-Ethanol Program, in conjunction with GreenField Ethanol, is giving corn farmers in Ontario a new market.
“If this does come to fruition, there is going to be some winnowing of the ethanol industry. Some plants are going to go out of business,” said the report’s author, David Peters. He teaches in the university’s agricultural economics department.
Australian researchers have found that diesel exhaust does much more damage to people’s health than does biodiesel’s exhaust.
Associate Professor Leigh Ackland, Associate Head of Deakin’s School of Life and Environmental Sciences, led a team of researchers who compared the effects of diesel exhaust and biodiesel exhaust on human airway cells. They found that diesel exhaust damaged and killed the cells, while biodiesel exhaust had little effect.
To whet your appetite for the upcoming International Congress on Biodiesel (as if you needed anything else to get you excited about the green fuel!), the organizers of the November gathering in Austria are offering a new podcast.
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