Redfield Energy, LLC of Redfield, South Dakota has become a member of the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA).- POET Biorefining-Macon has resumed ethanol and Dakota Gold distillers grain production and has now added Voila corn oil to its product mix.
- Solectria Renewables has commissioned a 2.15MW array at Cedarville University located in Cedarville, Ohio, on Earth Day. Cincinnati-based project developer and EPC, Melink Corporation, chose Solectria Renewables’ SGI series inverters to power this installation and SolrenView web-based monitoring, to monitor the array’s energy activity.
- Peak Solar LLC now has a new 24-hour hotline for American homeowners who are working on or interested in DIY solar installation on their homes: 1-805-Solar-81.
- Renewable Energy Systems Americas Inc. has begun construction on the 250 MW Buffalo Dunes Wind Project. Located southwest of Garden City, Kansas, the project was developed by Kansas-based TradeWind Energy and is jointly owned by GE Energy Financial Services and Enel Green Power North America.
UPS Ramps Up Its Natural Gas Fleet
UPS is ramping up its natural gas fleet with the addition of approximately 700 liquefied natural gas (LNG) vehicles. In addition, the company will build four refueling stations by the end of 2014. Once completed, UPS says its LNG private fleet will be one of the most extensive in the U.S. The company has been operating natural gas vehicles for more than a decade. With natural gas prices 30-40 percent lower than imported diesel and U.S. production gearing up, the logistics company is investing more aggressively in the natural gas infrastructure necessary to make it part of the UPS delivery network.
Worldwide UPS has more than 1,000 natural gas vehicles on the road today. UPS’s alternative fuel and advanced technology fleet of more than 2,600 vehicles also includes a wide array of low-emissions vehicles, including all-electrics, electric hybrids, hydraulic hybrids, propane, compressed natural gas and biomethane. Since 2000, the fleet powered by alternative fuels and technologies has driven more than 295 million miles.
“LNG will be a viable alternative transportation fuel for UPS in the next decade as a bridge between traditional fossil fuels and emerging renewable alternative fuels and technologies that are not quite ready for broad-based long-term commercial deployment,” said Scott Davis, UPS Chairman and CEO.
New UPS-built fueling stations in Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis, Tenn., and Dallas, Texas, will serve its heavy-weight rigs traveling into adjacent states. With the addition of accessible LNG fueling stations, UPS also will add LNG trucks on routes from Dallas, Houston and San Antonio to further extend territory.
An initial investment of more than $18 million to build fueling stations will be supported by the purchase of these 700 LNG tractors and continued expansion of the natural gas fleet in the U.S. UPS already operates 112 LNG tractor trailers from fueling stations in Las Vegas, Nev.; Phoenix, Ariz., and Beaver and Salt Lake City, Utah, and has its own LNG fueling station on its property in Ontario, Calif.
“When other shipping and logistics companies are talking about possibilities, we are putting alternative fueled vehicles on the highway,” said Davis. “LNG is a good alternative to petroleum-based fuel for long-haul delivery fleets as it is abundant and produces reduced emissions at less cost. At UPS, we are helping to knock down some of the biggest hurdles to broad market acceptance of LNG in commercial transportation by continuing to establish vehicle demand, fuel and maintenance infrastructures.”
Lee Consulting: Alternative Energy Knowledge Center
Have a question about renewable energy? Then look no further than Lee Enterprises Consulting based in Sherwood, Arkansas and your go-to guy, Wayne Lee. Lee has been a consultant for nearly 30 years and about a decade ago, began expanding his expertise into biofuels as people began coming to him with questions. He said he began fairly small with the goal of becoming the one-stop shop for those in the renewable fuels industry. Today, his firm has a breadth of talent in biodiesel, ethanol, biomass, cellulosic, biobutanol, waste-to-energy, wind, solar, and more.
So what types of services do they offer? Lee says in it upwards of 100.
And what might be a common request or question for his team?
For example, Lee said they are often contacted to do project feasibility studies such as the feasibility to build a biodiesel plant, If the the outcome is a green light, the client will often ask his group to serve as the project manager. In this case, they would help find experts to design and optimize the plant, build the plant, install the plant and bring you up to speed and get you trained. Lee said if this is four different people, he has found that if there is a problem, the four different companies would play the blame game. But if it is one person coordinating all the partners, then he or she can get down to the problem quicker and have it resolved in a timely manner.
As the environment continues to take center stage, I asked Lee if when working with his clients, he kept sustainability in mind. He noted, “If you look at the renewable fuels industry and the alternative fuels industry as a whole, there is a lot of overlap, but really it’s an all of the above approach. I can see an ethanol plant with a biodiesel plant sitting adjacent to it and perhaps add solar panels on the roof and wind turbines on the outside. I think that the key is Mother Earth will give us a lot of free stuff if we’re willing to take it.”
Lee added, “I think that alternative fuels is here to stay. I don’t think that there is bad and a good. There is a what’s good right now. My hope is over the next few years the alternative fuels industry becomes a little more mainstream. Petroleum is here to stay but it’s getting harder to find and harder to get and that’s going to make its price go up. And I think we all have a duty to keep the Earth clean and the way it was meant to be.”
Listen to Wayne Lee’s full interview here: Lee Consulting Enterprises: Alternative Energy Knowledge Center
DOE Announces $18M to Advance Drop-In Biofuels
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced $18 million in investments for four pilot-scale biorefineries that will test renewable biofuels that will meet military specifications for jet fuel, shipboard diesel, cars and trucks. These projects build on the Obama Administration’s broader efforts to advance biofuels technologies to continue to bring down costs, improve performance and identify effective, non-food feedstocks and processing techniques.
The projects selected for negotiation are: Frontline Bioenergy LLC (up to $4.2 million based in Ames, Iowa); Cobalt Technologies (up to $2.5 million based in Mountain View, California); Mercurius Biorefining, Inc. (up to $4.6 million based in Ferndale, Washington) and BioProcess Algae (up to $6.4 million based in Shenandoah, Iowa).
“Advanced biofuels are an important part of President Obama’s all-of-the-above strategy to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil, improve our energy security and protect our air and water,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “The innovative biorefinery projects announced today mark an important step toward producing fuels for our American military and the civil aviation industry from renewable resources found right here in the United States.”
Chu says domestic oil and gas production has increased each year the President has been in office. Simultaneously the administration is taking additional steps to reduce America’s reliance on foreign oil. As part of this effort, the Department is helping to speed the development of hydrocarbon-based biofuels that are more compatible with today’s infrastructure and engines, including heavy vehicles and other applications. According to the Energy Department’s Billion Ton Study, advanced biofuels have the potential to displace approximately one-third of the nation’s current transportation petroleum use.
The pilot-scale biorefinery projects selected today will use a variety of non-food biomass feedstocks, waste-based materials, and algae in innovative conversion processes to produce biofuels that meet military specifications for jet fuel and diesel. The projects will demonstrate technologies to cost-effectively convert biomass into advanced drop-in biofuels and assist these organizations to scale up the processes to commercial levels. Recipients are required to contribute a minimum of 50 percent matching funds for these projects.
Indonesia, EU to Meet Over Biodiesel Subsidies
Indonesian and European Union (EU) officials will meet to discuss allegations by the EU that Indonesia is illegally subsidizing biodiesel exports to Europe. The Jakarta Post reports says the Indonesians are confident they’ll be cleared of any wrongdoing:
An investigation initiated by the European Commission in November said that Indonesia had illegally subsidized its biodiesel producers.
The EU has accused the Indonesian government of imposing low export taxes on biofuel exports, making local biofuel products cheaper than those produced in the EU.
It was also alleged that the government provided local producers a subsidy of between Rp 2,000 (21 US cents) and Rp 3,000 per liter for domestic biodiesel.
[Indonesian Trade Ministry trade safeguard committee director] Ernawati told reporters that there was a big hole in the EU’s argument, claiming that low export taxes for biodiesel were part of a government strategy to boost the downstream industry, which no way aided local biodiesel producers.“We impose different tariffs on various products. We impose higher export tariffs for raw materials and lower tariffs for processed products. We want to boost downstream products,” Ernawati added.
The government subsidy, according to Ernawati, was actually only Rp 1,000 per liter and was given to boost domestic consumption of the eco-friendly fuel. She claimed that the subsidy did not affect the price of Indonesian biodiesel in the international market and that the subsidy had been given only when biodiesel prices were higher than that of regular diesel fuel.
The EU is also accusing Indonesia and Argentina of dumping biodiesel in the EU market by selling it at lower prices than available locally.
BioProcess Algae Awarded $6.4M Grant
BioProcess Algae has been selected to receive a grant of up to $6.4 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), as part of an innovative pilot-scale biorefinery 
project related to production of hydrocarbon fuels meeting military specification. The project will use renewable carbon dioxide, lignocellulosic sugars and waste heat through BioProcess Algae’s Grower Harvester(TM) technology platform, co-located with the Green Plains Renewable Energy’s ethanol plant in Shenandoah, Iowa.
“BioProcess Algae was the only algae platform chosen to be a part of this project by the DOE,” said Todd Becker, President and CEO of Green Plains. “This project will link our commercial scale platform for growing and harvesting algal biomass with technology partners for conversion into advanced biofuels. While this is a project for the development of drop-in biofuels, we continue to focus our technology for growing and harvesting algae for feed, food or fuel.”
The project will demonstrate technologies to cost-effectively convert biomass into advanced drop-in biofuels and the recipient is required to contribute a minimum of 50 percent matching funds for the project.
Tim Burns, President and CEO of BioProcess Algae added, “We believe our Grower Harvester platform will be vital in the development of this project with the DOE. For this project, we will integrate low-cost autotrophic algal production, accelerated lipid production, and lipid conversion in an effort to develop a cost-effective advanced biofuel for military needs. This development is consistent with our current plans to build the next phase of Grower Harvester reactors in Shenandoah.”
Kinder Morgan to Blend Biodiesel in Las Vegas, Phoenix
Energy company Kinder Morgan has announced it will soon start blending biodiesel at its Las Vegas and Phoenix terminals. This Reuters article says the company made the decision based, in part, on the upswing in Renewable Identification Numbers values:
The company is benefitting from a spike in the price of renewable credits, known as RINs. The move is “positive for us because we generate excess RINs at our transmix facilities,” said CEO Richard Kinder during a conference call.
He said Kinder Morgan generates 700,000 gal/month of excess RINs. “We are selling them on a monthly basis to a customer who wants to take all we have,” said Kinder, without specifying the types of RINs.
Biodiesel RINs have risen from 45 cents/RIN at the beginning of this year to current prices of about 80-90 cents/RIN.
Enhanced Geothermal System Changing Energy Future
Ormat Technologies, the U.S. Department of Energy and GeothermEx have successfully produced 1.7 additional megawatts from an Enhanced Geothermal System (EGS) project inside an existing wellfield in the U.S. –the first EGS project to be connected to the electricity grid. Using subsurface technologies, research and development teams stimulated an existing sub-commercial injection well resulting in a 38 percent increase in power output from brine at Ormat’s Desert Peak 2 geothermal power plant in the Brady complex, Churchill County, Nevada.
Support for the project included $5.4 million in direct DOE funding, $2.6 in million investment from Ormat, and more than four years of collaborative work with 
partners including Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. Geological Survey, Sandia National Laboratory, University of Utah EGI, Temple University and TerraTek.
Ormat explains that by expanding existing hydrothermal fractures deep within the Earth’s crust, EGS technology enhances the permeability of underperforming wells, making it possible to extract additional heat from a reservoir’s rocks and inject geothermal fluid at higher flow rates. Ormat’s air-cooled power plants don’t consume water in the conversion of energy into electricity; all the geothermal fluid is re-injected, to be produced again after heating in the reservoir.
“This research and development project was conducted under a stringent induced seismicity protocol developed by LBNL and the Department of Energy. We achieved an increased injection rate up to 1,600 gallons per minute without consuming or discharging water at the surface and using only existing geothermal brine returned to the original aquifer,” said Lucien Bronicki, founder and chief technology officer for Ormat. “Our objective in the Desert Peak EGS project was to demonstrate that this technology can have a significant impact on sub-commercial wells. This could enable us to use unproductive wells to generate more power and new revenue.”
“DOE’s Geothermal Technologies Office is changing geothermal development in the U.S.,” Bronicki added.
Honeywell UOP Selected for Floating LNG Project
UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, has been selected by Malaysia‘s Petroliam Nasional Berhad (PETRONAS) to provide technology for acid gas removal on the world’s first Floating Liquefied Natural Gas (FLNG) project, known as PETRONAS Floating LNG 1or PFLNG 1. The PFLNG 1 facility, which is designed to extract natural gas from offshore wells and liquefy and store it for later transport, will use Honeywell’s UOP Amine Guard FS process to remove carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide from 
the liquefied natural gas (LNG) feed streams.
“We are pleased to continue to grow UOP’s long-standing relationship with PETRONAS and for the opportunity to work with the company on its historic first floating LNG project,” said Rebecca Liebert, vice president and general manager for Honeywell’s UOP Gas Processing and Hydrogen business unit. “UOP offers a full suite of leading-edge, agile gas processing technologies, enabling us to design solutions for customers monetizing their gas resources. Together with PETRONAS, we are excited to bring continued improvements to meet the world’s growing demand for cleaner-burning and versatile natural gas energy in this new frontier of gas conditioning and treating.”
Scheduled for start-up by the end of 2015, the FLNG unit will be moored approximately 112 miles off the coast of Sarawak, Malaysia, and is designed to produce 1.2 million tons per year of LNG.
FLNG facilities such as PFLNG1 represent a step change because they allow these operations to be carried out far from land and closer to offshore gas sources. UOP says they will play a significant role in efforts to unlock gas reserves, particularly in remote and stranded fields previously deemed uneconomical to develop.
Ten Ways Renewable Fuels are Enviro
The Iowa Renewable Fuels Association (IRFA) has unveiled a list of 10 ways the renewable fuels industry is helping to improve the environment. According to IRFA, renewable fuels offer positive impacts on the environment compared to petroleum-based counterparts.
“Renewable fuels make our planet a better place to live with healthier air and water, and that’s exactly what Earth Day is all about,” said IRFA Executive Director Monte Shaw. “Smart energy policies like the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) encourage the production and use of cleaner, more environmentally friendly fuels like E15 and B20 that significantly reduce the environmental harm that is caused by petroleum-based fuels.”
The following Top 10 list highlights ways in which ethanol and biodiesel have benefited the environment over the past decade through improvements at the plant, on the farm, and out of the tailpipe.
1. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), for every unit of fossil energy needed to produce biodiesel, 5.5 units of energy are gained, while ethanol generates 2.3 units of energy for every unit of fossil energy input. By comparison, gasoline and diesel fuel have negative energy balances.
2. The adoption of regenerative thermal oxidizers (RTO) has significantly reduced volatile organic compound emissions from ethanol plants.
3. On a per gallon basis, today’s ethanol plants require 28% less thermal energy and 32% less electricity than a decade ago, according to the University of Illinois at Chicago.
4. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), biodiesel reduces greenhouse gases (GHG) by up to 86% compared to petroleum diesel, while Yale University found that ethanol reduces GHG by up to 59% compared to gasoline.
5. Water used to produce a gallon of ethanol has dropped 40% over the last decade, while biodiesel production reduces wastewater by 79% and hazardous waste by 96% when compared to petroleum diesel.
6. Increased income from ethanol demand for corn has allowed farmers to invest in precision farming equipment and stronger conservation and environmental protections.
7. The environmental footprint of U.S. corn production has improved greatly since the advent of the ethanol industry, including significant reductions in soil loss, irrigation, energy use and the amount of land required to produce a bushel of corn.
8. Ethanol and biodiesel are both biodegradable and non-toxic.
9. Biodiesel and ethanol significantly reduce tailpipe carbon monoxide emissions, air toxics, fine particulate matter and smog pollution compared to petroleum diesel and gasoline, making our air healthier to breathe.
10. Since the beginning of the RFS, biodiesel use alone has reduced lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by nearly 74 billion pounds, the equivalent of removing 5.4 million vehicles from U.S. roads.