Senators Call for Big Oil Investigation

Joanna Schroeder

U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) called on the Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate possible anticompetitive Senators Grassley and Klobucharpractices by oil companies that limit consumers access to homegrown renewable fuels such as ethanol. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez, Klobuchar, the Chair of the Antitrust Subcommittee, and Grassley, the Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, urged the Administration to take action to address recent reports indicating that oil companies may be undermining efforts to distribute renewable fuels, including higher ethanol gasoline blends, that help boost our nation’s energy security and lower the price of gas for consumers.

“The promise of renewable fuels is rapidly becoming a reality and introducing much needed competition to the transportation fuels sector,” the members said. “Given the implication these alleged activities, if true, could have on competition in the marketplace, we urge you to investigate them and consider whether any action is necessary. We look forward to working with you to ensure that Americans can continue to realize the benefits of cheaper, cleaner renewable fuel.”

Both Senators Klobuchar and Grassley have been strong advocates for the continuation, as is, of the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

In response to the Senators’ calls for a Big Oil investigation, Ron Lamberty, Senior Vice President for the American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE), said, “ACE members thank Senators Grassley and Klobuchar for standing up to Big Oil and investigating this market-restricting behavior on the part of the oil companies. The RFS will only be unworkable if Congress allows Big Oil to make it appear unworkable. If we had more lawmakers like Senators Grassley and Klobuchar, maybe Big Oil’s attacks wouldn’t be taken so seriously in Washington.Read More

ACE, biofuels, E15, Ethanol, RFS

Growth in Wind Industry to Boost O&M Market

Joanna Schroeder

According to a new report from GlobalData, with wind energy capacity growing at rapid pace, the value of the operations and maintenance (O&M) market is expected to increase from $3 billion in 2008 to $19 billion in 2020. The report finds that more than 191 GW of wind power capacity was added between 2008 and 2012, which has drastically increased O&M expenditure from $3 billion to $7 billion in the same period, demonstrating a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 15.6 percent.

Wind Farm near Galva Iowa Photo Joanna SchroederOffshore wind energy will continue to attract higher O&M costs in comparison to onshore wind, reaching a market size of $5 billion, or a 29 percent share of the total O&M market in 2020. Currently, the U.S. is the largest O&M market in the world, but GlobalData expects that China will surpass it to become the leader in O&M expenditure, with a 24.7 percent share of the market by 2020.

Prasad Tanikella, GlobalData’s Senior Analyst, said: “Higher turbine maintenance, high logistics costs and a lack of skilled manpower make offshore wind services more challenging than the onshore equivalent. Although onshore wind also faces similar issues, the impact of these factors on the offshore segment is more significant.”

According to Wind Operations & Maintenance Market, 2013 Update – Global Market Size, Share by Component, Competitive Landscape and Key Country Analysis to 2020, the growth in the wind industry’s O&M cost is largely due to the increasing age of wind turbines and the failure of components such as blades and gearboxes.

“This increase in market size is leading to a rise in the number of companies providing specialized wind turbine O&M services, which is in turn bringing the benefit of lower costs to consumers,” Tanikella concluded.

Electricity, Energy, Renewable Energy, Research, Wind

Solar Panels Being Installed On White House

Joanna Schroeder

They say nothing is a secret in Washington, D.C. and it’s no secret that after intense pressure from several environmental organizations including 350.org, solar panels are now being installed on the White House. Some will remember the days when President Jimmy weputsolaronit1Carter installed 32 solar panels on the storied home back in the late 70s only to have them removed when President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981 saying they were a “joke”.

Another company that helped lead the effort was Sungevity, whose co-founder Danny Kennedy helped solicit more than 50,000 signatures in 2010 urging the President and First Lady to install solar power on the White House.

“Sungevity applauds President Obama for upholding his commitment to renewable energy by putting solar panels back on the White House. Solar is fast becoming America’s most popular home improvement, and we are very pleased to see the First Family follow the American peoples’ lead,” said Kennedy. “Support for solar energy is one issue that rises above the political fray. All Americans can reap benefits from widespread solar adoption – solar power saves money, boosts the economy and creates jobs.”

In light of the news installation has begun, Unity College, an environmental college in Maine, has been promoting its role in rescuing the original solar panels from obscurity. In 2010, Swiss filmmakers Christina Hemauer and Roman Keller told the story in a documentary called, A Road Not Taken. When President Carter installed the panels atop the White House, he characterized the action as either a bold step in the development of cheap, renewable energy, or an example of a road not taken. The latter was the course of history and artistic focus of the documentary.

Sara Trunzo ’08, Food and Farms Project Coordinator at Unity College, was featured in the documentary. She and another Unity College alum, Jason Reynolds ’05, went on a road trip from Unity, Maine, to the Carter Center in Atlanta, Georgia, searching for the meaning of America’s turn from the opportunity to pursue renewable energy that President Carter had championed.

“My participation in ‘A Road Not Taken’ was a transformative moment in my education because it helped me understand the power of integrating sustainability, communication, policy, art, and activism to send a message,” said Trunzo. “The film is a beautiful piece of modern storytelling that captures an important moment in US energy history and Unity College history, too.”

Electricity, Renewable Energy, Solar, Video

Iowa E85 Sales Jump 43% in 2nd Quarter

Joanna Schroeder

E85 pump price Aug 2013Sales of E85 have increased 43 percent over the first quarter of 2013. Iowans purchased more than 2.62 million gallons of E85 in the second quarter of 2013, up from the 1.83 million gallons of E85 purchased in the first quarter of 2013, according to Iowa Department of Revenue data.

“E85 sales were down at the end of 2012 and beginning of 2013 due to last summer’s drought, but we’re seeing those numbers turn around now with very attractive E85 prices,” said Iowa Renewable Fuels Association (IRFA), Executive Director Monte Shaw. “As impressive as the 43 percent increase in second quarter E85 sales was, we should see E85 sales grow even further as the price savings are even better now. I routinely pay more than $1 per gallon less than regular unleaded for E85, and that’s serious savings.”

The IRFA recently launched a wholesale E85 price reporting campaign to promote greater transparency for retailers and distributors of E85 in order to aid retailers in supplying their consumers with the lowest-cost E85 available. The IRFA publishes Thursday’s wholesale E85 prices every Friday.

biofuels, E85, Ethanol, Iowa RFA

BioEnergy Bytes

Joanna Schroeder

  • BioEnergyBytesDFCanadian Solar has been chosen to provide solar modules for a solar project on the Leeward Islands. Comet Solar, an Anguilla-based solar installation company selected Canadian Solar, and when complete the solar power project will provide an estimated 600KW of power per year, making it the largest commercial project permitted by the St. Kitts & Nevis Government to date.
  • The most powerful turbine-generator unit ever built by Voith has entered service in the Chinese hydropower plant Xiluodu on the Jinsha River. After a successful 72-hour test run, Voith handed over the first of a total of three such machines to the customer “China Three Gorges Corporation.” With 784 megawatt the output of the generator-turbine unit in Xiluodu is higher than that of the world’s largest hydropower plants and consequently sets new standards.
  • The World Energy Council (WEC) has welcomed Enerjisa as the newest member of Global Partner programme. Enerjisa is a leading energy company operating in Turkey’s electricity generation, distribution, trading, wholesale and retail markets. The WEC is working to devise strategies to address global energy challenges and to deliver sustainable energy systems.
  • The 6th Sugar Asia conference will be held at the Bombay Exhibition Centre in Mumbai February 27-28, 2014. Sugar Asia is an international Conference and Expo on Sugar and its allied industries. This two days event will be focused on equipments and technology display for Sugar and allied industries like Ethanol, Distilleries, Cogen and Cane Farming. A two days conference is major highlight of the event where galaxy of international speakers are going to deliver best of their research, information and experience in front of the audience coming from various countries.
Bioenergy Bytes

Algae Int’l, Gulf Hydrocarbon Ink Biodiesel Deal

John Davis

algaegulfhydroA commercial scale algae producer and a biodiesel maker ink a deal that will end up turning algae oil into biodiesel. Biodiesel Magazine reports Gulf Hydrocarbon will represent Algae International Group in sales and distribution of its algal oils and products created with the algal oils, including biodiesel, and precedes Algae International Group’s commercial production at its pilot facility located in Tulare, Calif.

Algae International Group advises that it will start the relationship with Gulf Hydrocarbon by shipping samples of proprietary and nonproprietary algal oils for testing as feedstocks for biodiesel. Jess Hewitt, chairman of Gulf Hydrocarbon, said, “Algae oils were approved by the U.S. EPA for use as a biodiesel feedstock in 2010 but we have yet to see the feedstock available. By shipping samples to the biodiesel producers, we can begin the process of registering the numerous production plants with the EPA.”

As a part of the agreement, Gulf Hydrocarbon will offer standard biodiesel reference fuels made using Algae International Group’s output from its pilot facility. “In order to satisfy the OEM’s requirements for engine and material compatibility, we must be able to supply a standard reference fuel before the engine manufacturers can certify use of the algal-based biodiesel in vehicle and nonroad engines,” Hewitt said. “Gulf Hydrocarbon will be responsible for quality control and packaging of these fuels for distribution to fuel laboratories and OEM testing facilities.”

Gulf Hydrocarbon will also represent Algae International Group’s excess biogas market.

algae, Biodiesel

Investing Big Bucks in Biodiesel from Down Under

John Davis

Lignol Energy logoThe owner of Australia’s biggest biodiesel plant is seeing more greenbacks (or, well, whatever the nickname is for Down Under Dollars) for its company. Lignol Energy Corporation, already a leader in advanced biofuels and renewable chemicals, is putting another nearly $1 million US dollars into Territory Biofuels Limited, increasing LEC’s share of TBF to about two-thirds of its holdings.

“We are excited to be increasing our ownership in such a large scale biofuels project. This investment represents the opportunity for our company to have a substantial majority equity interest in potentially a very profitable business”, said Ross MacLachlan, CEO and Chairman of LEC. “Our goal remains to work with TBF with a view to restarting the plant in late 2013 with an appropriate project funding package in place. Once operational, we plan to incorporate plant upgrades to process lower cost feedstocks that should further enhance margins in 2014.”

TBF owns a large scale biodiesel plant in Darwin, Northern Territory. It was originally built in 2008 to turn palm oil and food-grade vegetable oil but closed down in 2009. Next year, there are plans to re-open the plant to run on more feedstocks, including tallow, used cooking oil and palm sludge oil.

Biodiesel, International

How the Make the RFS Attainable

Joanna Schroeder

According to Purdue University energy policy specialist Wally Tyner, the U.S. can likely produce federally mandated levels of biofuels under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) in 2014 if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reduces its requirements by 2.3 billion gallons. The RFS requires a minimum amount of biofuels to be blended into transportation fuels such as gasoline and diesel. For 2013, that level is 16.55 billion gallons. As it stands now, the volume requirement continues to rise each year until 2022.

tyner-w10Tyner projects that refiners could reasonably expect to produce 15.85 billion gallons of biofuels, less than the 18.15 billion that the EPA requires in its RFS for 2014. The EPA said on Aug. 6 that it will “propose adjustments” to next year’s volume requirements in the next few weeks. One element that has caused the EPA to change required volumes is the lack of commercially available “advanced” and “cellulosic” biofuels. However, despite the lowering of these category volumes, the EPA has maintained the overall biofuels production requirement.

“The devil is in the details. However, it is clear that if the EPA does what is implied … the RFS moves from being unworkable to quite manageable,” Tyner says in his article, “The Biofuels Renewable Fuel Standard – EPA to the Rescue.”

The RFS has been a topic of debate for several years in part because of the corn ethanol “blend wall,” the point at which the market cannot consume as much ethanol as the EPA requires to be produced. One reason, and one that was not factored in during the development of the RFS, is the decreased consumption of gasoline nationwide –  from 141 billion gallons in 2007, when the RFS mandates were last updated, to a rate of 133 billion now.

Tyner calculates in the report that 15.85 billion gallons of biofuels can be produced in 2014 if the EPA reduces its volume targets for corn ethanol to better align with the blend wall, Wheat Straw credit: Flickr Creative Commons:and by lowering its requirements for production of cellulosic biofuels such as from corn stover, straw and Miscanthus grass to what the EPA might deem to be available.

He said blend requirements could be met in 2015 and 2016 with similar reductions. With no changes in the RFS, the energy industry would have to blend 20.5 billion gallons of biofuels into gasoline in 2015 and 22.25 billion gallons in 2016. His calculations would reduce those totals to 16.58 billion in 2015 and 17.3 billion the following year.

The EPA has shown willingness to reconsider the blend mandates and using information it has at hand, along with analyses done by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), plans to announce final 2014 volumes sometime this fall.

advanced biofuels, biofuels, Cellulosic, Ethanol, RFS

DOE Looks to Better Catalysts for Biomass to Biofuel

John Davis

argonne1New and better catalysts could be the key to unlocking the potential biofuel locked up in biomass. This article from the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory says scientists at the lab’s Institute for Atom-Efficient Chemical Transformations (IACT) for the past four years have been looking at how to improve the efficiency and selectivity of catalysts:

IACT was originally founded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in 2009 as a special Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), in which scientists from both academic institutions and government labs were asked to team up to discover better ways of converting biomass – plant sugars from corn or sugarcane – into combustible diesel fuel, jet fuel or gasoline.

“While catalysts are used in a countless number of manufacturing and industrial processes, we wanted to focus on biofuels because they provide a challenging platform on which to work,” [Argonne chemist Chris] Marshall said. “The point of the EFRCs is to focus on some of the most important scientific problems we face today.”

In order to successfully convert biomass into fuel, Marshall and his colleagues have developed a roadmap of chemical reactions. Each of these reactions requires either a different catalytic material or a different set of reaction conditions to work effectively.

“The problem with biomass is that it’s loaded with oxygen, while the fuels we’re trying to create are much more oxygen-poor and hydrogen-rich,” Marshall said. “Hydrogen is an expensive commodity; if we’re going to use it, we need to use it judiciously.”

The most daunting task for the scientists is to improve the catalysts’ selectivity, while increasing the lifespan of these workhorses of biomass conversion. One discovery that is helping is a technique called “overcoating,” in which a dome-like sheath of protective material is added on top of the metal catalyst. Using a method known as atomic layer deposition (ALD), researchers are able to deposit extremely thin and uniform sheets of material on different surfaces, just a few atoms thick. They hope eventually to expand the process into biological molecules.

biomass, Government

New EPA Head Positive on Renewable Fuels

Cindy Zimmerman

The newly confirmed head of the Environmental Protection Agency visited the Iowa State Fair last week where she spoke to farmers and met with environmentalists.

mccarthy-iowaEPA Administrator Gina McCarthy stressed her goal of building a better relationship with farmers. “My commitment to you is that at the end of my term, we will have a stronger, more productive, more trusting relationship between EPA and the agriculture community,” she said during her brief remarks.

In an interview with USDA Radio from Iowa, McCarthy was positive about the role of renewable fuels going forward. “We’re at a pretty exciting time,” she said. “We are seeing a lot of activity, especially here in Iowa where they have advanced ethanol plants. We’re working closely with the farming community and we’re looking at new feedstocks all the time, new ways of producing biofuels.”

Earlier this month, the EPA published the final 2013 Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) volumetric blending requirements, or Renewable Volume Obligations (RVO), and McCarthy says they support the RFS. “We see that the Renewable Fuel Standard is operating effectively, that the law gives us plenty of tools and flexibility that we can move this forward,” she said.

McCarthy was just confirmed as the administrator of EPA last month.

Ethanol, Ethanol News, Government