Proponents Wonder Why Can’t Biodiesel Fulfill RFS

John Davis

epa-logoA hat tip to my friend Jessica Robinson over at the National Biodiesel Board for pointing out this great article from Biofuels Digest. As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed lower targets for the 2014 Renewable Fuel Standard, proponents of biodiesel are wondering why their green fuel is targeted a 20 percent reduction.

Let’s review the background on biodiesel and renewable diesel. There’s no blend wall in sight, production volumes have been growing fast, prices have been relatively stable, and because it provides a market for soybean oil, it reduces prices for ranchers and poultry farmers who use the soybean meal as animal feed.

Here are answers to your questions regarding biomass-based diesel and the proposed 2014 and 2015 standards.

Q: What is EPA’s stated method and target?

A: In the draft EPA document that is floating around the industry — which the Digest has reviewed — the EPA writes that it aims to “Base advanced volume on availability of advanced biofuels but considering the blendwall” by [setting} the advanced volume at the sum of the cellulosic standard, the BBD standard and all available volumes of non-ethanol advanced.” EPA adds that it intends to “Maintain biomass-based diesel std at 1.28 Bgal; since BBD is nested within the advanced biofuel standard, any excess volumes above 1.28 bill gal can compete with other advanced biofuels. There is limited availability of other advanced biofuels, which generates opportunities for biodiesel production above 1.28 bill gal to help meet the advanced biofuel standard.”Read More

Biodiesel, Environment, Government

Ethanol Safety Seminar Planned in Tacoma

Joanna Schroeder

Ethanol Safety SeminarThe Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) and the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway will co-host a free Ethanol Safety Seminar on October 23 and 24, 2013 at the Tacoma Fire Department Training Center in Tacoma, Washington. Sessions will run from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Registration is limited to the first 60 people per session. Lunch will be provided. Certificates of attendance will be awarded to attendees at the completion of the course.

This course was developed to give first responders, hazmat teams, and safety personnel an in-depth look at proper training techniques needed when responding to an ethanol-related emergency. A majority of this training is based on the “Complete Training Guide to Ethanol Emergency Response,” a training package created by the Ethanol Emergency Response Coalition (EERC) that has been distributed throughout the United States and to several countries worldwide.

“These training opportunities allow community responders to become more knowledgeable and better prepared to respond safely and effectively to incidents involving ethanol,” said Patrick Brady, assistant director of hazardous materials at BNSF Railway. “We feel it is important to bring in leaders in the hazmat emergency response field to share the best practices for responding to ethanol incidents with responders in communities that we serve.”

The Ethanol Safety Seminar focuses on numerous important areas of ethanol safety including an introduction to ethanol and ethanol-blended fuels, chemical and physical characteristics of ethanol and hydrocarbon fuels, transportation and transfer of ethanol-blended fuels, storage and dispensing locations, firefighting foam principles and ethanol-blended fuel, health and safety considerations for ethanol-blended fuel emergencies and tank farm and bulk storage fire incidents.

biofuels, Education, Ethanol, RFS

BioEnergy Bytes

Joanna Schroeder

  • BioEnergyBytesDFHuaneng Power International, Inc. has announced that the Distributed Energy Project for Guangxi Huaneng Guilin World Tourist City and Huaneng Hunan Guidong Hankou Wind Farm Project, both of which are wholly owned by the Company, had obtained approvals from the Development and Reform Commission of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and the Development and Reform Commission of Hunan Province, respectively.
  • Enerkem Inc., a waste-to-biofuels and renewable chemicals company, is proud to announce that it earned the top ranking by Lux Research for near-term growth opportunity among 415 companies, and was named a 2013 Global Cleantech 100 company by the Cleantech Group.
  • The NUNA 7 team of Delft’s University has won the World Championships of Solar Racing in Australia. With the very latest in solar and electronic technology, amongst the brand new, very efficient Filter Inductors of ISE Magnetics, the NUNA 7 crossed the line to claim the title with an average speed of 90 km/h for the 3,000 km journey.
  • The Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA) has revealed the three winners of its second annual Power of Wind blog contest. The first-prize winner is Gautham Krishnaraj, a B.Sc. student at McGill University studying Microbiology and Immunology. The second-prize winner is Laurence Dupuis, Laurence is currently studying Film Production at The Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema of Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. The third-prize winner is Daniel Bryce, who is working on a master’s degree in Planning at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.
Bioenergy Bytes

Cavitation Tech Deal Good for Brazil Biodiesel

John Davis

CTi Nano Reactor1Cavitation Technologies Inc.’s (CTi) first Nano Reactor system sales deal could be a positive development for biodiesel in Brazil. CTi’s strategic business partner and licensee of the company’s vegetable oil refining technology, Desmet Ballestra Group (“Desmet”), entered into a sales agreement with a soybean oil refinery in Brazil, using CTi’s Nano Neutralization(R) Reactor System that processes approximately 500 tons of soybean oil daily. This company news release says the system could be completed and ready to go by the end of June 2014.

With multiple sales in Argentina and Ecuador, this Brazilian installation marks CTi’s sixth in South America. This region has enormous sales potential in edible oil processing and refining and is a major target for the company. President Igor Gorodnitsky explains, “I can’t fully emphasize the importance of finalizing this installation in Brazil. In the edible oil processing and refining industry, Brazil is one of the largest markets in the world and we appreciate all that Desmet has done to complete this agreement.”

Mr. Gorodnitsky added, “Brazil is also one of the largest biodiesel producing countries and a world leader in bio fuel development. With our recently patented technology on processing and producing biodiesel, CTi is continuously on the lookout for additional new opportunities to implement our systems across these sectors. Brazil provides enormous potential for us moving forward.”

CTi touts its patented NanoReactor technology as significantly cutting producers’ processing costs and environmental impacts, as well as increasing the yield.

Biodiesel, International, Soybeans

EC&R Climate Dedicates Two Solar Projects

Joanna Schroeder

Congressman Ron BarberE.ON Climate & Renewables (EC&R) has dedicated two solar photovoltaic (PV) projects in the Tucson, Arizona area with a combined total of 15 megawatts (MW) of solar capacity. Both projects have long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) with Tucson Electric Power (TEP). According to Dr. Christophe Jurczak, CEO of E.ON Climate & Renewables Global Solar, these two projects are among the most technologically advanced solar PV projects in the world.

“These are our maiden solar facilities in the U.S. and signal E.ON’s commitment to solar development in the U.S. market,” said Steve Trenholm, Chairman E.ON North America.

In a statement, Congressman Ron Barber of Arizona praised the economic development opportunities that solar power brings to Arizona and the local community. “Solar-generating capacity in the United States continues to grow each year. I am proud that Arizona is a solar leader with nearly 10,000 people employed in my state’s rapidly growing solar industry.”

The first of the two projects, a 5 MW project called Tech Park Solar (TPS), was developed in collaboration with the University of Arizona Science and Technology Park (UA Tech Park) and TEP. The project started generating power in December 2012. The second, 10MW, project, Valencia Solar, came online in June 2013.

“We’ve been consistently impressed by E.ON. The company offers innovative tracking technologies and their employees possess strong expertise in renewable energy. E.ON is easy to work with and we would be pleased to work with them again,” said Carmine Tilghman, TEP’s Director of Renewable Energy.

During the ceremony, E.ON donated $10,000 to Casa de los Ninos, a local non-profit organization dedicated to preventing and treating child abuse and neglect in Tucson.

Alternative energy, Energy, Solar

Energy-Efficiency Standards Could Save Consumers $$

Joanna Schroeder

According to a new report, Energy Efficiency Performance Standards: The Cornerstone of Consumer-Friendly Energy Policy, consumers could save nearly $1,000 on annual household energy costs if energy-efficient performance standards were more prevalent and understood.

The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) report also finds a broad consensus among a variety of independent policy evaluations that energy-efficiency performance standards, iStock_000019192538XSmallwhen effectively implemented, are the ideal tool for delivering these savings. Currently, proceedings affecting almost two-dozen new energy performance standards are pending at the federal and state levels for a broad spectrum of products.

“Some analysts doubt the money-saving potential of energy efficiency standards because they assume that energy markets work perfectly and automatically push consumers toward money-saving, energy-efficient options. But that’s not how the real world works,” said Mark Cooper, Director of Research for CFA.

“Hundreds of empirical case studies we reviewed show that barriers and imperfections in energy markets create an efficiency gap—the difference between our actual level of energy consumption and the optimal level of energy consumption,” Cooper continued. “The studies show the barriers affect both the supply-side and the demand-side of markets for residential and commercial/industrial products. More importantly, evaluations of policies over the past decade indicate that those barriers can be brought down by well-designed energy-efficiency performance standards, like fuel economy standards for cars and trucks or standards for air conditioners.”

The report bases its conclusions on an extensive review of studies done by academics, think tanks, private-sector firms, and government agencies, drawing on literature by experts in several fields, including economics, energy efficiency, and technology innovation and diffusion. In addition to examining recent studies that directly address the efficiency gap and performance standards directly, the CFA study draws insights from empirical studies of two closely related fields, the innovation diffusion literature and climate change. The report will provide the analytic basis for evaluating specific standards that are currently going through regulatory review including household appliances, light duty vehicles, and heavy duty trucks.

“Critics of performance standards, whether they are efficiency gap deniers or cost-benefit naysayers, have either ignored the mountain of evidence that shows the benefits of standards far outweigh the costs, or use flawed data and misspecified models to reach unsupported and misleading conclusions. Our economic analysis confirms the pocketbook savings and our survey results show that consumers understand the benefits of these programs,” Cooper said. “Well-crafted, long-term, energy efficiency performance standards give consumers and businesses extra cash through significant energy savings.”

energy efficiency, Legislation

Cellulosic Byproduct Increases Ethanol Yield

Joanna Schroeder

jin_yongsu1-bScientists from the University of Illinois have reported that they have engineered yeast to consume acetic acid, a previously unwanted byproduct of the process of converting plant leaves, stems and other tissues into biofuels. This innovation increases ethanol yield from lignocellulosic sources (aka second generation feedstocks) by nearly 10 percent. According to researchers, the new advance will streamline the fermentation process and will simplify plant breeding and pretreatment of the cellulose. The results were published in Nature Communications.

Lignocellulose is the fibrous material that makes up the structural tissues of plants. It is one of the most abundant raw materials on the planet and, because it is rich in carbon it is an attractive source of renewable biomass for biofuels production.

The researchers explain that the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is good at fermenting simple sugars (such as those found in corn kernels and sugarcane) to produce ethanol. But coaxing the yeast to feast on plant stems and leaves is not so easy. Doing it on an industrial scale requires a number of costly steps, one of which involves breaking down hemicellulose, a key component of lignocellulose.

“If we decompose hemicellulose, we obtain xylose and acetic acid,” said University of Illinois food science and human nutrition professor Yong-Su Jin, who led the research with principal investigator Jamie Cate, of the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Jin and Cate are affiliates of the Energy Biosciences Institute (EBI), which funded the research. Jin is an affiliate of the Institute for Genomic Biology at the U of I.

“Xylose is a sugar; we can engineer yeast to ferment xylose,” Jin said. “However, acetic acid is a toxic compound that kills yeast. That is one of the biggest problems in cellulosic ethanol production.”Read More

advanced biofuels, Cellulosic, Ethanol, Research

WW2 Air Raid Bunker Converted to “Energy Bunker”

Joanna Schroeder

A former air raid bunker has been transformed into an “Energy Bunker” in the district of Wilhelmsburg, located in Hamburg, Germany. The project was part of the 2013 International Building Exhibition Hamburg (IBA) that kicked off this week. The massive building had been derelict for several decades but is now the host of a regenerative power plant supplying the surrounding community with green energy.

Former WW2 Air Raid Bunker Converted Into an "Energy Bunker" in Hamburg, GermanyThe project is part of the “Renewable Wilhelmsburg” climate protection scheme, which aims to provide the 50,000 Wilhelmsburg residents with CO2-neutral electricity by 2025 and with climate-neutral heating by 2050.

The surrounding neighborhood’s household energy is generated by a combination of energy sources: besides solar energy and biogas, the bunker also uses wood chips and waste heat from a nearby industrial plant, supplying heating energy to local households. What might be the project’s most innovative feature is its large-scale buffer storage facility with its 2 million litre capacity that integrates different eco-friendly heat and power units. The Energy Bunker also feeds the renewable power generated by its solar panels into Hamburg’s electricity grid, thereby supplying 3,000 households with heat and 1,000 households with electricity.

Another landmark project of the climate protection scheme is the “Energy Hill”, a former toxic landfill site that has been transformed into a renewable energy hill that, using solar energy and wind power, supplies 4,000 households with electricity.

Other pioneering projects include the “Energy Network Wilhelmsburg Central,” which integrates energy-generating facilities from various buildings into one large “virtual” power plant, and the BIQ House, which is setting new standards as the world’s first building to have a bioreactor façade. Microalgae are cultivated in the glass elements that make up the BIQ House’s “bio skin”. The house is part of the IBA “Building Exhibition within the Building Exhibition” project, which gives us a glimpse into urban life in the future.

Alternative energy, biogas, energy efficiency, International, Solar, Wind

BioEnergy Bytes

Joanna Schroeder

  • BioEnergyBytesDFWith the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), the Energy Information Association (EIA), and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) all reporting potential inabilities to issue reports vital to the proper functioning of the commodities and energy markets, Genscape is leveraging its vast proprietary network to ensure transparency and efficiency to all market participants. The company has announced that it will provide a complimentary “Daily Power Reactor Status Report” to backstop the NRC’s “Power Reactor Status Report” as a public service. Genscape physically monitors and captures hard data at 82% of the nation’s nuclear power generation facilities, meaning that output data does not rely on surveys, estimates or third-party sources.
  • Amyris, Inc. announced that its farnesene plant in Brazil has achieved the production run rate of 1 million liters over a 45-day period. The Amyris production facility, located adjacent to the Paraiso sugarcane mill in Brotas, Sao Paulo in Brazil, began commercial operations at the beginning of 2013 and had all six fermentors running in July to align with commercial volume needs. Amyris’s farnesene is a renewable hydrocarbon molecule addressing growing demand in a broad range of applications, from diesel and jet fuel to high-performance materials.
  • Groundbreaking has begun on the $19 million Fairfield wind farm that will include six utility scale turbines standing 398-feet tall, with a combined total of 10 MW of generating capacity. The Fairfield Wind project is jointly owned by Foundation Windpower and WINData. During construction, the project is expected to employ 50 to 60 workers. Foundation Windpower has already inked a power purchase agreement with NorthWestern Energy, which will begin accepting electricity from the turbines in 2014. Fairfield Wind may have the distinction of being one of the last wind energy projects initiated in Montana under the federal Production Tax Credit (PTC) program and is expected to be operational by June of 2014.
  • AmeriPride Services Inc., a supplier of linen and uniform rental services in North America, has announced the launch of a pilot program that will test three new types of alternative fuel vehicles in an effort to positively impact the environment and assess the impact on the company’s overall operations. Compressed natural gas (CNG), propane and plug-in electric vehicles will be tested this fall and throughout the upcoming year.
Bioenergy Bytes

Hawaiian Tour Shows Biodiesel’s Sustainability

John Davis

PacBiodiesel1A tour of some Hawaiian biodiesel facilities and the infrastructure that supports them demonstrated the sustainable nature of the green fuel. Biodiesel Magazine reports that recently Pacific Biodiesel, Big Island Biodiesel and Hawaii Pure Plant Oil hosted the tour, showing how the islands are developing a model that supports green jobs, local agriculture, the livestock industry and the community.

Guests representing various facets of the local community attended the event, from state legislators to farmers, ranchers and biodiesel fuel consumers.

With many of the pieces now in place, farmers, ranchers and biofuel producers hope to garner state support of this expanding community-based production chain. State and federal support will foster more local farming, ranching, production jobs and the involvement of the local community in sustainable, renewable energy creation, growing the local economy, keeping Hawaii green and working to achieve the state’s clean energy goals. The tour was broken into three segments.

The Hawaii Pure Plant Oil farm was founded in 2008 by father and son team Christian and Jamie Twigg-Smith who planted a total of 200 acres of jatropha with the intent of harvesting its seeds and extracting the oil for biodiesel production.

Now, five years after the farm’s inception, the Twigg-Smiths have formed a direct collaboration with Pacific Biodiesel Technologies under its federally funded Hawaii Military Biofuel Crop project. The project involves developing production models for jatropha and other potential biofuel crops such as sunflower, safflower and camelina, to share with potential biofuel crop growers throughout the state.

The article goes on to say the recently installed HMBC seed crushing mill, the first of its kind in Hawaii, can crush a wide variety of sources. In addition, those oils can be sent right next door to Big Island Biodiesel, a multifeedstock biodiesel plant.

Biodiesel