Caribbean’s Largest Solar Array Goes Live

Joanna Schroeder March 30, 2016

The largest solar array in the Caribbean is now producing energy. Monte Plata is a 33.4 MW PV solar array located in the Dominican Republic that will produce more than 50,000 megawatt hours of energy each year. The “power switch” was turned on by Dominican Republic President Danilo Medina. The project was designed and deployed by Dubai-based Phanes Group along with partners General Energy Solutions and Soventix.

Monte Plata’s 132,000 solar panels triple the number of solar panels in the Dominican Republic. Once phase two of the project is complete by the end of 2016, the array’s total capacity will rise to 67 MW, increasing the photovoltaic power output in the country fivefold.

“This project is a demonstration of how multiple stakeholders can work together to co-develop solar projects that are viable and bankable in emerging markets – successfully delivering access to energy and unlocking huge economic opportunities for remote communities,” said Martin Haupts, CEO of Phanes Group.

The country has been challenged with inadequate power supply that includes high transmission and distribution losses that exceed 30 percent. In addition, the country spends on average more than $4 billion each year on fossil fuel imports to operate petroleum, coal and natural gas fueled power plants.

“With much of the Caribbean challenged by expensive fuel imports, solar has the ability to liberate these island nations from economic and energy dependency, increasing the energy security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions while helping elevate communities,” added Haupts. “Phanes Group is delighted to have played a central role in delivering this breakthrough project, and we remain committed and excited about PV’s opportunities across the emerging world.”

Clean Energy, Electricity, Solar

Wind Energy Provides $7.3B in Health Savings

Joanna Schroeder March 30, 2016

According to a new report from the American Wind Energy Association, U.S. wind farms reduced electric power carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 132 million metric tons in 2015. In addition, wind energy reduces other harmful air pollutants including smog-causing sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NOx), which helps reduce rates of asthma and other respiratory issues. Electricity generated by wind in 2015 displaced an estimated 176,000 metric tons of SO2 and 106,000 metric tons of NOx, representing $7.3 billion in avoided health costs last year.

“Americans will be able to breathe easier and live longer thanks to clean energy produced by American wind power,” said Tom Kiernan, CEO of AWEA. “Clean air benefits from wind power totaled $7.3 billion last year, without even including the value of carbon savings, and the industry also attracts thousands of quality jobs and billions of dollars in private investment to the U.S. economy. With wind power, states don’t have to make a trade-off between clean air and strong economic growth.”

Based on costs assumptions provided by the Harvard School of Public Health study, the tons of SO2 and NOx pollution avoided in 2015 carry a public health monetary value of more than $5.4 billion and $1.8 billion, respectively. At the start of 2016, there were 9,400 megawatts (MW) of wind power capacity under construction, which is expected to reduce another 23 million metric tons of CO2 emissions each year when operational, and cut overall power sector CO2 emissions by an additional one percent.

The 132 million metric tons in CO2 reductions in 2015 are equivalent to eliminating all power sector carbon dioxide emissions in Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Colorado last year.

This data is an early look at AWEA’s 2015 U.S. Wind Industry Annual Market Report. The report will provide a comprehensive update on the state of the U.S. wind market, job numbers, state-by-state comparisons, and more.

Clean Energy, Electricity, Wind

Clean Energy Jobs Continue to Rise

Joanna Schroeder March 29, 2016

Clean energy jobs continue to rise with a new report from Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2) showing more than 2.5 million jobs in the clean energy industry across all 50 states. “Clean Jobs in America,” is based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics information and new data from the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as a comprehensive survey of tens of thousands of businesses across the country. The report provides detailed breakdowns of clean energy jobs not previously available.

According to the findings, energy efficiency is by far the nation’s largest clean energy sector employer, with nearly 1.9 million Americans while nearly 414,000 people work in renewable energy. The top renewable sectors were solar with 299,000 workers (including nearly 209,000 who work on solar full-time or close to full time, as The Solar Foundation noted in its 2015 job census) and wind with 77,000 workers.

“Clean energy is no longer a niche business – it’s a big-time job creator,” said Dan Smolen, managing director of The Green Suits, a Virginia-based talent recruitment and career development firm. “Our lawmakers need to realize that – and put policies in place, right now, to help the sector grow even more.”

Additional report findings include:

328,000 people work in the energy efficient lighting industry. Another 162,000 help build Energy Star appliances.
Nearly 170,000 Americans work in the advanced vehicle industry, including 107,000 who work on hybrids and electric vehicles. Strength in this industry is due in part to new fuel-efficiency standards for vehicles and trucks.
More people work in clean energy than sectors like real estate and agriculture, and many more work in clean energy than work in dirty energy industries like oil, gas and coal extraction.

“America’s clean energy jobs market is massive,” said Philip Jordan, vice president and principal at BW Research Partnership whose organization conducted the analysis. “It ranks right up there with some of the biggest industries in the country – including real estate, management, and agriculture. When we spoke with clean energy employers nationwide, we were struck by their responsiveness to state- and federal-level policies as well as their optimism.” Jordan added, “It’s clear that by shoring up clean energy policies, lawmakers have a big opportunity to attract even more clean energy jobs to their own backyards.”

Clean Energy, Solar, Wind

BioEnergy Bytes

Joanna Schroeder March 29, 2016

Edeniq and Aemetis, Inc., an advanced renewable fuels and renewable chemicals company, have announced they have entered into a License Agreement under which Aemetis will deploy Edeniq’s Pathway technology at its 60 million gallon per year ethanol production facility located in Keyes, California.
According to the Deccan Herald, The Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) has planned to run 1,800 of its 8,300 buses on biodiesel. The select buses will run on 20% biodiesel and 80% diesel. Currently, all KSRTC buses are running on 100% diesel. The KSRTC made the decision to reduce the diesel component after a series of trials and tests it carried out with biodiesel were successful.
Pankaj Lal, assistant professor of Earth and Environmental Studies with Montclair State University, was recently awarded a five-year, $450,000 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) grant from the National Science Foundation to explore sustainable bioenergy solutions in the Midwestern and Southern United States. Titled “Exploring Place-Based Opportunities for Bioenergy Sustainability,” Lal’s CAREER project will focus on place-based policy solutions that develop forest- and agriculture-based bioenergy as a fossil fuel alternative. His solutions will be based on analysis of factors such as location suitability, socioeconomic uncertainty and environmental impact.
Reuters is reporting that the Brazilian president has signed into law a proposal passed by both legislative houses to boost the biodiesel blend to 7%, to 8% in 2017 and 10% in 2019. Simultaneously, the government will undergo B15 trials over the next three years to ensure that the national fleet can operate with higher blends. The national biodiesel industry has been calling for such a policy to absorb their fuel into the domestic market and help create demand to boost production closer to their installed production capacity.

Bioenergy Bytes

Gevo’s Jet Fuel Meets Approved ASTM Standard

Joanna Schroeder March 28, 2016

Gevo has announced that ASTM International Committee D02 on Petroleum Products, Liquid Fuels, and Lubricants and Subcommittee D02.J on Aviation Fuel passed a concurrent ballot approving the revision of ASTM D7566 (Standard Specification for Aviation Turbine Fuel Containing Synthesized Hydrocarbons) to include alcohol to jet synthetic paraffinic kerosene (ATJ-SPK) derived from renewable isobutanol. With this approval, Gevo says Alaska Airlines will now conduct a commercial test flight using its biojet fuel.

“We’re pleased that this newly-revised standard now supports isobutanol based alcohol-to-jet aviation biofuels and we look forward to flying it this year. Developing a domestic, competitively priced, sustainable supply of biofuels is fundamental to Alaska Airline’s long term sustainability goals,” said Joe Sprague, Alaska Airline’s Senior Vice President of External Relations.

Once the revision of ASTM D7566 is published by the ASTM, Gevo’s ATJ will be eligible to be used as a blending component, up to 30 percent, in standard Jet A-1 for commercial airline use in the United States as well as in several other countries.

Dr. Patrick Gruber, Gevo’s CEO, added, “This ASTM revision is a major achievement and supports one of Gevo’s key products. We believe that Gevo’s renewable ATJ provides a clear and cost-competitive path for commercial airlines to reduce their greenhouse gas footprints and reduce their particulate emissions from combustion. For Gevo, this step is expected to open a large and significant market to Gevo around which Gevo expects to build a profitable business.”

aviation biofuels, biojet fuel

2016 FEW Agenda Announced

Joanna Schroeder March 28, 2016

The agenda for the 2016 International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo (FEW) has been announced. The event, taking place June 20-23, 2016 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, will feature more than 140 speakers speaking on topics in four tracks. FEW is the longest and largest running global ethanol event and more than 2,000 attendees are expected this year including ethanol producers, industry suppliers, service providers and researchers.

Tracks include:

Track 1: Production and Operations
Track 2: Leadership and Financial Management
Track 3: Coproducts and Product Diversification
Track 4: Infrastructure and Market Development

“This year’s agenda covers the latest innovations and efficiencies currently being developed for ethanol production,” said Tom Bryan, president of BBI International. “The agenda committee did an outstanding job of rating presentation abstracts and bringing the brightest biofuels minds together under one roof for this event.”

This year, the National Advanced Biofuels Conference & Expo will be co-located with the FEW, making this one of the largest gatherings of biofuels producers, professionals and presenters in the past decade according to BBI. The advanced biofuels event will feature the world of advanced biofuels and biobased chemicals—technology scale-up, project finance, policy, national markets and more—with a core focus on the industrial, petroleum and agribusiness alliances defining the national advanced biofuels industry.

biofuels, biomass, Ethanol, FEW

Minnesota Students Learn About Ethanol

Joanna Schroeder March 28, 2016

Norwood Young America’s Central High School students touring Heartland Corn Products.

More than 40 Minnesota high school students from Arlington’s Sibley East High School and Norwood Young America’s Central High School have visited Heartland Corn Products to learn more about ethanol production. Heartland Corn Products is one of the largest ethanol plants in Minnesota with an output of 108 million gallons a year and was built in 1995. During the tours, students learned about different elements of production including grain grading and handling, fermentation, grain storage, liquefaction and ethanol storage and shipment.

“We were interested in the tour so we can learn about this renewable energy source that is so important to Minnesota’s agriculture economy,” said Jim Mesik, agriculture teacher at Central High School. Minnesota is the fourth largest ethanol producing state.

Included in the tours was dried distiller grain production and storage. Dried distiller’s grains (DDGs) are a high-protein animal feed. In 2015, Minnesota’s ethanol industry produced 3.6 million tons of DDGs, which was sufficient to meet the feed requirements of the entire inventory of cattle and calves in the state.

Sibley East High School students touring Heartland Corn Products.

“We are always pleased to welcome high school students to our plant and provide them with a first-hand look at how clean Minnesota-grown renewable energy is produced,” said Scott Blumhoeffer, Vice-President at Heartland Corn Products.

“These tours show students how a homegrown renewable ingredient is converted into a clean fuel that continues to reduce harmful greenhouse gases. These tours also provide them with a better understanding of the career opportunities in Minnesota’s ethanol industry,” said Tim Rudnicki, executive director of the Minnesota Bio-Fuels Association, whose organization organized the tours.

Sibley East High School’s agriculture science teacher, Jeff Eppen, said it was important for students to get a better understanding of the ethanol industry and how it is produced, adding some of the school’s former students have been employed at Heartland Corn Products.

“A unique part about agricultural education is the instructor, students and community help decide the curriculum for their school. We as a school have decided that we want biofuels as a part of our Ag education,” he added.

biofuels, Education, Ethanol

The GMO Labeling Debate

Jamie Johansen March 25, 2016

Our latest ZimmPoll asked the question, “What should Congress do about GMO labeling?”

It looks like we have many opinions on what Congress should do about the labeling of genetically modified organisms (GMO). Most agricultural organizations supported Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Pat Roberts bill on Biotechnology Labeling Solutions, blocking advancement of the legislation that would create a voluntary federal standard for labeling foods with genetically modified ingredients. Yet, Senate failed to agree and now it is in the hands of Congress.

Here are the poll results:

Nothing, let states decide – 31%
Pass mandatory national law – 25%
Pass voluntary, educational law – 35%
Don’t know – 6%
Other -3%

Our new ZimmPoll is now live and asks the question, Do you have a degree in agriculture?

A recent survey conducted for Land O’Lakes suggests that there is very low interest in college grads to pursue a career in agriculture. However, AgCareers.com sees a very different trend. AgCareers has a 33% increase in the number of visits to their website in the last year. This led us to wonder if you have a degree in agriculture and how you might be using it.

ZimmPoll

Senators Call for Increased RFS RVOs

Joanna Schroeder March 25, 2016

This week Senators Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and 17 others sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) calling for them to follow the congressional intent of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) by increasing blending targets (Renewable Volume Obligations/RVO) for 2017. The biofuels industry praised the senators for their call to action and released a joint statement.

“We want to thank all 19 senators for highlighting the biofuel industry’s concerns with EPA incorrectly citing distribution infrastructure as a factor in setting the 2014–2016 blending targets, and urging the agency to reverse course for the 2017 rule by simply following congressional intent. That is the very heart of why we and other biofuel groups filed a lawsuit in January against EPA.

Getting the RFS back to the statutory levels congress intended is critical in moving our nation forward to energy independence by using cleaner burning, homegrown biofuels, like ethanol, which reduce harmful emissions and our reliance on foreign oil imports. As important, returning to the statutory levels intended by Congress will provide the necessary certainty producers need to move forward with critical business decisions.

Back in the fall of 2015, Administrator McCarthy addressed biofuels stakeholders, saying, ‘EPA is working hard to make sure that the Renewable Fuel Standard program is actually moving towards the levels that Congress intended.’ We are hopeful that the EPA will follow through on their commitment, releasing a rule that reflects this and eliminates the possibility of any distribution waivers.”

We appreciate the steadfast commitment of these senators to ensure the RFS is enacted as originally envisioned and encourage the EPA to heed the recommendations of these senators, to indeed get the RFS ‘back on track’ as the agency has promised.”

Biodiesel, biofuels, EPA, Ethanol, RFS

Greenbelt Explores Cuban Alt Energy Opportunities

Joanna Schroeder March 25, 2016

Greenbelt Resources CEO Darren Eng recently took advantage of the new opportunities opening up between the United States and Cuba. He traveled to Havana, Cuba and while there met with several companies to discuss their exempt from embargo advanced modular technology that can produce products such as cellulosic biofuels and animal feed.

Eng met with a representative from the Center for Information Management and Energy Development (CUBAENERGIA), a company that provides, research-development and tech-innovation projects to companies across the country. In addition, he met with representatives from Cubazucar, a branch of the Cuban sugar industry. During his visit Eng says he confirmed that sustainable energy development is a high priority for many major Cuban industries, in particular sugar and food production.

“The mores of Cuban business rely heavily on trust, which can only be earned in person,” said Eng. “By meeting face-to-face, we jointly overcame the myriad challenges we experienced communicating long-distance, and we reaffirmed our mutual desire to develop projects utilizing Greenbelt technology.”

Eng says a variety of factors make Greenbelt Resources uniquely suitable for government approval in the current diplomatic milieu. He notes the company is not a consumer business; their technology converts local food/farm industry wastes into local resources such as renewable fuel, animal feed and sustainable energy; and the Greenbelt local-scale model benefits small private farmers, much like small-tractor maker Cleber LLC, the first private Cuban-American company approved in Cuba.

Several factors make Special Economic Zone of Mariel (ZED Mariel) suitable for an initial deployment of Greenbelt solutions, Eng added. The sugar industry and other food producers have a strong presence in the area while businesses in the zone need a reliable source of industrial energy and fuel. In addition, he says, the government promises an accelerated review and approval process with emphasis on sustainable development.

Greenbelt Resources CFO Joe Pivinski added, “Now that we have established key relationships, and through those relationships confirmed the unique potential Cuba represents to our company our goal is to establish alliances with appropriate financial partners and funding sources to obtain capital to pursue these opportunities.”

advanced biofuels, Cellulosic, Ethanol

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