ACT Expo to Kick off in Washington, D.C.

Joanna Schroeder June 24, 2013

The 2013 Alternative Clean Transportation (ACT) Expo kicks off at the Washington Convention Center today and during the three-day show, new technology diesel advancements in both heavy-duty trucks and light-duty passenger vehicles will be showcased by the Diesel Technology Forum. According ACT, their Expo is North America’s largest alternative fuel and clean vehicle technology conference and expo – representing electric, hybrid, hydrogen, natural gas, propane autogas, and renewable fuels.

The Diesel Technology Forum will display information about new technology diesel engines and display one of the newest diesel vehicles now available in the United States – the 2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee EcoDiesel. Forum Executive Director Allen Schaeffer will also participate in an Executive Roundtable – “State of the Union: An Overview of the Alternative Fuel Industry in 2013 and Key Issues for the Road Ahead”. The roundtable will be moderated by New York Times energy reporter Matthew L. Wald and will include:

Roy Willis , Chief Executive Officer, Propane Education & Research Council
Marty Durbin , Chief Executive Officer, America’s Natural Gas Alliance
Allen Schaeffer , Executive Director, Diesel Technology Forum
Brian Wynne , President, Electric Drive Transportation Association
Peter Lehner , Executive Director, Natural Resources Defense Council

According to the U.S. and international energy and transportation experts, diesel is going to remain the “dominant” growth fuel in transportation for several decades. Today, more than 80 percent of cargo in the U.S. is transported by diesel power and more than 90 percent worldwide. As a result, the Diesel Technology Forum says diesel technology will play a major role in improving fuel efficiency and reducing vehicle emissions.

Alternative Vehicles, biofuels, Hydrogen, Natural Gas, Propane

Uncertainty over RFS Hurting Biofuel Investment

Joanna Schroeder June 24, 2013

While Florida was debating the future of its Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) many biofuel companies fought hard to keep it in place. One supporter was Brad Krohn with Florida-based United States EnviroFuels. Brad recently spoke with our Chuck Zimmerman following a day of testimony heard by the Florida House. They just had a follow up discussion about how things are going for the company.

US EnviroFuels has a 30 million gallon a year advanced ethanol project in the works that is based on conventional, well-proven Brazilian style technology. The plant’s primary feedstock is sugarcane and secondary feedstock is sweet sorghum – both of which will be processed into advanced low carbon ethanol and renewable power.

Krohn said the the project is designed, and they have raised capital in their first and second funding rounds. In addition, the project has been issued three major permits for construction from Florida and it is very close to construction. However, Krohn said they are still in the process of getting the project fully funded. Hopefully, the company will find support from interested investors to complete their project which will have a significant positive impact to the local community.

Krohn explained that current political uncertainty has made it nearly impossible to get the equity funding his project and others need. “I believe that the oil industry is succeeding in stymieing or chilling the investment into next generation ethanol, whether you call it Gen 1.5 or Generation 2 ethanol, primarily through three-fronts the oil industry is focused on.”

“The first is repeal of the federal RFS, either an all-out appeal of the RFS or significant compromise in Congress. The second is an appeal of EPA’s approval of E15, gasoline that contains 15 percent ethanol. And the third is refusal to flat-out blend percentages of ethanol higher than 10 percent, which effectively is not complying with the mandated volumes under the RFS to go to higher blends of ethanol,” continued Krohn. “All these factors are contributing to the financial community being very, very skeptical or weary of investing in to the ethanol industry no matter how good a project is; no matter how viable a project is for advanced ethanol. The investment community sees tremendous political instability for the future of ethanol.”

Listen to Chuck’s interview with Brad Krohn to learn more about how the oil industry is trying to alter the future of ethanol: Interview with Brad Krohn

advanced biofuels, Audio, E15, Ethanol, RFS

Biodiesel Bounces Back in Iowa

John Davis June 24, 2013

The last year or two has been especially tough for the biodiesel industry, but the green fuel is seeing a comeback. And nowhere is that more apparent than Iowa, one of the nation’s leaders in biodiesel production. This article in Iowa Farmer Today says the biodiesel industry is having a much better year this year and even quotes Iowa Biodiesel Board executive director Randy Olson saying that this could be a “record year.”

There are several reasons.

First and foremost is the fact the renewable fuels standard (RFS) considers biodiesel an advanced biofuel and includes a target of 1.28 billion gallons for 2013, Olson says.

He adds it is possible the industry could produce as much as 1.5 billion or 1.6 billion gal. in 2013. That would be an increase of roughly 50 percent from 2012.

Second, the federal tax credit is in effect. That credit was allowed to expire in 2010 and again in 2012. When it was renewed at the end of this past year, the renewal was made retro-active to 2012.

That credit could expire again, and Olson says the industry supports a renewal of it, but he says because of the RFS, biodiesel producers are in a better position to weather the loss of a tax credit than they were in 2010.

“We’re just looking for stability right now,” he says of government policies.

A third factor helping today’s biodiesel producers is the basic economic fact that oil prices are comparatively high, and soybean prices have come down from the record highs they reached in recent years.

The result of all this is fuel blenders are using more biodiesel than they have in the last couple of years, with some using it for the first time and others upping their blends from B5 all the way up to B20 in some cases,

Another factor that serves the Iowa biodiesel industry well is the nature of feedstocks. More than half of biodiesel nationwide is made from soybean oil, a major product for Iowa, with corn oil and animal fats, also big products for the Hawkeye State, going into the green fuel.

Supporters of biodiesel in Iowa say their biggest concern right now is preservation of the RFS.

Biodiesel

XIOLINK Installs Solar Panels In St. Louis

Joanna Schroeder June 24, 2013

XIOLINK LLC, has completed the first phase of the installation of an advanced solar electricity system to provide sustainable energy to its downtown St. Louis, Missouri headquarters. The building has become one of the first in the city’s central business district to install solar panels. The full solar system will be completed by Labor Day.

“We’re committed to using innovative, sustainable solutions that benefit the environment as well as our business operations, and the addition of solar energy not only helps us reduce our carbon footprint but positively impacts our bottom line,” said Brad Pittenger, co-founder and CEO at XIOLINK. “It will also enable us to invest the green energy savings into better serving our clients and continuing to develop our outstanding IT professionals at XIOLINK.”

St. Peters, MO-based SunEdison manufactured the Silvantis Solar Photovoltaic modules that were used with the design and installation completed by Brightergy. The solar panels will supply power for XIOLINK’s offices and network operations center.

With the addition of solar energy, XIOLINK remains committed to using smart technologies to reduce environmental impact, as well as maximizing resources and efficiency. Last year, XIOLINK was named one of St. Louis Business Journal’s “Heroes of the Planet”.

Electricity, Energy, energy efficiency, Solar

Genscape Monitoring to Ensure RIN Integrity

John Davis June 24, 2013

The recent crisis over fraudulent Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) led to great consternation in the biofuels community, as obligated parties sought assurances that the RINs they were buying were legitimate and met their obligations. Provider of energy information for commodity and financial markets Genscape, which got its start in monitoring the power grids, has expanded into the biofuels area.

“We started looking at how we could extend what we’re doing in the energy space into ag, [in particular], around the soy area,” explains Robert Barton, managing director at Genscape. That led to a conversation with the National Biodiesel Board, in the middle of the RIN integrity issue. Genscape looked at new ways to use their technology and monitoring techniques from a labor-intensive method of quarterly monitoring to a more frequent, independent, real-time monitoring, “Which is the RIN Integrity Network.”

Robert says they monitor three data streams … an initial on-site audit, information provided by the producer, and independent monitoring … to monitor and cross-check the information they get to make sure they have a truly accurate picture and assuring that the producer is really producing the amount if gallons for the number of RINs they claim. He also points out that Genscape is completely outside of the sales process, so there’s no conflict of interest.

Genscape has also just been approved to monitor the ethanol industry to ensure those RINs, and the company believes its flexibility will give them more insight around the plants and how the obligated parties will have better buying information. Robert says they are also poised to get into the cellulosic ethanol industry, but that demand for that market has not come up yet.

Genscape is also the first EPA-approved QAP provider and now first to have EPA approval for biofuels produced at foreign facilities and imported into the US. This new EPA designation is another feather in the cap for Genscape’s RIN Integrity Network. More information is available at http://info.genscape.com/canadian-producer-roadmap.

And while most of these programs described above are for their paying client base, Gensacpe also offers some free information aggregated on their web site, Genscape.com/biofuels.

Listen to Joanna’s interview with Robert here: Robert Barton, managing director at Genscape

Audio, Biodiesel, biofuels, Ethanol, News, RINS

New Energy Systems Integration Facility Announced

Joanna Schroeder June 21, 2013

A new Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF) will be built in Golden, Colorado, sponsored by the Energy Department and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) that will focus on utility-scale clean energy grid integration. The facility’s first industry partner – Colorado-based Advanced Energy Industries – has already signed on to start work at ESIF, developing lower cost, better performing solar power inverters.

“Our National Laboratories are a national treasure that help America’s entrepreneurs and innovators to accelerate the development of new technologies,” said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.“This new facility will allow for an even stronger partnership with manufacturers, utilities and researchers to help integrate more clean, renewable energy into a smarter, more reliable and more resilient power grid.”

The 182,500-square-foot ESIF is the nation’s first facility to help both public and private sector researchers scale-up promising clean energy technologies – from solar modules and wind turbines to electric vehicles and efficient, interactive home appliances – and test how they interact with each other and the grid at utility-scale.

ESIF will house more than 15 experimental laboratories and several outdoor test beds, including an interactive hardware-in-the-loop system that lets researchers and manufacturers test their products at full power and real grid load levels. The facility will also feature a petascale supercomputer that can support large-scale modeling and simulation at one quadrillion operations per second.

“ESIF is an excellent example of the impact that federally-funded research can have on solving national problems beyond the scope of private investment. And, it demonstrates the importance of partnerships among the federal government, industry, and academia,” NREL Director Dan Arvizu said. “With NREL’s 35-year focus on developing competitive renewable energy and efficiency technologies, we’re pleased to take a leadership role in this next frontier of energy research.”

Congress provided $135 million to construct and equip the user facility and the President’s FY 2014 budget request includes an additional $20 million for facility operations.

Alternative Vehicles, Clean Energy, Smart Grid, Solar

EPA Approves EcoEngineer’s QAP Program

Joanna Schroeder June 21, 2013

The U.S. Environmental Agency (EPA) has approved EcoEngineers’ application to implement a quality assurance program (QAP) for Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs) generated on biofuels produced at foreign facilities and imported into the U.S. In February, EcoEngineers became the first in the U.S. to be approved to audit domestic RINs, which oil companies use to account for their compliance under the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).

The QAP program, as outlined in the EPA’s Notice of Proposed Rule Making (NPRM), was originally written to cover only domestic production. Now RINs generated by importers on foreign production and RINs generated by foreign companies will also be covered by EcoEngineers’ QAP program.

“We’re very pleased with the direction EPA is taking,” EcoEngineers Partner and Senior Engineer James Ramm said. “The breadth of services we offer meets the needs of diverse players in the biofuel supply chain and the EPA is supporting our role as a validator of RINs.”

EcoEngineers currently assists foreign facilities to be “QAP ready,” meaning the company will monitor production and operations at foreign facilities to ensure they meet RFS requirements. Importers who buy biofuels from EcoEngineers’ foreign “QAP Ready” facilities can generate QAP RINs for the imported fuels they purchase from them.

While there is no deadline for establishing final QAP guidelines, EPA has indicated it hopes they will be released this fall. The QAP program in its final form is expected to authorize third parties to certify the validity of RIN credits and protect from liability refiners that purchase the validated RINs.

Biodiesel, biofuels, Ethanol, RFS, RINS

LCFS Remains Under Fire

Joanna Schroeder June 21, 2013

Recently, the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) announced that it will not sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at this time to force it to promulgate a national Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). According to the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), such a cap and trade program for transportation fuels would make drivers pay more at the pump and significantly weaken America’s energy security.

The news came several weeks after EPA Administrator nominee Gina McCarthy said to Congress, “EPA is not considering nor does it have any plans to seek to establish a federal LCFS.” California passed its version of the LCFS and was subsequently sued and found unconstitutional by the Supreme Court; although, while the courts work out the details, the state is allowed to continue rolling out its law.

CEA is pleased to learn that IPI has decided -at least for now- that it will not sue EPA to get what it wants: an onerous new mandate on transportation fuels that will hurt American consumers and weaken our energy security,” said Micheal Whatley, CEA vice president. “It is important to continue to monitor IPI and other groups who may decide at any time to sue the EPA, hoping to force a settlement that would lead to the development of an LCFS regime.”Read More

advanced biofuels, Low Carbon Fuel Standard

Redrawing the Energy-Climate Map

Joanna Schroeder June 21, 2013

Warning that the world is not on track to limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has urged governments to swiftly enact four energy policies that would keep climate goals alive without harming economic growth.

“Climate change has quite frankly slipped to the back burner of policy priorities. But the problem is not going away – quite the opposite,” IEA Executive Director Maria van der Hoeven said in London at the launch of a World Energy Outlook Special Report, Redrawing the Energy-Climate Map, which highlights the need for intensive action before 2020.

Noting that the energy sector accounts for around two-thirds of global greenhouse-gas emissions, she added, “This report shows that the path we are currently on is more likely to result in a temperature increase of between 3.6 °C and 5.3 °C but also finds that much more can be done to tackle energy- sector emissions without jeopardising economic growth, an important concern for many governments.”

New estimates for global energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 2012 reveal a 1.4 percent increase, reaching a record high of 31.6 gigatonnes(Gt), but also mask significant regional differences. In the United States, a switch from coal to gas in power generation helped reduce emissions by 200 million tonnes (Mt), bringing them back to the level of the mid-1990s. China experienced the largest growth in CO2 emissions (300 Mt), but the increase was one of the lowest it has seen in a decade, driven by the deployment of renewables and improvements in energy intensity. Despite increased coal use in some countries, emissions in Europe declined by 50 Mt. Emissions in Japan increased by 70 Mt.

“We identify a set of proven measures that could stop the growth in global energy-related emissions by the end of this decade at no net economic cost,” said IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol, the report’s lead author. “Rapid and widespread adoption could act as a bridge to further action, buying precious time while international climate negotiations continue.”

Carbon, Climate Change, Environment

Utilities’ Energy Efficiency Ideas Short on Savings

Joanna Schroeder June 21, 2013

A review of five-year energy efficiency plans submitted to the Iowa Utilities Board by MidAmerican Energy Company and Alliant Energy shows utilities are failing to deliver programs that will maximize the benefits of energy efficiency.

In testimony filed with the Board, the Iowa Environmental Council, Environmental Law & Policy Center and their partners demonstrated that MidAmerican Energy’s proposed programs would achieve just about half of what is possible and cost-effective through efficiency programs. These programs take a range of forms including rebates for residential customers who weatherize their homes or purchase more efficient appliances and heating and cooling equipment and offering large commercial customers incentives to install efficient lighting or motors that waste less energy and reduce the need for additional power plants.

Nathaniel Baer, energy program director at the Iowa Environmental Council explained that MidAmerican has proposed investing over $374 million to help customers save 1,053,832 megawatt-hours (MWh) over five years, but the utility could increase those investments and improve its programs to help customers save 1,905,675 MWh over the same time period, or 80 percent more. All additional energy saved would still be cost-effective – in other words, the economic benefits would be greater than $1 for every $1 invested.

“We reviewed an analysis commissioned by MidAmerican Energy to identify savings that would be possible through cost-effective energy efficiency programs,” said Baer. Read More

Electricity, energy efficiency

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