California Governor Outlines Energy Goals

Cindy Zimmerman

cal-gov-brown-2015Sworn in for his second, second term as Governor of the state of California on Monday, Edmund Gerald “Jerry” Brown, Jr. outlined three energy-related goals he would like to see the state accomplish within the next 15 years.

“First, increase from one-third to 50 percent our electricity derived from renewable sources,” said Gov. Brown in his inaugural address. “Two – and even more difficult – reduce today’s petroleum use in cars and trucks by up to 50 percent; three, double the efficiency of existing buildings and make heating fuels cleaner.”

He continued: We must also reduce the relentless release of methane, black carbon and other potent pollutants across industries. And we must manage farm and rangelands, forests and wetlands so they can store carbon. All of this is a very tall order. It means that we continue to transform our electrical grid, our transportation system and even our communities.

I envision a wide range of initiatives: more distributed power, expanded rooftop solar, micro-grids, an energy imbalance market, battery storage, the full integration of information technology and electrical distribution and millions of electric and low-carbon vehicles.

Brown was sworn in for an unprecedented fourth term as California governor this week, with his second and third terms separated by over 30 years.

Energy, Government, Solar

Iowa State Students to Ride Smarter on Biodiesel Bus

John Davis

cyride1Students at Iowa State University will get to class a little smarter… and not just because of good study habits. The school and the university’s hometown of Ames, Iowa have inked a deal with Iowa-based Renewable Energy Group (REG) that will see CyRide, the transit agency serving the City of Ames and Iowa State University, to supply biodiesel blended fuel in 2015.

REG Energy Services, LLC began providing 350,000 gallons of fuel with biodiesel blends of up to 20 percent for CyRide’s 78 buses January 1. The agreement is REG’s first with a municipality.

“We want to thank CyRide for choosing REG Energy Services as its 2015 fuel partner,” said Don Nelson, REG Director, Regional Sales. “As REG Energy Services expands, we look forward to the opportunity to work with municipalities to provide a high-quality product that provides for energy and food security, job creation and environmental stewardship.”

Ames will increase its use of biodiesel from previous years under the agreement, which provides buses with higher blends of the advanced biofuel during the summer months. The CyRide fleet serves an average of 40,000 riders daily and operates approximately 1.2 million miles a year. The city will see carbon dioxide emission reductions of as much as 658 metric tons in 2015 with the increased biodiesel blends.

The REG biodiesel will come from the company’s Magellan terminal, just down the rode in Des Moines. City officials say with the environmental benefits of the sustainable biodiesel, everyone wins with this deal.

Biodiesel, REG

Enel Green Power Starts Geothermal Plant

Joanna Schroeder

The Bagnore 4 geothermal power plant located in the municipalities of Santa Fiora and Arcidosso, near Grosseto, in the Italian region of Tuscany is online and grid connected. The project was completed by Enel Green Power and has an installed capacity of 40 MW and will generate up to 310 million kWh per year. Bagnore 4 joins the 20 MW Bagnore 3 plant and is composed of two 20 MW turbines.

Enel Green Power logoThe construction of the new plant involved a total investment of around 120 million euros, partly financed with funds from the European Investment Bank (EIB). The project is in line with the growth targets set out in Enel Green Power’s 2014-2018 business plan, which calls for around 600 million euros of investment in geothermal power in Tuscany.

The company says its new plant was designed to meet the highest international standards and to employ the most environmentally friendly technology available. Bagnore 4 also features a sophisticated monitoring and remote diagnostics system to ensure high reliability and efficiency.

Electricity, Geothermal, International

BioEnergy Bytes

Joanna Schroeder

  • http://energy.agwired.com/category/bioenergy-bytes/Hanwha SolarOne has announced they have signed a deal with a leading photovoltaic (PV) developer for the supply of 80 megawatts (MW) of solar PV modules to a project in the Antofagasta Region. The solar installations will be powered by Hanwha SolarOne’s new polycrystalline module generation, the HSL S Series.
  • China Sunergy has announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, CEEG (Nanjing) Renewable Energy Co., Ltd., has won a 30 MW contract from Enrich Energy Pvt. Ltd, an integrated solar energy solutions provider and a pioneer in India focused on developing large scale private solar parks across India.
  • Aquatherm Industries, Inc. congratulates Mr. Reed Wilson in having been elected President of the Florida Solar Energy Industries Association (FlaSEIA). Wilson is owner of Aquatherm’s long-time Florida Distribution Center Aquatherm Solar Supply as well as Fort Myers-based HVAC and solar contracting firm FL Green Team.
  • The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) has announced the extension of the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Rebate program, which will continue to provide $2,000 rebates for large-battery system plug-in hybrid electric and battery-electric vehicles until June 30, 2015, or until the 500 vehicle benchmark is reached. To date, DEP has more than 150 rebates remaining at this amount. DEP has invested $4.35 million toward the deployment of electric vehicles in Pennsylvania since 2011.
Bioenergy Bytes

Carolina Biodiesel Producer to Expand Operations

John Davis

blueridge1Western North Carolina-based Blue Ridge Biofuels will expand its operations to turn oilseeds and used cooking oil into biodiesel. The company says this year’s expansion will take their capability from about 360,000 gallons of the green fuel a year to a million gallons this year and up to 3 million gallons in the coming years.

Early in 2015, we’re setting up shop at the Catawba County EcoComplex in Newton, NC where we can make a lot more biodiesel. Plus, we can expand into new markets, since we are the first biodiesel producer in the Charlotte area to make fuel from used cooking oil. And we’re still going to be here 100% for our fuel customers and restaurant clients in Western North Carolina. One thing we love about making biodiesel is the way it connects us to the community: from farmers who grow oil crops, to restaurants that recycle their used cooking oil, to our partners in the green economy, to our awesome customers who use biodiesel to heat their homes, run their vehicles, and power their businesses. We’re going to keep our biodiesel distribution hub and a used cooking oil collection hub here in Asheville — so we can keep our local economy and community growing.

Blue Ridge Biofuels has also launched a partnership to sell Bioheat – a biodiesel heating oil mix – and is able to claim its first full year under the BQ-9000 quality standard.

Biodiesel

Genetics to Help in Biomass-to-Biofuel Conversion

John Davis

Researchers might have found a more efficient way to turn biomass into biofuel using plant genetics. This article from Phys.org says plant geneticists Sam Hazen at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Siobhan Brady at the University of California, Davis, have sorted out the gene regulatory networks that would have the biggest impacts on the green fuel production.

The authors say that the most rigid of the polymers, lignin, represents “a major impediment” to extracting sugars from plant biomass that can be used to make biofuels. Their genetic advance is expected to “serve as a foundation for understanding the regulation of a complex, integral plant component” and as a map for how future researchers might manipulate the polymer-forming processes to improve the efficiency of biofuel production.

The three key components, found in plant tissues known as xylem, provide plants with mechanical strength and waterproof cells that transport water. Working in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, Hazen, Brady and colleagues explored how a large number of interconnected transcription factors regulate xylem and cell wall thickening. Results appeared in an early online edition Dec. 24 in Nature.

An invited commentary in the journal on the significance of this discovery points out that “understanding how the relative proportions of these biopolymers are controlled in plant tissue would open up opportunities to redesign plants for biofuel use.” Hazen, Brady and colleagues’ study identified hundreds of new regulators and offers “considerable insight,” the authors say, “into the developmental regulation of xylem cell differentiation.”

The authors of the study were able to find that most of the proteins including regulators of cell cycle and differentiation bind directly to cellulose genes and to other transcription regulators, giving plants a huge number of possible combinations for responding and adapting to environmental stressors.

biofuels, biomass, Research

Ethanol Report Looks at Year Ahead

Cindy Zimmerman

ethanol-report-adUnfinished business and much of the same old attacks on the RFS are likely to dominate 2015 for the ethanol industry.

In this edition of “The Ethanol Report,” Renewable Fuels Association president and CEO Bob Dinneen takes a look at what he expects to be some of the big issues for ethanol in the year ahead.

Ethanol Report on Industry Outlook for 2015
Audio, Ethanol, Ethanol News, Ethanol Report, RFA, RFS

2014 Energy Legislation in Review

Joanna Schroeder

As 2015 kicks off the Center for the New Energy Economy (CNEE) has released an Advanced Energy Legislation 2014 Year in Review. During 2014, the report found that 430 advanced energy bills became law. While the total number of enacted bills decreased from 713 in 2013, CNEE found that percentages of energy legislation by policy category remained stable. This leads the company to predict that interest in energy policy should remain somewhat constant over the next year.

Screen Shot 2014-12-29 at 9.44.48 PM

Figure 1. 2014 Enacted Legislation by Policy Category (430 bills)

There were several notable pieces of legislation passed last year including energy legislation in California, Hawaii, Nevada, Maine, Minnesota and Rhode Island. In 2014, South Carolina became the latest state to enact a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) focused on distributed generation while Ohio and Indiana suffered setbacks. Other key actions during the year included state responses to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Clean Power Plan proposed rule, along with concerns over revenue shortfalls in the federal Highway Trust Fund due to increased fuel economy and new pipeline safety rules.

A few other key wins for renewable energy included Maine’s new solar standard that will grow the state’s use of solar energy from an estimated 40 MW in 2016 to 500 MW n 2030. Massachusetts added a renewable thermal energy storage standard.

The report was based on CNEE’s Advanced Energy Legislation Tracker, a tool for finding and tracking energy legislation by state (and federal). Click here to read.

Electricity, Energy, Legislation, Renewable Energy

BioEnergy Bytes

Joanna Schroeder

  • BioEnergyBytesDFTerraForm Power has completed its acquisition of 77.6 MW of distributed generation solar power plants from the Capital Dynamics U.S. Solar Energy Fund, L.P. The transaction is expected to provide approximately $21 million in unlevered Cash Available for Distribution (CAFD) in the next year and will be immediately accretive to CAFD per share. The power purchase agreements in the acquired portfolio have a weighted average remaining contract life of 19 years with a weighted average credit rating of A3/A-.
  • San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) has announced that more than 1,000 MW of renewable power is being delivered to the San Diego region made possible by the new $1.9 billion Sunrise Powerlink transmission line project. The addition of the 150-MW Solar Gen 2 Imperial Valley solar project now brings to more than 1,000 MW the total amount of solar and wind power being transmitted to SDG&E customers from the Imperial Valley.
  • Renewable Energy Systems Americas has announced the completion of a portion of the 267 MW Tucannon River Wind Farm in Washington State. The company served as the Balance of Plant (BOP) construction contractor for the project’s owner, Portland General Electric (PGE). The project consists of 116 2.3 MW Siemens turbines and is expected to produce enough clean, renewable energy to power the homes of approximately 84,000 average residential customers.
  • Solar-Tectic LLC has been issued a patent for their technology that allows for the growth of single crystal semiconductor films on inexpensive substrates such as glass, from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The technology was invented by the late Dr. Praveen Chaudhari, winner of the 1995 US Medal of Technology and Innovation, and has applications in various industries in addition to solar, such as displays and LEDs. U.S. patent 8,916,455 titled “Method of Growing Heteroepitaxial Single Crystal of Large Grained Semiconductor Films on Glass Substrates and Devices Thereon” promises to solve a long standing challenge in materials science, namely, the growth of single crystal semiconductor films directly on amorphous substrates, such as glass.
Bioenergy Bytes