Understanding how plants use solar energy could play a big role in the future energy supply, claim scientists.

Researchers who met at a public discussion in Glasgow earlier this week talked about how understanding the fundamental processes that plants use to turn light into energy is a key way of securing cheap, emission-free energy in the future.

Scientists who took part in the event - organised by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) - say that furthering our understanding of photosynthesis 'offers an innovative way of producing environmentally-friendly energy.'

Photosynthesis is the process that green plants and certain other organisms use sunlight as an energy source to synthesise food from carbon dioxide and water.

Sociology Professor Steve Yearley from the University of Edinburgh who took part in the public discussion said: "If carefully managed, biofuels could provide a partial solution to dwindling fossil-fuel supplies. However, the biofuels industry currently faces criticism for pushing up food prices and damaging sensitive ecosystems.

"Photosynthesis on the other hand, does not carry these risks. However, the development of any new technology can have far-reaching effects on society and it is important that we and the wider public assess what those might be at this early stage."

Scientists also discussed how a better understanding of photosynthesis could lead to better crops for biofuels.

Professor Jim Barber of Imperial College London said that if we can understand how plants capture and store solar energy, we could mimic the natural process to design solar panels with better energy conversion rates and also develop a clean, efficient means of producing hydrogen fuel.

Professor Barber said: "Plants use solar energy to split water into oxygen, released as 'waste', and hydrogen which they use to help build sugars that feed the plant.

"We do not fully understand how photosynthesis works, but recent key advances in plant research mean that the time is right to consider this science as a basis for future sustainable energy sourcing."

© Faversham House Group Ltd 2007.

Finance Will Support Development of US Geothermal Industry

REYKJAVIK, ICELAND--(Marketwire - July 26, 2007) -

Glitnir bank has agreed to provide ThermaSource, LLC (TSL) with up to USD 22.5 million to finance the acquisitions of drilling rigs (and related equipment) and working capital needs.

TSL will provide project management, engineering services and supervise effective drilling programs as well as provide the geothermal industry with a fleet of drilling rigs and experienced geothermal crews.

Louis Capuano Jr., CEO of ThermaSource, LLC: "With the completion of Glitnir's financing, ThermaSource will have the financial resources to fund our rapid growth. Glitnir's focus on the geothermal energy projects will provide a strong partner in ThermaSource's continuing growth."

ThermaSource's majority owners, US Renewables Group and Carlyle/Riverstone Group, are leading Private Equity Funds with focus on the energy sector.

Thomas King, CEO of US Renewables: "This financing is an important milestone in the growth of ThermaSource as the premier supplier of drilling and consulting services to the geothermal sector. We have been very impressed by Glitnir's knowledge of the geothermal market, its ability to anticipate structural requirements, and its approach to deal making in a spirit of partnership. We look forward to a long and profitable relationship with Glitnir through ThermaSource and in other renewable energy investments."

Larus Welding, CEO of Glitnir: "This agreement is an important milestone in establishing Glitnir as the leading geothermal bank in the world. The renewable energy team, led by Arni Magnusson, is both dedicated and focused and I am certain that the teamwork between Glitnir and ThermaSource will be very successful."

Arni Magnusson, Managing director of global sustainable energy at Glitnir: "Glitnir aims to be the leading bank in financial services to the geothermal sector. ThermaSource is a very professional, fast growing drilling company in the US, which specialises in servicing the geothermal industry. It is therefore a great pleasure to ensure ThermaSource with the financing of machines and equipment which will support the important development of the US geothermal industry."

About ThermaSource

ThermaSource, LLC provides the geothermal industry with engineering project management, consultation services and drilling rigs with crews. With over 420 years of geothermal experience on the ThermaSource, LLC management team, the educated and experienced drill crews and a consultation service that has been our business mainstay since 1980, ThermaSource, LLC is a well-respected contributor to the geothermal industry. For more information: www.thermasource.com

While most of them have been extensively discussed, the information available is usually fragmented, being either too scientific or simplistic in its presentation, and generally not comparable.

Now STOA, the European Parliament's Scientific Technology Options Assessment body, has published an inventory of 20 of the most promising options, which are clustered in five technologies: hydrogen and fuel cells, battery electric vehicles, hybrid technology, biofuels and natural gas. The inventory provides a comparative overview of the pros and cons of each of these technologies.

Focusing primarily on road transport, the study starts by looking at hydrogen which, when combined with fuel cells, seems to be a promising technology alternative. However, some serious technological problems remain unsolved, including for instance questions concerning the performance of fuel cells, and the production of large amounts of 'clean' hydrogen. Recently, the only affordable way of large-scale hydrogen production has been via steam-reformation from natural gas. From a mid-term perspective, this route might support the market penetration of hydrogen and of fuel cells, notes the study. The crucial point is that, in this case, hydrogen would be derived from a fossil fuel source.

Other routes are also being discussed, including the production of hydrogen from renewable sources (wind, photovoltaic, solar thermal, water) via electrolysis. This is often regarded as a kind of silver bullet since it enables close to zero emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). 'But it is not clear if, at which time, and in which regions the production of hydrogen from renewable sources will be feasible at larger scales and at reasonable costs,' says the study.

A 'clean' production of hydrogen from nuclear power is feasible as well, but the drawbacks here are the finiteness of uranium sources and the acceptance of the use of nuclear power. In terms of climate security, the study predicts that the coal route will only be suitable if it is combined with CO2 sequestration and storage (CSS).

Assessing the use of hybrid technology, the study finds that this option offers the possibility to save energy and emissions by using established technologies and infrastructures. Whatever fuel and propulsion technology will be dominant in 20 to 30 years, the authors of the study predict that that hybrid technology will be part of the propulsion system. It is an important component of most fuel cell concepts and there seems to be a high potential to further improve the efficiency of conventional fuels.

The development of pure electric cars is also explored. Here the study remarks that the commercialisation of such vehicles will strongly depend on the development of suitable batteries. In spite of decades of research and development activities, decisive technological breakthroughs regarding batteries are not in sight. 'Yet, a surprising breakthrough in battery technology is not completely impossible and would surely entail radical changes to both the transport and the energy sector,' say the authors of the study.

No inventory on alternative fuel sources would be complete without an assessment of biofuels. While recognising the ease at which so-called first generation fuels, mainly biodiesel and bioethanol, can be produced today, the study sees second generation fuels as the way forward. Unlike their ancestors, second generation biofuels can be made using the whole plant or from biomass other than rapeseed and sugar cane.

It is estimated that by 2030, roughly 20% to 30% of the EU's road transport fuels could be covered by biofuels derived from European biomass such as energy crops, agricultural and forestry residues or the organic fraction of municipal solid waste. But to meet the continent's fuel needs, it is likely that biomass will have to be imported from abroad. This should be critically discussed, argues the study, since importing biomass may be detrimental to ecologically sensitive areas worldwide.

Last on the list of possible fuel alternatives is compressed natural gas technology (CNG). 'This is a feasible technology for the transport sector and has the potential to bring at least mid-term improvements in terms of energy security and GHG emissions,' notes the study. But its possible contribution to energy security strongly depends on the overall demand for natural gas. It is likely that CNG vehicles will become at least established for niche applications, such as in larger fleets or in inner cities. Meanwhile the study predicts that liquid petroleum gas (LPG) will offer environmental benefits at relatively low costs. However, since both CNG and LPG are based on fossil feedstock, they must be considered as bridging technologies. They might help to pave the way for 'cleaner' gaseous fuels such as hydrogen, bio-methane or dimethyl ethyl (DME), suggests the study.

For more information, please visit:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/stoa/publications/studies/stoa179_en.pdf

JAKARTA - More overseas firms are showing interest in developing the bioenergy sector in Indonesia, with a British oil giant and a Swedish energy firm being the latest to join the list, bringing investment commitments in the sector to Rp 160 trillion (US$17.7 billion).

Alhilal Hamdi, head of the government's biofuel development committee, said Monday that BP Plc., and its partner, D1 Oil Plc., had allocated $160 million for developing the industry in India, Africa and Indonesia -- most of which would be spent on the development of 1 million hectares of plantations here.

Speaking Monday, he added that last March, Sweden's Bioenergy had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for the development of 100,000 hectares of jatropha plantations in East Nusa Tenggara.

He estimated the value of this investment at around $200 million as the company was also planning to build a biofuel plant with a capacity of 350,000 tons per day.

Purnomo Yusgiantoro, Energy and Mineral Resources Minister, said on the same occasion that Indonesia needed a total investment of Rp 200 trillion until 2010 to be able to develop up to 5.25 million hectares of biofuel feedstock plantations.

Of the Rp 200 trillion, Rp 185 trillion was expected to come from the private sector, while the remaining Rp 15 trillion would come from the state, he explained.

Under the government's biofuel plans, Indonesia wants to develop 5.25 million hectares of biofuel plantations in the next three years in order to produce 5.29 million kiloliters of biofuel per year by 2010.

It hopes that by 2025, biofuel production will account for some 5 percent of the country's energy mix, which is currently dominated by fossil fuels.

With the arrival of two more foreign companies, Purnomo said he was upbeat about the government meeting that target.

Indonesia has been seeking sources of renewable energy, including biofuels, in a bid to reduce its dependence on oil.

It has laid the foundations to become one of the world's top biofuel producers in the coming years with the signing of 58 agreements worth $12.4 billion with 59 energy firms and institutions in January.

Among the big companies on the list are China's major energy firms, CNOOC and Sinopec, Malaysia-based Genting Biofuels Asia and a number of local companies, including the Sinar Mas Group.

CNOOC is now in the process of building three biodiesel plants in West Kalimantan.

CNOOC signed an investment commitment worth $5.5 billion in January.

In addition, three Austrian companies -- Energea, BioDiesel International and the Christof Group -- said recently that they were interested in constructing biodiesel refineries, and have been involved in discussions with potential Indonesian partners.

Copyright © The Jakarta Post

The EU’s consumption of biofuel went up dramatically in 2006, according to new figures. A report published by EurObserv’ER, a renewable industry consortium, says biofuel use in the EU went up 78 per cent from 2005 to 2006 – from 3m to 5.38m tonnes.

Germany is by far the EU’s biggest biofuel consumer: with a total consumption of 3,343,700 tonnes in 2006, it is far ahead of runners-up France (682,000 tonnes) and Austria (275,200 tonnes).

The report says this is due to “the explosion of vegetable oil consumption in Germany, which considers this product as a fully-fledged fuel”.

The majority of the biofuel boom is made up of biodiesels which are much more prevalent than bioethanol, according to the figures.

But in spite of the EU-wide increase, the report warns that “a significant number of countries shall not reach the threshold as set by the directive (5.75 per cent biofuel share of total consumption in 2010)”.

The EU’s biofuel directive calls EU member states to boost their use of biofuels in the next few years as a way to cut CO2 emissions and help decrease Europe’s dependence on fossil fuels.

But environmental organisations are warning that biofuels are not a silver bullet for the transport sector, and could trigger environmental damage if they are developed without safeguards.

NGOs including Friends of the Earth and WWF say there is a danger that production could be intensified at the expense of forests and wildlife.

There are also concerns that the monoculture of biofuels in Europe could lead to a rise in food prices as biofuels replace food crops.
©2007 theparliament.com

The technology could potentially be used to produce renewable fuels from carbon dioxide, Sunflower said. The emissions from two of its existing plants and its two proposed coal-fired plants would be used to make the biofuel at Holcomb Station.

The first phase of Sunflower's Holcomb Expansion project is being co-funded by Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Inc., based in Westminster, Colo. The total project is expected to cost about $417 million.

"This is an important first step in our efforts to demonstrate that coal-based flue gas can be utilized for beneficial purposes," Earl Watkins, Sunflower's president and chief executive officer, said in a release. "I look forward to the day when this project is completed, and we are facilitating the production of renewable energy that benefits our agricultural producers in central and western Kansas."

The algae farm part of the process is being developed by GreenFuel Technologies. Its laboratory will use the flue gas from Sunflower's power plant to grow micro-algae in an enclosed environment. Testing is being conducted to determine the specific strain of algae that will grow best.

"GreenFuel recently learned valuable production lessons at their Arizona algae project that will benefit the Holcomb Expansion partners, so we are pleased they have decided to focus their efforts on five projects globally and provide us with their newest technology," said Clare Gustin, Sunflower's vice president of member services and external affairs.

Following the algae farm, the rest of the project will consist of an anaerobic digester, a biodiesel plant and dairy subsystems to complete the ethanol plant.

© Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc.

LANSING — Michigan will soon be producing a new type of ethanol - not from corn but from trees.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced Thursday that Michigan will soon be home to the world's first commercial scale cellulosic ethanol plant, to be built by Mascoma Corp., a Massachusetts-based energy biotech company.

Cellulosic ethanol, unlike the more common corn ethanol, is a biofuel that would derive its energy primarily from wood chips and other nonfood crops, or "biomass."

The process that would be used to break down the biomass would use enzymes to break down the tree's cellulose, convert it to sugars, then ferment those sugars into alcohol - the basis for ethanol.

The conversion has a corollary in nature, Mascoma Corp. CEO Bruce Jamerson said.

"It's very similar to what goes on in a ruminant animal's stomach, converting grasses into energy," he said. "It's a very similar process, but much more sophisticated and about three times more effective in generating energy."

One of the factors that attracted Mascoma to Michigan was the recent $50 million federal grant MSU received to study biofuels in June. MSU will help in areas such as pretreatment technology for cellulosic ethanol production and energy crops that can be utilized by the plant.

"It tells us there's going to be continuous support for professors, students and research that we can tap into," Jamerson said. "It was absolutely a factor in our coming here."

Jamerson estimated the plan could produce 150 gallons of ethanol out of a cord of wood, or 128 cubic feet, and the total investment for the plant will be $100 million.

Despite the fact the fuel primarily would be derived from wood, it would actually be good for Michigan forests, said Becky Humphries, director of the Department of Natural Resources.

"That may sound counterintuitive but we manage our forests sustainable now, meaning we grow a lot more (trees) than we cut (down) in the forest right now," Humphries said.

Michigan has been losing its marketplace to sell wood, she said.

"As we cut down trees that mature or have become diseased, we don't have places to sell some of that fiber," Humphries said. "This gives us a place to do that."

While Michigan is known for its high-quality hardwood supplies, the state also has a lot of other tree species that are of a lower quality that can be turned into biomass for fuel purposes, she said.

Some, however, are not so sure the new plant is the best idea for Michigan.

"As the world's first anything, I have some reservations about the state using taxpayer funds to underwrite a somewhat experimental venture," said Diane Katz, director of science, environment and technology policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank.

"My concern would not be the ethanol but the funds," Katz said. "The Mackinac Center has tracked state subsidized programs for years and they are overwhelmingly failures. The market does a better job of making sense of what to invest in than the state does."

There are significant ecological advantages to cellulosic ethanol, such as leaving a small carbon footprint.

Traditional gasoline produces 24.6 pounds in greenhouse gasses per gallon, whereas cellulosic ethanol only puts out 1.2 pounds per gallon, Jamerson said.

It also would be more economy-friendly, he said.

"Compared to oil refineries, which have many dangerous materials, we're very clean," he said. "We don't use acids or harsh chemicals."

Even still, Katz said, cellulosic ethanol remains experimental.

"No one should think it's a perfect substitute," she said. "We should not get our hopes up too much about an ethanol future."
©2007 The State News

The technology could potentially be used to produce renewable fuels from carbon dioxide, Sunflower said. The emissions from two of its existing plants and its two proposed coal-fired plants would be used to make the biofuel at Holcomb Station.

The first phase of Sunflower's Holcomb Expansion project is being co-funded by Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association Inc., based in Westminster, Colo. The total project is expected to cost about $417 million.

"This is an important first step in our efforts to demonstrate that coal-based flue gas can be utilized for beneficial purposes," Earl Watkins, Sunflower's president and chief executive officer, said in a release. "I look forward to the day when this project is completed, and we are facilitating the production of renewable energy that benefits our agricultural producers in central and western Kansas."

The algae farm part of the process is being developed by GreenFuel Technologies. Its laboratory will use the flue gas from Sunflower's power plant to grow micro-algae in an enclosed environment. Testing is being conducted to determine the specific strain of algae that will grow best.

"GreenFuel recently learned valuable production lessons at their Arizona algae project that will benefit the Holcomb Expansion partners, so we are pleased they have decided to focus their efforts on five projects globally and provide us with their newest technology," said Clare Gustin, Sunflower's vice president of member services and external affairs.

Following the algae farm, the rest of the project will consist of an anaerobic digester, a biodiesel plant and dairy subsystems to complete the ethanol plant.

© Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc.

Approvals have been granted from DRIRE and DIREM, the regulatory bodies responsible for French environment and fuel specifications and applications.

O2Diesel's French connection began in late 2005 when Abengoa Bioenergy R&D became the company's largest shareholder, and entered into a five-year agreement to jointly develop the European market for O2Diesel's ethanol diesel fuel blend technology.

The company expects Europe will be a substantial opportunity, especially as the 2003 EU directive to replace 5.75% of fossil energy with renewable fuels is implemented in member countries

"Ethanol is not an established fuel component in Europe, so there have been a substantial number of regulatory hurdles to overcome," said Alan Rae, CEO of O2Diesel.

"We believe these approvals in France will be the first of several over the coming months as our efforts start to deliver results. We look forward to being able to announce our first fleet shortly."

France is the third largest consumer of petroleum in Europe, behind Germany and Russia, and tenth in the world. Diesel represents more than 70% of France's transportation fuel market at 29 billion litres per year.

Independent of the EU directive for 5.75% fossil fuel displacement, France has its own imposed target to replace 10% of diesel fuel with renewable alternatives by 2015.

O2Diesel says its fuel provides exceptional performance and environmental qualities for centrally fueled fleets and off-road equipment, reducing harmful emissions without sacrificing power and performance.

O2Diesel claims its fuel is or can been made available in any fuel market using existing diesel fuel storage, supply, and distribution networks.

World Banlk - “A surge in the production of biofuels derived from corn, wheat and soyabeans is helping to push up food prices so sharply that the World Food Programme, the United Nation’s agency in charge of fighting famine, is finding it difficult to feed as many hungry people as it has in the past.

Josette Sheeran, WFP’s executive director, said in an interview with the Financial Times that rising food prices were ‘already having an impact on WFP operations’ and added: ‘There is a realisation we are facing a new level of challenge.’ Food commodity prices are surging because of a number of factors including rising demand from China and bad weather, but the potential consequences of the rising demand for biofuels has caught the attention of those in the business of feeding the world….” [The Financial Times/Factiva].

AFP reports that “The World Food Programme feeds people in countries including Chad, Uganda and Ethiopia, but reaches a fraction of the 850m people it estimates suffers from hunger. It spent about $600m buying food in 2006.” [Agence France Presse/Factiva].

The Financial Times mentions that “some 77 per cent of the WFP’s food purchases are made in developing countries. Last year it spent $460m (€334m, £226m) in such countries, making the largest cash purchases in Uganda, Ethiopia and Pakistan. The United Nations organisation feeds some 90m people annually.Ms Sheeran also said that her organisation and others were trying to make it easier for poorer farmers to benefit from rising demand for food, either by helping African farmers become more efficient and tapping new markets or by helping small farmers in Latin America benefit from the rising demand for biofuels.‘In a world of growing population, the African farmer will be needed,’ she said.

The rise in food prices has also underlined the difficulties the WFP and other food aid programmes face when determining which type of donations they receive are more effective – cash or commodities.About half of the donations the WFP receives are now made in cash, the rest in commodities. When the organisation started, it benefited mainly from surplus food donated by wealthy nations including the US. It now receives cash from many countries, and often, as is the case with the US, must spend that money on products grown in the donor country.”[ The Financial Times/Factiva]

Last month, Republican senators from the South provided about half the votes that defeated federal legislation to require power companies to get 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. Nationally, almost half the states have adopted their own renewable mandates, but only one, Texas, is in the South.

Southern lawmakers — responding to heavy lobbying from local utilities — argue their region is not conducive to solar or wind power like the sun-baked Southwest or the open plains of the West.

But many leading scientists and environmental advocates say Southern states have plenty of alternative-energy potential. Utilities have simply grown comfortable with cheap, dirty coal and have not been forced to change, they say.

"If you look at other regions of the country where renewables have taken off, it's been because of mandates, and that's why you haven't seen it take off in the South," said Nicholas Rigas, director of the South Carolina Institute for Energy Studies at Clemson University. "Once the development starts it will be just as successful as it is in other states."

The South has long relied on coal for electricity. Its two largest utilities — Atlanta-based Southern Co. and Charlotte, North Carolina,-based Duke Energy Corp. — produce about two-thirds of their power from coal, mostly burned in aging plants not yet upgraded with clean-air technologies.

Southern Co. puts more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other U.S. utility.

Its Scherer plant near Macon, Georgia, for several years has been the nation's single largest source of the greenhouse gas, which most scientists believe contributes to global warming. Duke Energy is not far behind, ranking third in carbon dioxide emissions, while the Tennessee Valley Authority ranks fourth, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Many of the companies' plants also rank among the worst in emissions of mercury, a neurotoxin, and other pollutants that cause smog, respiratory problems and acid rain.

The utilities — among the largest political donors in Washington — vehemently oppose federal mandates. They argue that "one size fits all" standards would drive up Southern utility bills and urge that new technologies be phased in gradually.

Southern Co., which reported profits of $1.6 billion in 2006, questions the existence of global warming even as other utilities acknowledge it must be addressed.

"If we are irrational about it and we cripple our economy or cripple our industry and we realize carbon dioxide wasn't the source of the problem, then we'll be real regretful," said Chris Hobson, senior vice president for research and environmental affairs at Southern Co., which owns Alabama Power Co., Georgia Power Co. and other subsidiaries.

But the demand for renewable energy is growing.

"Coal is the dominant source of global warming pollution," said Michael Shore, who directs Southeastern air quality programs at Environmental Defense, a private lobbying group. "It is critical that states in the Southeast embrace energy efficiency and renewables if we are to take responsibility for global warming."

The Energy Department said the proposal that failed in the Senate would have increased utility bills nationally by less than 1 percent through 2030. Renewable energy advocates acknowledge the South could see slightly higher increases, in part because the region's electricity rates are among the nation's lowest. But they say the South should be ready to meet modest new mandates.

Many Southern states already produce a small amount of power from hydroelectric dams. Although the region has relatively low wind speeds, a recent study by Georgia Tech and Southern Co. found promise for offshore wind energy production in coastal states.

The most potential could lie in the South's emergence as a national leader in producing energy from timber residue, grasses and agricultural waste. Biomass now accounts for 1.5 percent of the nation's power — more than solar or wind.

Steven Taylor, chairman of the bioenergy program at Auburn University in Alabama, said Southern states have a record of producing biomass from their vast forests and farmlands.

Although utilities still struggle to collect and transport the materials efficiently, much of the infrastructure has been put in place by the agriculture and timber industries. And most legislative proposals would allow utilities to "co-fire" biomass at modified conventional plants, eliminating the need for expensive new facilities.

"We've got the ability to generate a pretty good proportion of our power or liquid fuel from biomass," Taylor said.

Copyright © 2007 the International Herald Tribune

PANA - A community- based organisation in the eastern region of Ghana has announced that it has started the production of bio- diesel in Ghana from palm kernel oil. The Dumpong Pineapple Growers Cooperatives said it was doing this in collaboration with its US partners, Dumpong Biofuels.

According to the producers, the product has a better performance quality compared to petroleum diesel. They have started using the bio-diesel to power a generator and to fuel their official vehicles and it worked efficiently just like the petroleum diesel, officials told PANA Tuesday.

Jerry Robock, Head of the US Dumpong Biofuels team, said that a simple processor to convert locally produced palm kernel oil into bio-diesel was assembled and a process known as "transesterification", which removes glycerine molecule from the oil, was used to extract the fuel.

He said the processor comprising two 55-gallon steel drums were welded together with an electric heating element screwed through one opening.

A piping and a small electric pump were added to pump palm kernel oil and a solution of methanol with potassium hydroxide into the processor. The circulating mixture finally pumped the bio-diesel into a washing tank.

Robock said bio-diesel was more environmentally friendly than petroleum diesel and significantly reduced exhaust emissions and could be a major substitute for imported petroleum diesel fuel.

He explained that the project, which cost about US$1,000 and was currently on a pilot basis, could be adopted in other communities to help cut down cost of fuel.

He added that Dumpong Biofuel had come up with a strategy to take advantage of locally available oilseed crops to include atrophy and sunflower seed as well, to be converted into environmentally renewable and sustainable fuel to be used locally to replace imported diesel fuel.

Copyright Africa Interactive

The European Union plans to give money to help developing countries grow energy crops rich nations want to use for transport fuel, the EU aid chief said Friday.

Europe and the United States plan to use more low-carbon emission biofuels to reduce their dependence on imported oil and cut their contribution to global warming.

EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel said the EU would allocate part of a 220 million euro ($300 million) foreign aid budget to offer countries investment and technical skills so they can jump on the biofuel bandwagon. Officials were unable to give a precise figure.

He said the EU was currently studying how sugar producers from former European colonies in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific, or ACP, could turn to ethanol production while other regions could grow oilseed crops.

The biofuel boom offers an answer to fears that ACP countries will lose out as the EU slashes sugar prices it kept artificially high for decades.

For more than 30 years, these countries had preferential access to rich European markets and grew crops that Europe wanted. The EU is now pushing them to turn to other crops by cutting trade tariffs for other products - and may reduce high ethanol tariffs in the future although this is likely to benefit Brazil more than other sugar exporting countries.

Michel acknowledged concerns that turning land over to energy crops might reduce food production but said this should not hold back a "historic" opportunity to introduce new crops where there is high demand.

But nonprofit groups warn that the benefits of biofuel production - access to energy and new income - could be outweighed by rising food prices and more competition for the same land.

Even small increases in food prices could harm populations living on less than a dollar per day, said International Food Policy Research Institute director Joachim von Braun.

A report this week from Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization warned that high prices for wheat and maize - blamed on increasing demand for biofuels - could last through the decade.

Simon Trace from development campaigner Practical Action said there still isn't enough proof that using more biofuels will slow down climate change since refining some of them drains a considerable amount of energy, canceling out environmental benefits.

"If we get this wrong, if we waste time and resources in chasing something that does not reduce climate change, we are potentially pushing millions of people into poverty," Trace said, painting a scenario where food prices go up as land is turned over to energy crops.

Officials from Senegal and the Dominican Republic cautioned that rich nations need to be involved to make sure multinational companies and farmers negotiate fair land agreements.

Copyright 2007 Associated Press.

U.S. farmers planted 92.9 million acres of corn in 2007, exceeding last year’s planted area by 19 percent and surpassing the March projection by 3 percent, according to the Acreage report released today by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS). The actual planted acreage is the highest since 1944, when farmers planted 95.5 million corn acres.

Driven by favorable prices, growing ethanol demand and strong export sales, farmers in nearly all states increased their corn acreage. They set state records in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and North Dakota, while Iowa continued to lead all states in total corn acres.

The increase in corn is offset mainly by fewer acres of soybeans in the Corn Belt and Great Plains, and fewer acres of cotton in the Delta and Southeast. Nationwide, NASS estimates planted soybean area at 64.1 million acres, down 15 percent from last year’s record high and down 5 percent from the March forecast. Area planted to cotton totals 11.1 million acres, marking a 28 percent drop from 2006 and the lowest level since 1989.

The Acreage report shows that the nation’s farmers continued to embrace biotechnology. Corn growers planted 73 percent of their acres with biotech seed varieties, an increase of 12 percent from 2006. Cotton farmers planted 87 percent of their acres with biotech varieties, up 4 percent from 2006, and soybean producers planted 91 percent of their acres with biotech seed, up 2 percent from 2006.

NASS’s acreage estimates are based on surveys conducted during the first two weeks of June on approximately 11,000 segments of land and from a sample of approximately 88,000 farm operators across the United States.

© 2007 Biofuel Review

BERLIN - Germany's biofuel companies hope for government support to keep their industry thriving. While critics say the environmental and social damages caused by the biofuel boom are severe, industry members say biofuels can be an important factor in the battle to stop global warming.

Both the United States and the European Union are heavily supporting the increased use of biofuels to drive down greenhouse gas emissions in the transportation sector.

At a summit earlier this year, the 27 EU member states agreed to increase the share of biofuels in transportation to at least 10 percent by 2020 -- a very ambitious goal, observers say.

"If we want to reach that goal, we need government support," Moritz Gaede, member of the executive board at Campa AG, a German biofuels firm, recently told a group of reporters in Berlin.

His call was supported by a German environmentalist, who said that much like the solar energy sector, which got a significant boost from a renewable energy feed-in tariff, the biofuel industry needed incentives.

"The market doesn't automatically care for climate protection; the state has to create those incentives," Gernot Klepper, environment and natural resources expert at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a Germany-based think tank for research in global economic affairs, said at the same news conference.

Klepper, in a presentation to reporters, said some 7.5 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions were saved in 2005 because of biofuels.

But biofuels are becoming increasingly controversial. For one, they have driven up food prices: Farmers are switching in droves from producing food crops to plants used for biofuel production, which is often subsidized. Palm, soybean and rapeseed oils are increasingly used for biofuels, and less wheat is produced, putting a strain on the poorest countries, which can hardly afford higher prices.

Moreover, biofuels lead to more land being used for agricultural purposes; in countries like Indonesia and Brazil, where palm oil is produced, this leads to rainforests being cut down, critics say.

Biofuel critics also argue that biofuels produce much more CO2 than is being said, if you count in the agricultural production cycle that includes heavy fertilizing and harvesting machinery.

On Thursday, a charity supporting farmers in developing countries sounded the loudest alarm yet. The charity, Grain, said their research shows that the biofuel boom is causing severe environmental and social damage.

"The wide-scale cultivation of agrofuels will actually make things worse in many parts of the world, notably southeast Asia and the Amazon basin, where the drying of peat lands and the felling of tropical forest will release far more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than will be saved by using agrofuels," the group said in a statement based on its research. "Farming is responsible for 14 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Within farming, the largest single cause is the use of chemical fertilizers, which introduce a huge amount of nitrogen into the soil, and nitrous oxide into the air.

"Changing land use (mainly deforestation and thus linked to the expansion of crop monoculture) is responsible for another 18 percent. And a large part of global transport, which is responsible for a further 14 percent of emissions, stems from the way in which the agro-industrial complex moves large quantities of food from one continent to another."

Klepper did not agree with Grain's findings: He said biofuels' ecologic record is already better than most people say.

"In the past decade, the environmental balance of biofuels has dramatically improved," Klepper said. "Today, biofuels produced in Germany can replace roughly 70 percent of the fossil fuel."

The industry also hopes for so-called second-generation biofuels, which are based on biological waste digested by bacteria. They are, however, at least a decade away, according to current estimates.

Until then, Gaede said biofuels should be certified for their sustainability, to avoid social (child work) and environmental (deforestation) shortcomings in connection with their production.

Norbert Schmitz, of the environmental consulting agency Meo Consulting, has helped develop such a certification system for the German Agriculture Ministry, which will be tested within the coming years, he said. Companies in the 27 EU member states and key firms in Malaysia, India, Brazil and Argentina will take part in the test system, he added.

© Copyright 2007 United Press International, Inc.

Pubs could face rising prices and shortages of core food and drink products as an unforeseen consequence of increased investment in biofuels.

Suppliers are warning that farmers producing grain to make staples such as bread and beer are being incentivised by subsidies to sell to fuel producers instead. Grain used as feed for cattle and poultry is also in short supply.

The Bavarian Brewers Association, which represents German beer producers, said this week that beer prices are likely to rise because European farmers are abandoning barley to plant subsidised crops for sale to biofuel producers.

The UK government has set a target of 2010 for 5 per cent of all the fuel sold on forecourts to come from biofuels. This is forecast to save 1m tonnes of carbon a year, said to be the equivalent of taking 1m cars off the road.

However, charity Grain warned last week of the dangers of diverting grain from food to fuel production. The cautionary note came after BP announced plans to invest £200m in a biofuels plant in Hull, which will make ethanol from wheat.

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation has also said basic food prices in poor countries are being pushed up by competition for land from biofuels.

Copyright The Publican Publishing Ltd.

Catilin has come up with a way to let biodiesel manufacturers consume both of their major food groups: animal fat and vegetable oil.

The company, which was developed from research at Iowa State University, has devised a catalyst that allows fuel refiners to mix different types of oils together in the same manufacturing process. Currently, it's not easy for biodiesel manufacturers to process animal and vegetable oils together. The catalyst also eliminates a step in the oil-to-biodiesel process.

In all, the catalyst could cut processing prices by 30 cents a gallon, CEO Larry Lenhart said in an interview.

"Think of this nanocatalyst as an omnivore," said Erik Straser, a partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures, which was the lead investor in a $3 million initial round of funding for the company.

Mohr Davidow also announced it is participating in funding for ZeaChem, which says it has come up with a process that can extract far more ethanol out of rotting vegetable matter than competitors' processes. Using ZeaChem's method, nearly all of the carbon out of a pile of vegetable matter gets turned into fuel. Right now about one-third of the carbon in the corn ethanol process winds up as worthless carbon dioxide, which then adds to the levels of greenhouse gases.

ZeaChem hopes to have a million-gallon-a-year facility up and running in 12 to 18 months.

"There is no 'Frankenbug'," Straser said, referring to how some companies hope to create synthetic microbes to process cellulosic ethanol. "The enzyme cocktail is much simpler here. It works on a wider variety of feedstocks too."

Both biodiesel and ethanol are dependent upon feedstocks such as palm oil, sugarcane, and corn, which can fluctuate wildly in price and erode margins. Corn has doubled in price, from $2 a bushel to $4 a bushel, in the U.S. in the past year and whacked the profits of ethanol producers. Increased biodiesel demand is expected to make cooking oil prices spike in the coming years.

To ameliorate these problems, researchers are trying to come up with feedstocks with almost no value (like wood chips) instead of food crops (like corn), to reduce the amount of energy required to produce fuel, or figure out better ways of using the byproducts that result from the manufacturing process.

Ideally, the Catilin catalyst will let biodiesel refiners select from a wider variety of feedstocks, particularly the lower value ones such as old chicken fat. It also lowers the capital expenditure because one processing line can be used for a wider variety of oils.

Although the U.S. consumes a lot of meat, the store of leftover animal fat isn't large enough to get the country off of imported oil. Even if all the animal fat and tallow from slaughterhouses were converted to biodiesel, it would produce only a billion or so gallons of fuel a year, or about a percent of the amount of diesel consumed, according to statistics from University of Minnesota professor Vernon Eidman. Still, a billion gallons of fuel a year could sell for about $3 billion. To capitalize on the opportunity, pork and poultry giant Tyson Foods and ConocoPhilips announced plans to build a refinery.

The catalyst also isn't absorbed by the oil, so it can be reused. Straser further asserted that the catalyst will cut the costs of biodiesel refiners that mix meat and vegetable oils as well as those that want to stay vegetarian.

How does it work? The catalyst is a hollow, porous sphere. The outside of the sphere reacts with one type of oil to strip away glycerol while the inside sphere reacts with a different oil.

ZeaChem, meanwhile, has created an enzyme that converts plant matter made of sugar into acetic acid, which is then used in the ethanol conversion process. The techniques used by the company result in less carbon being burned off. ZeaChem's system also takes advantage of lignin, a high-energy material in plants that is extracted during the initial stages of making cellulosic ethanol and reused in a later part of the process.

What's more attractive: biodiesel or ethanol? Straser says his firm is investing in both, but indicated that biodiesel may have a lead. Ethanol, after all, is mostly being emphasized in the U.S. and Brazil and is not as popular globally.

"Net, net, it's a better fuel," he said. "Overall, the world is turning toward diesel."

Others, such as Michele Rubino of Navigant Consulting, side with ethanol, noting that the subsidies are higher on some types of biodiesel.

Copyright ©2007 CNET Networks, Inc

BEIJING - China is likely to face raw material shortages for an increasing number of ethanol plants until the technology matures to enable conversion of agricultural waste into biofuel.

Industry officials, gathered for a biofuel conference in Beijing, said China might also be short of sweet potatoes and sweet sorghum for ethanol projects, prompted by Beijing's limits on the use of corn for fuel ethanol out of concern that it could cause a shortage of food.

PetroChina, listed arm of the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), was conducting a feasibility study for a 100,000-tonne-per-year sweet potato-based ethanol plant in the southwest province of Sichuan, a company official said.

The plant will be located in Sichuan's Nanchong, Li Jianxin, a senior engineer with PetroChina Planning and Engineering Institute, told Reuters on the sidelines of the biofuel conference organised by IBC Asia Pte Ltd.

His remark followed an announcement this month by China Agri-Industries Holdings Ltd. , a listed arm of state-owned grains group COFCO, that it was to build a similar plant in the eastern province of Jiangsu province.

Industry officials said other developers were also working on similar sweet potatobased ethanol projects in the central province of Hubei and Hebei.

With oil prices hovering around $70 a barrel and Beijing promoting biofuels to wean the country from imported oil, many ethanol projects have sprouted in China, especially as local officials are keen to boost rural economies.

This has already helped push up domestic corn prices towards record highs ahead of the 2007 harvest and after a bumper crop last year. "China cannot follow the path of the United States and Brazil in developing ethanol. China's raw material supplies are insufficient," said Li Guiying, a researcher with the Research Centre for Biomass at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

Worried that high corn prices might fuel inflation and undermine the country's food security, Beijing has recently introduced a series of measures to curb the use of corn by processors, including fuel ethanol.

Beijing has said that production of the crops used in making power should not take land away from its grains production. China feeds 21 percent of the world's population with its 7 percent of the world's cultivated land. "Supplies of feedstocks like sweet potatoes and sorghum grown on marginal land are very limited," Feng Han, manager at new business development for Du Pont (China) Research and Development and Management Co. Ltd, told Reuters.

"That does not support scale production of ethanol," said Han.

"Cellulose ethanol will be the future. China has a large amount of stalks from wheat, rice and corn."

Han said Du Pont Co. was looking for a Chinese partner for cellulose ethanol, and that it hoped to start commercial production by 2010 or 2011.

The industry officials estimated about 200 million tonnes of stalks would be available for ethanol production in China.

With a boom in ethanol made from corn or sugar threatening food supplies even in countries such as the United States, many firms, including Du Pont, are racing to develop a commercially viable technology for cellulose-based ethanol.

China Agri-Industries, China's top fuel ethanol producer, is also working with Danish enzyme supplier Novozymes A/S on such technology and it is investing 50 million yuan to build a pilot plant to covert cellulose-based biomass into fuel ethanol in the northeastern province of Heilongjiang.

© Reuters 2007.

WASHINGTON - The Energy Department is creating three bioenergy research centers to find new ways to turn plants into fuel.

The three centers, which the department described as three start-up companies with $125 million each in capital, will be in Oak Ridge, Tenn.; Madison, Wis.; and near Berkeley, Calif. They will involve numerous universities, national laboratories and private companies. The goal of the centers, which are to be announced on Tuesday, is to bring new technologies to market within five years.

The new approach supports President Bush’s goal of reducing gasoline consumption by 20 percent in 10 years.

The bioenergy centers will focus on finding naturally occurring microbes that can break down lignin, a component of plants and trees, to give access to the material inside, called cellulose. The cellulose can be converted into ethanol or other liquid fuels, like butanol and biodiesel, said Raymond L. Orbach, the under secretary for science at the Energy Department.

Today, companies trying to commercialize cellulosic ethanol use heat and acids, an expensive process.

They have focused on the cellulose itself, which is made up of six-carbon sugars, the kind that is found in grains that have been turned into fermented products like beer for thousands of years, and of five-carbon sugars, which cannot be fermented by ordinary means. These are bound together tightly, and must be loosened by biological processes.

“There has been tremendous progress,” Dr. Orbach said. “But if you don’t fix the front end, the back end isn’t going be very efficient.”

The centers will also work on creating new crops that produce lignin that is easier to deal with, he said.

Ethanol is increasingly used as a gasoline substitute, but that has driven up the price of corn. “There’s a lot of biomass in our country that has nothing to do with corn or any other food,” Dr. Orbach said in an interview. One such plentiful plant often mentioned is switch grass.

In another area, the department announced Monday that it would help establish laboratories in Texas and Massachusetts to test designs for wind turbine blades up to 300 feet long, about twice the length of blades now in common use. The size of wind turbines in use has tripled in the last five years and could triple again, but this would require blades of lighter materials that are three times the length of the longest blade that can be reliably tested now in this country, said Andrew Karsner, assistant secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy.

The two announcements are part of a highly public campaign by the Bush administration to stress its commitment to renewable energy.

One of the new bioenergy centers will be led by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, an Energy Department lab in Tennessee. Participants include another lab, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, Colo.; the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta; the University of Georgia, Athens, and the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

A Great Lakes center, in Madison, Wis., will be led by the University of Wisconsin, and will include Michigan State University, East Lansing; the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, Wash.; the Lucigen Corporation, Middleton, Wis.; the University of Florida, Gainesville; Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Illinois State University, Normal; and Iowa State University, Ames.

The third, the Joint Bioenergy Institute, will be led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, and will include Sandia National Laboratories; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of California, Davis; and Stanford. Dr. Orbach said that the centers’ geographic diversity would help researchers examine a wide range of plants.

The centers, each to be financed by $25 million a year, are supposed to be fully operational by the fiscal year beginning Sept. 1, 2009.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Researchers have made a new type of biofuel with more energy than ethanol, and which can be produced more quickly and efficiently than other biofuels.

At present biofuel - most commonly in the form of ethanol - is produced biologically, using microorganisms to break down raw biomass into simple sugars, which are then fermented to produce ethanol.

Ethanol is a far from perfect fuel - its production can be slow and the amount of energy it produces is vastly less than conventional fuels such as petroleum.

James Dumesic, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the United States, and colleagues have created a new biofuel, dimethylfuran (DMF), using a combination of conventional biological and new chemical methods.

Their approach is quicker than the biological method and uses far less energy than existing chemical procedures.

They first use microorganism-derived enzymes to break down raw carbohydrate chains into fructose (a simple sugar). Then an acid and a metal are used to catalyse reactions that remove oxygen molecules from the mix - minimal oxygen being more desirable in transportation fuel.

Although DMF has not yet been tested as a fuel, Dumesic says it is superior to ethanol in several ways.

It boils at 20 degrees Celsius higher than ethanol, meaning it remains as a liquid in the fuel tank and becomes a vapour in the engine - necessary for a fuel.

DMF also has a 40 per cent higher energy density than ethanol, requiring a smaller fuel tank, and repels water, so the fuel won't absorb moisture from the air like ethanol.

Dumesic says DMF, like ethanol, could be used as a fuel additive to increase fuel efficiency and ensure cleaner emissions.

He adds that part of the production process is similar to methods now used by the petroleum industry, making it easier to scale up production.

But he warns that safety and environmental testing are needed before widespread use of DMF as a possible blending agent for transport fuels can be considered.

Copyright SciDevNet

Washington, D.C., June 22, 2007—The Senate last night passed anti-energy legislation that will, if enacted, increase prices for consumers on an array of goods, including gasoline, automobiles and food, while doing nothing to increase supplies of affordable energy.

“The current legislation mandates the production of billions of gallons in subsidized ethanol while simultaneously criminalizing ‘excessive’ gas prices at the pump,” said Myron Ebell, Director of Energy Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “The real price gouging is not being perpetrated by oil companies, but by the Senate, by forcing drivers to buy higher-priced ethanol.”

The bill also contains provisions which sharply increase corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for new vehicles and higher efficiency standards for a wide range of electrical appliances. Both provisions were adopted despite research showing that appliance efficiency rules have led to downgraded performance and that fuel economy regulations make vehicles less crashworthy and more dangerous to passengers.

“The one bright spot is that other terrible provisions were dropped,” said Ebell. “ For now, at least, the Senate has failed to increase consumer electricity prices by mandating a 15% renewable portfolio standard for utilities.”

“2006 was once again a strong year for the industry,” says Angelo Toselli, PwC Partner and Energy and Utilities Practice Leader. “All sectors are still enjoying solid results — a trend we don’t see changing anytime soon.”

According to PwC, average total assets for the top 100 companies increased by 21% from $1.93 billion in 2005 to $2.34 billion in 2006. Average cash flow from operations increased 9% to $436 million in 2006, up from $400 million in 2005.

Valuation parameters for Canadian oil and gas transactions continued their positive trend, reaching new record highs in 2006. The median acquisition price for 2006 was $20.13/boe compared to $15.83 in 2005 — an increase of 27%, fuelled primarily by oil prices.

This year’s survey included a total of 32 income trusts in 2006 compared to 36 in 2005 as a result of merger and acquisition activity in 2006. Total market capitalization of the trusts increased by 4% from $69.9 billion in 2005 to $73.0 billion in 2006. The S&P/TSX Energy index did not match the broader S&P/TSX index, posting a net gain of only 3% in the year, while the S&P/TSX Energy Trust index posted a loss of 4%.

Toselli notes, “The big story for 2006 was the surprise announcement on October 31 by the Canadian federal government to change legislation to impose a new tax on income trusts, effectively ending their perceived favourable tax treatment. This announcement resulted in a significant loss in market value of the energy trust sector.”

The PwC survey also notes that it is anticipated that the federal government will soon announce short-term targets for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants from key industrial sectors. It is expected that a significant portion of the burden will rest on the shoulders of the energy industry.

Specific sector results are as follows:

Crude oil & natural gas:
Canadian crude prices continued to increase in 2006. The average par price for light sweet oil posted at Edmonton by the four Canadian refiners in 2006 of US$72.77/bbl was 6% higher than the 2005 average price of US$68.72/bbl. Prices peaked in July 2006 with an average monthly price of US$85.62/bbl.

As predicted in last year’s survey, natural gas prices did not follow the same trend as crude oil prices in 2006. Instead, lower winter heating demand, growth of onshore natural gas production and above average storage supplies led to a decrease in prices as compared to 2005.

“Given the projected growth in Asia and continued and escalating geo-political unrest in certain OPEC nations, commodity prices are expected to remain high for 2007. However, certain industry analysts and government agencies do expect oil prices to moderate,” says Cal Jacober, PwC Partner with the Canadian Energy and Utilities Practice. “Natural gas prices are also expected to be marginally higher for 2007 as a result of increased demand.”

Oil & gas services:
2006 was again a strong year for the industry with a record 22,127 wells drilled in Western Canada. The industry saw continued strong demand for services for a third year in a row in 2006, however, based on the reduction of activity in Q4 2006 and the weak 2007 first quarter drilling results (down 21% from Q1 2006) this trend is not expected to continue in 2007.

Oil sands:
The oil sands juggernaut continued to roll in 2006, with entries by several new participants. Throughout the year applications, hearings, approvals, and public announcements took place and construction progressed, or was initiated, on several existing and new projects. The geographic footprint of oil sands activity spread both west of existing areas and then further east into Saskatchewan.

The sale of oil sands development leases in the province hit a record high of approximately $2 billion, nearly five times higher than the previous year. Daily oil production for the year was 1.1 million barrels, close to a third of Canada’s 2006 overall liquids output.

Electricity:
Within the past year, key policy and regulatory issues were focused primarily on concerns related to the supply and demand of electricity. While Ontario and New Brunswick moved forward on a range of new generation and nuclear refurbishment activities in order to meet potential supply gaps, Newfoundland and Québec considered and initiated new generation capacity and transmission projects respectively in order to meet the demand of other jurisdictions. Overall, advancements on the generation front were strongly in favour of cleaner and renewable sources of electricity.

Survey methodology:
The annual PwC survey provides a summary of performance within numerous sectors of Canada’s energy industry including: crude oil, natural gas, oil and gas services, oil sands and electricity. The survey also summarizes financial and operating information of the top 100 Canadian public oil and gas companies and 32 oil and gas income trusts, as presented in their respective annual reports for the fiscal years ended in 2006.

When it comes to finding cleaner greener sources of electrical power, we’re going to have to start thinking out of the box a bit if we want to reduce carbon emissions and increase efficiency. Coal, solar, wind and hydro may be the most common sources to power your home, but now you can now add cow poop to the list as well. And no we’re not kidding…

Cows produce the greenhouse gas methane through their farts and poop. The very thought may ellicit giggles, but methane represents a serious threat for global warming — it’s a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. When you have thousands of cows packed into very small areas on industrial dairy farms (such as in California), you are looking at a serious methane problem. Naturally it makes sense then to try to kill two birds with one stone and turn the methane gas into something useful (like a source of energy) while breaking it down.

While they haven’t yet produced a specific module for bovine emissions, Velocys, a company in Ohio, has come up with a method to refine the methane gas that is the byproduct of a number of industrial processes. The methane is moved through microchannels, mixed with carbon and then frozen, allowing the nitrogen that is in the compound to pass through, thus purifying the gas, so that it may be used as a power source.

Meanwhile, PG&E, the California utility company that wants to get you to power your house with your car, recently signed an agreement with BioEnery Solutions that will allow them to provide enough natural gas which they plan to get from cow poop for about 50,000 homes. BioEnergy is a company that retrofits a lagoon of cow manure, in order to to trap the methane that is being produced as it manure decomposes. The methane is then cleaned so that it can be used to generate electricity. Their first project for this partnership will be installed on Vintage Dairy, in Fresno County.

Methane digesters aren’t a new technology, but they are starting to be applied more widely. In 2004, Albert Strauss installed a similar system on his farm in Marin County, and started to sell it back to PG&E. It was the first of 14 proposed systems that were being tested in the hopes that it could become another outlet for power generation. It’s a technology that has been in existence for years, though it was to costly to install it. Here’s hoping that the new developments in technology and and PG&E’s deal with BioEnergy is another step in the right direction.
Source: inhabitat

* Matching the federal EcoENERGY subsidies for home energy retrofits;
* Point-of-sale rebates on Energy Star appliances;
* Subsidies for passive and photovoltaic solar panels; and
* Subsidizing the added cost of converting to 100% green power.

"Everyday I get requests from people asking me for information on incentives for conservation and solar panels. Now, I finally have some good news for them," said Winter.

The incentives bring new challenges in helping people find the solutions and incentives that best fit their needs. "We need to reach out to every home in Ontario," said Winter, "and there's no better way than through community groups and summer campaigns."

Winter noted there is $1.5 million dollars available for community-based outreach projects through the Ministry of Energy's Community Conservation Initiatives fund, but the applications are due June 29th. Details are at the ministry website,

http://www.energy.gov.on.ca/index.cfm?fuseaction=conservation.community

The Conservation Council is offering to help any group that can hire summer students to reach out to their community through community workshops and a conservation challenge.

The Council has also released its own five-year Conservation Challenge, which is available on its website, www.weconserve.ca . Among its challenge targets (which exceed the provincial targets) are to raise 70% of the existing Ontario homes to an Energuide 70 rating by 2012 (up from the current average of 54), and to reduce residential electricity to an average of 750 kWh/month (down from the current level of 1,000 kWh).

"The Province has given us the incentives. Now it's up to all of us to build a conservation movement across Ontario," said Winter.

Empire Communities is one of the province's leaders in building to an EnerGuide 80 performance rating five years ahead of the Ontario Building Code

Award winning builder Empire Communities is celebrating the completion of their Discovery Home, located in the award winning community of Wyndfield in Brantford. The ENERGY STAR® qualified Discovery Home is designed to help combat climate change by reducing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously helping homeowners save on their energy bills.

Empire Communities will also announce that from this point forward, every new home they build will be ENERGY STAR qualified, demonstrating their company-wide commitment to reduce the impact on the environment by building exclusively energy efficient homes. An ENERGY STAR qualified home is 30 % more energy efficient than a home built to minimum building code requirements and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by up to 3 tonnes per year.

Chief Energy Conservation Officer of Ontario Peter Love will award a Certificate of Recognition to Empire Communities for their energy conservation achievement and commitment.

PROVIN, France - On Francois-Xavier Letang’s farm, yellow-flowering canola fields hold the promise of a payoff that is changing the color of the European landscape and the future of its transportation: biodiesel.

Thanks to government subsidies and long-held concerns about climate change, European farmers are trying to match their American counterparts in the ethanol business and expecting rewards when they deliver their crops to newly built biodiesel refineries.

“It’s a very profitable outcome,” said Letang, 32, looking ahead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits on the canola beans that he will harvest this summer.

Even as they argue about benefits and costs, Europeans are leaping into a biofuels race that is well under way in the United States and has sped around the world from Brazil to Beijing.

Europe is starting to see a dividend on European Union subsidies paid to farmers - at least $25 for every acre of energy crops produced. Earlier this month, Europe’s first regular passenger train service powered by biodiesel departed London for Wales.

Still in its early stages, biofuels has the agriculture business booming in parts of Europe: Near Letang’s farm, 75 miles southwest of Paris, implement dealer Philippe Bernard said he expects to sell $650,000 worth of canola-cutters, tools put on farm machinery to harvest canola plants, this year. A few years ago, he sold none.

In Europe, where 55 percent of vehicles are diesel, biodiesel is produced by blending petroleum-based fuel with oil from any number of oilseed plants such as soybean, canola and palm - or even using old cooking oil.

Europe lags well behind Brazil and the United States, the world’s ethanol giants, as Europeans joust over the environmental consequences of biofuels, as well as more immediate impacts.

In Germany, for example, the price of beer has risen steadily due to a doubling of the price of barley as farmers switch to canola and other crops to feed biodiesel plants.

Nonetheless, the European Union is planning a new biofuels push to require its 27 member countries to blend 10 percent-blended biofuel by 2010, well beyond the requirements even in the ethanol-hungry United States.

Europe’s motivation is somewhat different than the U.S. aims. Rather than stressing independence from foreign energy imports, European leaders speak often of threats from global warming.

And while U.S. farmers are converting fields to corn production for ethanol, in Europe it’s canola, a weedy, knotty, waist-high plant - called rapeseed here - that is being sowed on swaths of land in France, Italy and Germany.

But Europe also must import palm oil to make all that biofuel. And that’s one reason why environmentally conscious Europeans have proceeded with caution up to now and why early biofuels goals on the continent have fallen short.

‘Biofuel gangs’

“Biofuels Gangs Seek Green Profits” read a headline in the Times of London earlier this month, a reference to the dark side of a sped-up search for raw materials to feed European bio-refineries.

The story described how armed thugs are forcing people from disputed lands in Colombia in order to grow palm trees harvested for the oil in their fruit and seeds.

More reports of biofuels entrepreneurs burning and clear-cutting in developing countries such as Ecuador, Peru, Indonesia and Malaysia to make way for palm plantations are adding a new chapter to the debate about saving the world’s remaining rainforests. The destruction has left some European politicians nervous about promoting biofuels, contrasting with the full-throated support by their American counterparts for ethanol produced largely from homegrown corn.

A United Nations report last month warned of global environmental consequences from biofuels. The report said increased production of ethanol and biodiesel has many positive effects including the potential of providing a quarter of the world’s energy needs in the next 15 to 20 years. But it went on to say that unless nations adopt new conservation policies, “the environmental and social damage could, in some cases, outweigh the benefits.”

In Europe, Germany and the Netherlands are especially concerned. A Dutch agriculture official said his office had met with global canola importers, among them Decatur, Ill.-based Archer Daniels Midland, to urge reforestation and other conservation efforts in the palm oil business. A spokeswoman for ADM said her company had no comment.

In Brussels, European officials said in interviews they intend to impose a certification system requiring importers to prove that their palm oil had not been harvested in environmentally destructive ways.

In a recent speech, Mariann Fischer Boel , the European Union’s agriculture and rural development commissioner, asserted that Europe needs imports to meet biofuels goals. But she added: “I don’t want future European imports of ethanol or palm oil to evoke the sound of valuable ? rainforest crashing to the ground.”

Changing landscape

The biofuels push is changing how parts of Europe look, too. In two years time, European land dedicated to canola has doubled - to more than 4 million acres last year - prompting worries of fertilizer pollution and a changing countryside in a part of the world accustomed to small farms and diverse crops.

Aat Peterse is an analyst for the European Federation for Transport and the Environment, which represents 49 environmental groups across Europe. He described how hedges and trees are disappearing in the countryside near his home in France to make way for canola.

“It started out with everyone thinking this is a good idea,” said Peterse. Now, he and other advocates are trying to tamp down enthusiasm for biofuels.

Biofuels production is also increasing European Union pressure on farmers to comply with conservation rules that far exceed those in the United States.

About 1 percent of Europe’s 15 million farms are subject to inspection this year to find out if farmers are adhering to requirements such as protecting animal health, saving grasslands and soil and limiting runoff of farm chemicals.

European farmers can reap subsidies practices such as cutting weeds by hand rather than using a power mower or tractor. Why? To protect partridges and hares, creatures valued in the European countryside.

If farmers don’t comply, money is deducted from the EU subsidies they get and they risk losing government support altogether.

Pekka Pesonen, a Finnish dairy farmer who heads a Europe-wide association of farm groups, contrasted European efforts to reduce nitrogen runoff from croplands with what he referred to as “a fairly relaxed approach” in the United States.

“It’s like Orwell’s 1984; you have to provide proof of what you do. That makes it enormously complicated from the farmer’s position,” he said.

Yet farmers like Francois-Xavier Letang in France seem untroubled. He maintains thickets of greenery around his fields and said he will use 25 percent less pesticide this year than permitted.

“The main issue in France today is a great interest in environment and water quality,” he said.

There’s a great interest in biofuels in Europe, too, he observed, adding: “We’re expecting a good outcome in the coming years.”

Copyright © 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch L.L.C.

The deal between BP and Synthetic Genomics is centered on developing biological conversion processes for subsurface hydrocarbons that could lead to cleaner energy production and improved recovery rates. As part of the agreement, BP has also made an equity investment in Synthetic Genomics.

Microbes are key components in sustaining and maintaining life on Earth, and genomics is leading to an enhanced understanding of these organisms. In the first phase of the BP/Synthetic Genomics program, the research will focus on gaining a better understanding of microbial communities in various hydrocarbon formations such as oil, natural gas, coal and shale. Synthetic Genomics, which was founded by genome pioneer J Craig Venter, Ph.D., will use its expertise in environmental DNA sequencing and microbial cell culturing to produce the first comprehensive genomic study of microbial populations living in these environments. Once the basic science research phases are complete, BP and Synthetic Genomics will seek to jointly commercialize the technologies developed.

“We believe that one of the most promising solutions to producing cleaner fuels will be found through genomic-driven advances,” said Dr. Venter. “Through our research collaboration with BP, we will achieve a new and better understanding of the subsurface hydrocarbon bioconversion process which we are confident will yield substantial cleaner energy sources.”

The overall goal of Synthetic Genomics is to discover and/or design new genomes that will code for new types of cells with desired properties for bioenergy or specific chemical production. In this project, Synthetic Genomics scientists hope to better understand hydrocarbon metabolism by sequencing the genomes and culturing the cells of the naturally occurring microbes that thrive in subsurface hydrocarbons.

Tony Meggs, Group Vice President of Technology at BP, adds: “This collaboration is an exciting development that could lead to an unprecedented understanding of the microbial activity in the subsurface; and eventually to the development of more environmentally-friendly and efficient energy production and recovery techniques.”

© 2007 Biofuel Review

RIO DE JANEIRO - The largest movement fighting for the distribution of unproductive rural property to landless peasant farmers in Brazil complains that the "euphoria" over the production of biofuels from sugar cane and other crops is aggravating the concentration of land ownership and driving up land prices.

The Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra or Landless Workers Movement (MST) argues that the biofuel boom is just another manifestation of the growing strength of agribusiness in Brazil, Latin America's giant.

Joao Pedro Stedile, a member of the MST national leadership, told IPS that biofuel production forms part of the "agricultural model of the dominant classes, the big capitalists who have built up an alliance of vested interests, comprised of transnational corporations on one hand and large Brazilian landowners on the other."

This alliance, he said, is based on export-oriented production on vast tracts of land, and heavy use of toxic agrochemicals that damage the environment.

The MST advocates a different model, one that is "focused on the needs of the people, and is based on keeping peasant farmers in the countryside and on multi-crop production that puts a priority on food production, without the use of agrotoxics," said the activist.

The MST's fifth national congress, which has drawn 18,000 delegates to Brasilia, the capital, from Jun. 11-15, is discussing alternatives to agribusiness.

"Agribusiness impedes land reform because to carry out such reforms, it is necessary to democratise access to property ownership, carve up the large estates (latifundium) and stimulate multi-crop farming for the domestic market," said Stedile. Agribusiness, by contrast, "needs ever larger scales of production and increasingly concentrates land ownership," he added.

According to the Pastoral Land Commission, 3.5 percent of Brazil's landholders own nearly 60 percent of the best farmland, while the poorest 40 percent of farmers have a mere one percent.

The MST, Latin America's largest social movement, stages occupations of unproductive land to press for faster, more effective agrarian reform.

The movement now has a new concern: the biofuel craze and its impact on the distribution of land.

Stedile said that "What worries us now is the offensive we are seeing by U.S. investors who are funnelling large amounts of money into the purchase of land and distilleries in Brazil, to produce ethanol."

He pointed to the purchase of 13 ethanol factories, mainly by U.S. investors. For example, U.S. agribusiness giant Cargill bought the largest ethanol plant in Riberao Preto in the interior of the state of Sao Paulo, along with 356,000 hectares of sugar cane crops.

"The recent announcement in Brazil by Soros is also pathetic," said the activist.

Adeco, a company in which Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros is the main shareholder, has invested 900 million dollars in the construction of three ethanol plants in the southern Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. In addition, Soros plans to purchase one billion dollars worth of land in Brazil through an investment fund.

A recent study published by the FNP Institute, which is linked to the agricultural market research services firm AgraFNP, confirms that land prices have increased as a result of the ethanol boom.

The study, coordinated by agronomist Jacqueline Dettman, notes that in states like Sao Paulo, sugar cane production is encroaching on orange crops and pastureland, and has driven land prices up by 70 percent in the last year.

And in areas suitable for growing sugar cane in the impoverished northeast, land prices have hit record highs, increasing by 84 percent over the last year, says the study.

In an interview with IPS, Minister of Agrarian Development Guilherme Cassel admitted that along with the growth of ethanol production, "there have to be regulations to ensure that production is not based on the expansion of the latifundio at the expense of the environment, family farms and agrarian reform."

But production of biofuels and food are compatible, he said, if they are planned and regulated, "by avoiding, for example, the purchase of land by foreign investors, which even poses a problem in terms of national sovereignty."

Cassel, however, said he had discrepancies with respect to the MST's argument that agribusiness has been favoured over a "social" model of agriculture.

"In Brazil we have two models: agribusiness, based on large extensions of land and monoculture farming, and the family farm model, based on land reform settlements, crop diversification and protection of the environment," he stated.

During his first four years in office, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva "supported both models, and both were very effective," he said.

Brazil is currently in a position "where it is no longer necessary to commit ourselves only to monoculture farming to generate revenues. At the same time, we support agrarian reform and family agriculture," Cassel added.

He pointed out that over the last four years, the Lula administration increased credits for family farms from 1.15 to 6.25 billion dollars.

The minister said he agreed with the MST that of the two models, "the best one for the Brazilian countryside is the one based on small landholdings, with large numbers of people working, generating jobs and income, with diversified production that protects the environment."

This viewpoint, he acknowledged, is opposed to the model "that has concentrated land and has caused unemployment and marginalisation among people in the countryside, deforestation, slave labour and violence."

The government, he added, is prioritising production of biodiesel, produced from vegetable oils, as a motor for rural development.

He described this as a "revolutionary policy" that has already benefited some 200,000 farmers in the northeast, according to government figures.

What the minister and Stedile do not agree on is the progress made by the government's agrarian reform programme. The MST leader argues that the process has been "practically stagnant" since the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1995-2003).

Stedile says 65 percent of the new settlements in which landless farmers have been granted property were established on publicly-owned land in the Amazon jungle region, and thus "should be labelled ‘colonisation projects' instead of ‘settlements'."

The remaining 35 percent, according to the MST, are settlements in which there has been no true agrarian reform policy, in the sense of "measures aimed at distributing land and democratising the ownership of rural property."

"We maintain that these settlement policies do not constitute agrarian reform, but are policies of social contention aimed at resolving short-term problems" that form part of "free-market economic policies that have left behind national and industrial development."

"I don't agree with Stedile's arguments," Cassel responded. "The Brazilian government can confidently state that never before have so many people been settled on land of their own in such a short time in Brazil."

According to the minister, 371,000 rural families have received a total of 32 million hectares of land in the last four years, "an area larger than Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Switzerland combined."

He did not deny that many of the families were settled in the Amazon jungle region, and said that policy should be included in the aims of social movements like the MST when they "discuss a rational and environmentally sustainable occupation of land."

Copyright © 2007 IPS-Inter Press Service

In the 2 1/2 years since Gordon Ommen co-founded US BioEnergy Corp., the company has quietly grown into one of the country's top ethanol producers, with plans to double in size this year and grow its capacity to 1 billion gallons a year by 2009.

But Ommen knows there are challenges ahead for both his young company and the rapidly growing ethanol industry. Thanks to that fast expansion and some distribution issues, some Wall Street and university analysts predict the ethanol boom is about to stumble on a supply glut and shrinking profit margins.

"It's going to be a little bit of a bumpy ride, I think, but in the long run we are bullish on renewable fuels and believe that they are going to be a part of our domestic fuel stream for a long time to come," said Ommen, chairman, president and CEO of Inver Grove Heights, Minn.-based US BioEnergy.

It's a view shared by Geoff Cooper, who runs ethanol programs for the National Corn Growers Association. He said the industry expects what he called a temporary oversupply for several months, though he hesitated to call it a glut.

Lehman Brothers analysts estimated the surplus at about 1 million gallons per day starting in the second half of 2007. The firm's report attributed part of that to the ethanol plant construction boom, but said transportation bottlenecks are a bigger problem.

Ethanol is produced mainly in the Midwest and has to be moved to coastal markets by train or truck since pipelines don't exist, said Michael Waldron, a co-author of the report.

"The supply is coming online and there isn't really an efficient way to get it to the demand centers on the East and West Coasts," he said.

Currently, agribusiness conglomerate Archer Daniels Midland Co., of Decatur, Ill., is easily the country's largest ethanol producer with annual capacity of 1.1 billion gallons, and has expansion plans that will raise that to 1.6 billion gallons.

US BioEnergy, with 300 million gallons of capacity, was No. 1 among the companies that primarily produce ethanol until Brookings, S.D.-based VeraSun Energy Corp. opened a new plant in April that boosted its capacity to 340 million gallons. VeraSun has plants under construction or in development that will boost capacity to 670 million gallons. US BioEnergy is building plants to expand its capacity by as much as 450 million gallons; its goal is 1 billion by 2009.

"We expect the relentless supply of new ethanol production capacity will lead to a 70 percent decline in margins by 2009," wrote Bank of America analyst Eric K. Brown in a report late last month. The report, "The Ethanol Floodgates Have Opened," downgraded ratings on several ethanol-related stocks.

Researchers at Iowa State University also raised concerns about profit margins being battered by corn prices that, driven by ethanol, have risen from under $3 per bushel last summer to close to $4 per bushel lately. They say that will make it difficult for ethanol plants to make money. And as the ethanol supply grows, they predict, ethanol prices will drop relative to gasoline unless there's a change in government policy to encourage more demand for it.

"People who raise equity for ethanol plants don't like hearing this," said Bruce Babcock, director of the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development at Iowa State.

Last year the United States produced nearly 5 billion gallons of ethanol and will reach around 7 billion this year, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, the ethanol industry's main trade group.

The federal renewable fuels standard sets a goal for Americans to burn 4.7 billion gallons of renewable fuels such as ethanol this year, rising to 7.5 billion gallons by 2012. Some states also offer various tax incentives to encourage ethanol use. Some states also have mandates. Minnesota, for example, requires that all gasoline sold in the state be 10 percent ethanol.

Babcock said once production reaches the 9 billion to 10 billion gallon range, the price will have to come down to induce blenders to use more of it than the rules now require, he said.

Ethanol now makes up about 4.5 percent of the nation's gasoline mix, depending on location. Once that rises to 10 percent - the percentage all cars now sold in the U.S. can use without modifications - Babcock questions where any additional demand would come from. Given that ethanol has about two-thirds the energy content of gasoline, he said, ethanol would have to be priced at two-thirds the price of gasoline to induce a major turn toward E85, an 85 percent ethanol blend that can power flex-fuel vehicles.

"Otherwise no one will fill up with E85," he said.

The chairman of the National Corn Growers Association, Gerald Tumbleson, shares that concern.

"We call it a 'blend wall,'" said Tumbleson, who farms near Sherburn in southern Minnesota. "If you hit that blend wall, what's the value of our product? That's what makes us nervous."

Tumbleson said corn growers are hoping to get laws changed to require even greater use of ethanol, such as a 20 percent mandate. He said America's energy independence is at stake.

The Renewable Fuels Association is downplaying fears of a glut. Matthew Hartwig, a spokesman for the group, said there's a lot of room for growth before ethanol makes up 10 percent of the market, which would be around 14 billion gallons a year.

"Certainly the market for E85 will continue to grow as Detroit builds more of their new vehicles as E85 vehicles," and as gas stations install more E85 pumps, he said. Most stations that offer E85 are in the Midwest, though availability is expanding.

Hartwig discounted fears of distribution bottlenecks, expressing optimism that the railroads can handle the volume. The industry increasingly has been using long "unit trains" carrying nothing but ethanol from where it's made to where it's needed. Pipelines may finally make economic sense down the road when the industry produces larger volumes of both grain and cellulosic ethanol made from other plant material, he said.

A glut could set the stage for industry consolidation, said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst with Raymond James & Associates. But industry observers said consolidation is not a burning issue right now.

If a shakeout does happen, US BioEnergy may be in acquisition mode, Ommen said. The company picked up five of its operating or planned plants through acquisitions. Most recently, it announced May 31 that it's acquiring Millenium Ethanol LLC, which is building a plant near Marion, S.D., with a capacity of 100 million gallons per year that's expected to begin production in the first quarter of 2008.

"There's going to be bumps in the road," Ommen said. "Those bumps could produce opportunities for well-positioned companies."

Copyright 2007 Associated Press

Montana - Ethanol production is good for the economy and the environment, but it can and should get even better, proponents said at a conference here Monday.

There are 6,000 ethanol plants operating around the world, said Phillip Madson, president of Katzen International, which designs advanced technology for the fuel based on corn, other grains or cellulose.

The efficiency of those plants varies greatly. Modern plants produce at least 1.25 energy units for every unit they consume, Madson said at the annual meeting of Ethanol Producers and Consumers. But in Brazil, where sugar cane is converted into the ethanol that powers most of the nation's automobiles, the efficiency rating is 9-to-1, he said.

"The Brazilians are way ahead of us," he said.

But the United States, even using fossil-fuel dependent technology to raise the crops, can boost its efficiency to a 5-to-1 ratio, he said.

Some environmental and human rights groups raise ethical questions about converting food crops into fuel, a process that also consumes large quantities of water.

Others point to increasing food prices as a problem, because corn is being diverted to ethanol. Due to the increased demand, corn prices rose by 50 percent last year, said John Urbanchuk, an agricultural and alternative energy consultant who spoke at the conference.

That affects agricultural markets in a variety of ways, but the markets will adjust, he said.

"The world will not end and you will not see tremendous, significant increases in food prices," Urbanchuk said.

The challenge will come in producing enough grain to meet all of the needs, he said, adding that 30 million acres of agricultural land have been taken out of production in the United States in recent decades.

Increased corn production, partly through better plant genetics and farming methods, will provide the basis for 17 billion gallons of ethanol expected to be produced annually by 2017, he said.

However, wheat and barley will play increasing roles as well, he said, and technology is on the cusp for commercial production of ethanol from cellulose, which is found in grasses and wood.

"We're going to need cellulose," he told about 100 people gathered for the conference.

Turning grass into motor fuel is technologically feasible, said Murray Burke, president of SunOpta Bioprocess Inc., which has built cellulose plants in Louisiana and Europe.

"Cellulose ethanol is ready right now," he said. "It can be done."

But it also faces a lot of challenges, many of them involving transportation of vast amounts of raw materials. In addition, Burke said, cellulose ethanol relies to high degree on economy of scale, which means small plants, though more easily financed, have a hard time making a profit.

Using wood in such plants could be easier than using straw or grasses because a transportation infrastructure already exists, he said. However, "soft hardwoods" such as aspen and poplar are more efficient than conifers, he said.

Solids left over from cellulose-based production can be burned to fire the boilers that power ethanol plants, Madsen said. Solids left over from grain ethanol can be fed to livestock in nearby feedlots, and methane from the manure can then be used to heat the steam the plants need.

"We should not be fueling a cellulose fuel industry with gas or coal," Madsen said.

The conference ends Tuesday.

Copyright 2007 Bozeman Daily Chronicle

By Rick DelVecchio

MONTICELLO, Ill. - The farmer, standing in a field of tall grass, talked like an oilman.

The grass was waist-high as John Caveny held out a business card with his title printed in green: "Biomass Energy Wildcatter." He compared the potential energy productivity of the Corn Belt to that of East Texas more than 100 years ago.

"I tell people this is the next Spindletop," he said, referring to the famed gusher near Beaumont that started the age of petroleum in 1901.

That era is fading and a new energy age is beginning. Out is crude and in is cellulose, a renewable carbon source to replace fossil fuels in power plants and transportation.

According to Caveny's analysis, the new energy gold isn't black, it's green, and the new energy wildcatters aren't sitting on gushers, they're standing in them.

Caveny demonstrated as he waded among rows of miscanthus, a tropical "superweed" so tough and prolific that it looks to him like a good bet to make mountains of cellulose -- and bundles of cash for farmers.

"The glitter on this crop is so bright that there are some people, the wildcatters, who are putting their money where their mouth is," said Caveny, a small grower known locally for his grain-fed turkeys.

The scene in Caveny's field in the heart of prairie country about 2 1/2 hours southwest of Chicago was a glimpse of the emerging bio-economy, where government and private investments in a post-oil future are creating a rush for sources of renewable carbon and the means to turn them into fuel and chemicals.

It was also a glimpse of the potential impact of UC Berkeley's partnership with the nearby University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the $500 million Energy Biosciences Institute funded by British oil giant BP. The institute is being set up this summer to support hundreds of scientists in a push to create cheap, abundant vehicle fuels from sources of renewable carbon including farmed trees, manure, garbage and customized energy crops like Caveny's grass.

The point of the institute, and of smaller but similar efforts by industry and universities around the country, is to move research breakthroughs swiftly into the field. To put their ideas into action, the scientists need conservation-minded farmers willing to bet on the cellulose in plant fiber as a better source of ethanol than corn grain.

Caveny is among the first to get involved. But if biofuels are to have more than a marginal impact on energy consumption, legions more growers must follow - aided by policy changes promoting cellulose as a cash crop and encouraging Americans to drive more fuel-efficient vehicles.

Caveny, who learned of the potential of energy crops from research at Urbana-Champaign, is optimistic that science will expand crop yields and cut production costs so a gallon of biofuel at the pump will be competitive with a gallon of gas.

As Caveny's superweed grass grows head-high by the Fourth of July, scientists at the university are finishing proposals for the first round of money from the energy institute, which will fund biofuels research for 10 years.

"The future is big for this stuff, in my opinion," said Frank Dohleman, an Urbana-Champaign doctoral student in plant biology, "and I don't mind being in on the ground floor."

The comparison of a carbon farm to an oil well isn't as far-fetched as it sounds. Miscanthus, which is one of many perennial plants under study as sources for cellulose-based biofuels, grows for 20 years and needs relatively low amounts of fertilizer, water and care. European researchers have been studying it for some time.

The economics are attractive enough now to draw investors who can afford to wait a few years to recover their stake. They're expected to improve markedly as demand and productivity grow: The glint in the wildcatter's eye is the gusher of a 300-acre energy farm costing about $6 million for land, interest and planting and turning at least $8 million in revenue over the life of the crop.

Caveny's new career as a cellulose prospector shows that the foundation of the bio-economy has begun to form without the aid of technologies needed to boost the output of plant photosynthesis and of the chemistry to convert plant fiber to fuel.

Caveny had been growing a small crop of his bushy Southeast Asian superweed, called Miscanthus x giganteus, on a test basis and now has all the knowledge he needs to make the jump to business. He's working with a commercial partner, Speedling Inc., to propagate the plant in the heat of Florida for sale as a transplant to farmers across the United States.

Six ethanol processing plants funded by the U.S. Department of Energy will come on line within 18 months, and these represent the market for the first cellulose harvest, said Tom Harrington, who is based in Morro Bay (San Luis Obispo County) as a Speedling consultant.

"Just using our existing technology, we expect to expand to 15,000 acres by '09, and I would say that's conservative," he said.

Caveny predicted that a renewable carbon industry will be running full force in the Midwest within six years as farmers branch out from corn and soy to embrace cellulose crops. He sees markets opening for cellulose to fire power plants in place of coal and natural gas and to provide stock for ethanol, which is currently fermented from the sugar in grain rather than from the carbohydrate-rich fiber in stems and leaves.

"This is one of those things where we can do the right thing and make some money," Caveny said. "If a farmer can produce a crop profitably and in a sustainable manner, he'll do it."

Technology could drive a tenfold boost in fuel yields, making biofuels a significant factor in the nation's energy mix, Dartmouth College engineering Professor Lee R. Lynd said in congressional testimony last month. "We have a historic opportunity to reimagine agriculture to accommodate large-scale energy production," he said.

Skeptics say such predictions do not account for the challenges of engineering biological systems on a continental scale. They fear a technological push will disrupt native ecosystems and profit large companies, which will fund much of the research and development, at the expense of small operators.

Perennial crops are better for the environment than corn but still pose problems of water and fertilizer use, erosion and soil health, said Alice Friedemann, a science writer who has covered biofuels. "We shouldn't be betting the farm on having this work," she said.

In fact, the full ecological, economic and social impacts of an agriculture-based biofuels industry are unknown. But Caveny, for one, has seen enough to be convinced that there is ample opportunity in biofuels for large and small businesses to share. He's also convinced that energy crops can be grown sustainably.

"I think the two beneficiaries of this are the environment and the general public," he said.

He quickly added: "There are segments that are going to make a lot of money off this."

Predictions that the Corn Belt is on the brink of an energy boom are based on the possible global market for biofuels combined with the prospects for side-by-side research efforts to grow cellulose and process it into fuel. The predictions assume that aggressive, sustained research will produce breakthroughs that dramatically boost yields and lower processing costs to compete with corn-based ethanol.

The first step toward the goal of replacing 30 percent of U.S. gasoline use with biofuels by 2030 - the Bush administration's challenge to ease the nation off foreign oil dependence - comes into view if the agriculture industry can grow ample cellulose. That means planting 20 million to 55 million acres, depending on the cellulose yield, with miscanthus and other perennials. The lower figure is a little more than half the land area of Illinois.

Initial testing financed by the state of Illinois has shown that miscanthus has ideal qualities for industrial-scale production in temperate climates, scientists and farmers say. BP's money will give scientists the means to take the next steps.

Scientists say that next phase must focus on increasing the plant's yield and adapting it to diverse climates. They also say research is needed to deal with any susceptibility to pests and any threat the plant's fast-growing root system poses to native species.

On a recent May afternoon, a group of shirtless young men bent over in a farm field near campus in 85-degree heat. The men were students of Tom Voigt, an associate professor at Urbana-Champaign and a member of the university's agricultural extension staff. He hired them for the summer to plant the first acres of a planned 340-acre energy farm that will serve as a model for growers interested in expanding into the cellulose industry.

"I don't believe what we want to do is rocket science," said Voigt, who specializes in turf grasses. "It's not like going to the moon, and it hasn't been done in this country because there hasn't been a need to do it."

BP partnership raises no eyebrows in Illinois

Fears of nefarious corporate influence on academic freedom prompted howls of protest at UC Berkeley when oil giant BP announced five months ago that it had selected the campus to host its $500 million biofuels research project.

But in the Midwest, where UC Berkeley's research partners at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will work on the agricultural side of the problem, there was little if any ruminating over the power dynamics of such a large industry partnership with a public university.

Why? For one thing, the University of Illinois has been working hand in hand with commercial interests from the outset. Nobody has a problem with the golf course industry, for example, sponsoring research on smoother putting greens, and so, too, there isn't any violation seen in BP providing a pool of money for researchers studying energy crops that farmers can adopt and sell to industry for conversion to biofuels.

"Most of the spin people have taken on this has been positive -- more positive than I expected," plant geneticist Jack Juvik told a Chronicle reporter visiting the campus recently. "The university has been doing mission-oriented research for a long time. The system has been mission-oriented."

Said university extension specialist Anne Silvis: "We crossed that bridge a long time ago."

At Cal, some people worry that BP could direct research away from pure science and toward commercial ends. Silvis and a colleague, crop sciences researcher Maria Villamil, interviewed at their office on campus, had a different take.

"It's not perceived as some unholy partnership that's going to take us down the road of guns for hire," Silvis said.

"To the contrary," Villamil said. "We're finally making these companies support research on good alternatives."

Earlier this year, UC Berkeley's Academic Senate held two debates on the BP deal and some professors stood up to rip the company and the administration. University of Illinois faculty representatives heard the news from their chancellor and were unperturbed, said Tom Voigt, an assistant professor and extension specialist.

The reaction, said Voigt, was "either nonchalant or positive."

On the Cal campus, some students interested in the environmental and social aspects of the push for alternative fuels slammed the deal. Such an outcry has not been heard in Illinois.

"Other than myself, I haven't heard any student buzz of frustration," Rob Scott, a doctoral student in educational policy studies, said in an e-mail message.

Interviewed at a research farm off campus, Frank Dohleman, who is working on his doctorate in plant biology, gave what he called his "pro-BP speech."

"They're an oil company," he said. "They don't need to be doing this. The federal government isn't stepping up. BP has stepped forward and given the funding, and on top of that, they have the power to make this real."

Farmers interested but not ready to commit

One-third of Illinois farmers surveyed last year told University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers that they're interested in growing the tropical reed grass miscanthus as an energy crop, but most won't commit until all the steps are worked out, from planting and harvesting to crop insurance and government incentives.

"I think everything about miscanthus is great, but I know it represents a big challenge for the farmer," said Maria Villamil, an Urbana-Champaign researcher who is studying the social acceptability of energy crops. About 400 farmers responded to the survey.

Testing has proved miscanthus to be a productive crop in many parts of the state, yet the markets for it are in their infancy. It's likely that farmers will start off growing small amounts to supply nearby power plants that burn the dried grass directly. Another option is selling to small-scale fermentation plants that convert the material into liquid fuel for local consumption.

"It's so bulky you can't transport it more than 50 miles," said Anne Silvis, an Urbana-Champaign extension specialist.

One of the trickiest problems is designing specialized harvesters and balers for a crop that grows 12 feet high, creates huge blocks of vegetation instead of rows, and dies back in winter to thickets of spiky canes as woody as bamboo.

Urbana-Champaign scientists interviewed were overwhelmingly positive in their assessment of the impact of miscanthus on the environment. They said it crowds out weeds and adds carbon to the soil -- a service provided for thousands of years by the prairie grasses that predated industrial agriculture. It could improve wetlands by serving the function that canebrakes served before the prairie was developed for farming, and its minimal fertilizer requirements could help clean up the Mississippi River, they said.

"The more we go to the bioenergy stuff, the better it's going to be," said Mark David, a professor of biogeochemistry at Urbana-Champaign.

The potential drawbacks include runaway growth, high water use in low-rainfall areas and competition with food crops for the best land. Loss of biodiversity is another question: The miscanthus variety being studied in Illinois is a genetic oddity, its parentage is unknown and it spreads with rapidity by cloning.

In addition, some critics are worried about changes in land use in which woodlands on the edges of croplands could be pushed aside to make way for energy plantations.

Steve Long, the University of Illinois plant biologist who leads the miscanthus research effort, said that could mean a trade-off, but he predicted that people will adopt lifestyle changes that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

"My personal prediction is that in four to five years' time the major spur for biofuels is going to be global (climate) change, not the price of gas at the pump," he said.

© 2007 Hearst Communications Inc.

As crude oil prices flare up and remain on the boil and concerns over long-term oil supplies gain currency, the interest in unconventional transport fuels have gone up by leaps and bounds. Already, the Centre is reportedly mulling making 5% blending of ethanol with petrol quite mandatory. The way ahead is to produce biomass feedstock in a ‘green’ and sustainable manner, and for biofuels to be manufactured using innovative processes which are commercially viable.

The plain fact is that the transport infrastructure today is clearly vulnerable due to its overwhelming dependence on a single fuel source — crude. Petroleum products like petrol and diesel account for about 96% of transport fuels, with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), compressed natural gas (CNG), electricity and biofuels making up for the remainder. Unlike hydrocarbons, biofuels are renewables and so, by and large, do make eminent sense environmentally.

For definitional purposes, biofuels are liquid and gaseous fuels produced from various forms of biomass and used to displace conventional automotive fuels for transport mainly on land, but also by sea and air. So bioethanol, biodiesel and biogas are labelled biofuels, and fossil-fuel derived oils such as oil shales, tar sands and coal-to-liquids are of course not.

The figures show that in 2005, around 1,215 billion litres (GI) of petrol and 1,207 GI of diesel were consumed globally as transport fuel, which implied about 84 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. In comparison, the global production of all types of biofuels for 2005 is estimated at just over 40 GI. The big picture is that biofuels added up to about 2.8% of 2006 worldwide transport fuel demand. And boosting their share in the fuel mix would require proactive policy to slash production costs.

On the face of it, heightened crop requirements for water and plant nutrients would be real constraints in stepping up usage of biofuels. Besides, deforestation to have in place more cropping land to grow energy crops could be a major environmental setback. Additionally, the extensive production of biofuel crops may well result in substantially increased use of artificial fertilisers and pesticides with consequent risks of contamination of water supplies.

The commercial viability of biofuels does depend on future oil prices, public policy and technological breakthroughs. The indirect tax benefits and excise exemptions for biofuels announced in the Union Budget ought to incentivise blended fuel. Already, the target is 10% blending of petrol with ethanol by 2010. As a matter of fact, there are real possibilities for expanding the range of feedstocks for biofuels. The “second generation” biofuel technologies include cheaper sources of non-edible biomass such as crop and forest residue.

This would require biotechnical solutions to produce biofuels, and the development of multi-product bio-refineries. The expert opinion is that ethanol from sugarcane can compete with oil prices round $40/bbl, which is way below today’s international price of crude. But in India, ethanol is made from molasses, a byproduct of the sugar industry.

This is a circuitous route for ethanol production. In sharp contrast, Brazil, which produces over 15 GI of ethanol, does so by directly processing sugarcane feedstock. Its ethanol is seen as price competitive with imported transport fuels. Without the requisite geographical conditions, ethanol here may not be produced as cheaply but it does make policy sense to aim for higher than 5% blending ratio. What is required is a standalone ethanol policy that blends well with energy policy and which is quite removed from the vexed political economy of sugar.

Further, advanced conversion technologies such as bioethanol from ligno-cellulosic feedstock would better gel with Indian conditions, given our increasingly water-challenged conditions and the fact that sugarcane is unquestionably a water-intensive crop. Policy planning is the key.

But the fact remains that the cost analysis of biofuels need to be in terms of “litre of petrol equivalent” (lpe), since bioethanol has a lower calorific (heat) value of about 63% of petrol; that of biodiesel is around 91% of diesel. However, biofuels have superior engine combustion properties, which make up for lower heat values.

Current commercial bioethanol production costs range from $0.25/lpe (sugarcane, Brazil) to corn ethanol $0.60/lpe (US), where prices are heavily subsidised. As for biodiesel, the prevalent productions costs add up to $0.90/l using oilseeds like rape and soybean; the costs are slightly lower using palm oil. The projections are that by 2015, improved processes, learning by doing and scale economies ought to reduce production costs of bioethanol to $0.25-0.65/lpe. For biodiesel the like figures are seen at $0.40-0.75/lpe.

The bottom line is that biofuels could become a “potential part solution” to transport fuels, what with rising oil prices and worsening local and global pollution levels. A forward-looking policy for biofuels should also mean rural and agricultural development in a more equitable, sustainable manner via newer ‘cash crops’ and the possibility of using wastelands for biodiesel.

Copyright © 2007 Times Internet Limited

WASHINGTON – With the help of the United States and Brazil, three Central American countries and one Caribbean nation could become less dependent on oil imports by switching their economies to biofuels, according to U.S. and Brazilian officials.

“We seek to promote the democratization of energy in the Americas, increasing the number of energy suppliers, expanding the market and reducing supply disruption,” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said June 4.

Rice was in Panama City for the 37th General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS). The OAS issued a declaration June 5 that biofuels are “critical to diversifying the use of energy” in the Western Hemisphere.

The secretary noted that the United States and Brazil completed in March what she described as a “groundbreaking” bilateral agreement on biofuels. (See related article.)

She said El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and St. Kitts will be the initial focus of the U.S.-Brazil Biofuels Partnership’s outreach program. She added, however, that the partnership is eager to expand cooperation to more countries, particularly in the Western Hemisphere.

“Our goal should be nothing less than to usher in a new era of inter-American security in energy,” Rice said.

The State Department’s chief of energy-producer country affairs, Matthew McManus, says “this initiative is about energy security of the countries in the most oil-dependent region in our hemisphere.”

“We want to help them help themselves,” he told USINFO.

Promoting reliance on biofuels

Under the partnership, the world’s two largest ethanol producers are committed to helping less-developed countries in the Western Hemisphere promote production of biofuels from local crops. The partnership also intends to advance the research in and development of more efficient biofuel technologies and to work toward a greater convergence of biofuels standards around the world.

More reliance on locally produced biofuels promises not only to bring down the four countries’ energy bills but also to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and spur rural economic and agricultural development, McManus said.

He added that all four countries depend heavily on imported oil – in some, oil makes up nearly 90 percent of their energy consumption – and they produce electricity largely from petroleum, a practice that increases their vulnerability to oil shocks. However, these four countries also have relatively strong agricultural sectors that they could convert partially to energy crops, he said.

“We hope they can grow a significant portion of energy they consume,” McManus said. He said the focus of the initiative is production of biofuels for local use.

Long growing seasons, tropical climate, high precipitation levels and low labor and land costs favor biofuel production in all four countries. All grow sugarcane, which Brazil has used to produce ethanol efficiently and in large quantities. For Haiti, where the sugarcane industry is in decline, biodiesel derived from castor bean and jatropha shrubs might be a better option, according to a 2007 report funded by the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB).

The partnership, with support of the IDB and the OAS, is funding feasibility studies to determine types of sugarcane best suited to local conditions and examine other factors such as soil quality, environmental impact and the potential for rural development.

“The initiative is going to be tailored to each country individually and we have begun consultations with Brazil and each target country,” McManus said.

Attacting private-sector investment

Emerson Kloss of the Brazilian Embassy in Washington says the private sector is a key to the success of the initiative in Central America. Kloss is the head of the agriculture and biofuels section in the embassy’s economic department.

Brazilian companies already have invested in El Salvador and Jamaica, but more investment is needed to make biofuel programs viable, Kloss told USINFO.

However, McManus said the governments of the four countries first need to carry out regulatory and legal reforms necessary to lay the groundwork for investment in and expansion of biofuel production and infrastructure. According to the IDB report prepared by Garten Rothkopf, a consulting firm, public education campaigns about benefits of biofuels also are important if biofuel expansion is to succeed.

Kloss said, based on the Brazilian experience, the conversion from oil to biofuels should not prove too costly for the four economies. But he cautioned that overall cost estimates are premature because the outreach initiative has just entered the information-gathering phase.

“We are trying to see what we can deliver,” Kloss said.

Once the four countries achieve some degree of energy independence, the partnership will consider expanding the initiative to other nations, according to the U.S. and Brazilian officials.

“But we want to get the work in the initial partner countries under way first,” McManus said.

Copyright USINFO

OTTAWA - Waste pressure from natural gas pipelines may be the answer to providing the next generation of clean power for Canadian cities. The Honourable Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources, today announced $785,000 for Enbridge Gas Distribution to launch a project using a fuel-cell and gas expansion turbine plant in Toronto. Minister Lunn made the announcement at an international energy conference hosted by the Canadian Gas Association.

The Pipeline to Ultra-Clean Generation project converts waste pressure from natural gas pipelines to power a turbine, creating clean electricity. A fuel cell works in combination with the turbine to generate additional power with near-zero polluting emissions.

"This plant is the first of its kind in the world," said Minister Lunn. "Our Government is proud to support companies like Enbridge that are developing cleaner energy technologies that will benefit the environment, protect the health of Canadians and build a clean-energy economy."

The new funding will support the addition of a 1.2-megawatt fuel cell to the plant, bringing the total Government contribution to almost $2 million since the beginning of the project.

"This is a prime example of how high-efficiency, near-zero-emissions technologies can play a meaningful role in meeting clean air and climate change objectives," said Jim Schultz, Enbridge Senior Vice-President, New Ventures. "Enbridge is a leader in the North American energy market, and we are excited to work with FuelCell Energy Inc. and our other vendor partners to commercialize this new innovative fuel-cell plant, and to ensure gas utilities are part of the environmental solution for our society."

As the first utility to demonstrate this hybrid fuel-cell technology, Enbridge Gas Distribution is demonstrating leadership in embracing alternative-energy technologies.

"This hybrid fuel cell will provide much needed electricity generation in the communities we serve, and this electricity will have a very low environmental impact. We're excited about the prospect of using this new technology that operates without the combustion of fuel. Across our largely urban franchise, future installations will allow Enbridge to provide low-impact electricity to Ontario's grid as by-product of our daily pipeline operations," said Enbridge Gas Distribution President Al Monaco.

This project helps advance the Government's commitment to developing knowledge, innovation and productivity in the natural resources sectors - giving Canadians the advantage to succeed.

Called the Hartman Loop, the new cooling system is the first installation of its kind in Canada. It is a dynamic control strategy that electronically co-ordinates the operation of the chillers, pumps, and cooling towers as an integrated system. The programming involved in this technology takes all the factors that contribute to producing and distributing chilled water, and calculates and adjusts equipment automatically to optimize equipment performance and minimize energy consumption. Additionally, this system is free of harmful, ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons.

Mr. Love and Humber President-elect John Davies, who hosted the event and accepted the certificate on behalf of Humber, flipped the switch and turned-on the Hartman Loop at the certificate presentation today.

Mr. Love addressed the crowd; "Humber is to be commended for their energy conservation efforts. They are creating tomorrow's leaders by demonstrating leadership and innovation, helping to build a culture of conservation in Ontario."

"It is imperative that Humber lead the way in sustainability and new technology," said Mr. Davies. "By using state-of-the-art technology, we are benefiting the environment and reducing our operating costs, while creating a comfortable learning environment."

In addition to showcasing some of the hottest ideas in green energy, the day will include a panel of venture capitalists who will discuss the green energy market and areas for potential investment. GreenTech 2007, held in Pasadena, the #4 Cleantech city in the U.S., is oriented toward investors and potential partners for these immediately commercial and viable technologies.

Michael A. Giardello, CEO of Materia, Inc. (www.materia-inc.com), a conference sponsor, will present technology creating chemicals, plastics and pharmaceuticals from renewable sources. Materia was founded to commercialize olefin metathesis catalyst technology. This market-enabling, Nobel Prize-winning, green chemical technology enables chemical compounds to be synthesized with greater efficiency, under less stringent reaction conditions, and with reduced byproducts and hazardous waste. As stated by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences when awarding the 2005 Nobel Prize, "metathesis is an example of how important basic science has been applied for the benefit of man, society and the environment."

Materia, Inc. and Cargill have accomplished significant advancements in their joint effort to use Materia's proprietary technology for converting biobased oils to industrial chemicals, feedstocks and consumer products. The companies produced the first successful commercial proprietary product for Cargill's internal utilization. This is certain to be a product area of rapid growth in the marketplace.

(www.greentech2007.com)

Background

Demand for energy is expected to triple by 2050, and new investment and technology will be vital to solving the crisis in resource sustainability. According to the U.S. Dept. of Energy, bioenergy ranks second (to hydropower) in renewable U.S. primary energy production and accounts for three percent of the primary energy production in the nation. Bioenergy technologies use renewable resources, or biomass, to produce energy related products that include electricity, liquid, solid and gaseous fuels, heat, chemicals and other materials. Solar energy is also in the national spotlight, primarily due to the $3.2 billion dollars in funding over the next 11 years that California has allotted to it; and the global solar energy market and industry have shown growth figures of over 30% for more than 5 consecutive years.

The U.S. Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources has announced that this month the U.S. Senate will take up energy legislation and a national renewable portfolio (RPS) amendment, presented by various senators and signed by supporters like GE, Google, the United Steelworkers, Union of Concerned Scientists, BP America, and Sierra Club, along with many others they will urge Congress to pass a national standard that would require utilities to supply a specific percentage of electricity from renewable sources of energy such as wind, solar, biomass and geothermal. The plan would create a renewables standard of 15 percent by 2020.

About the presenting companies

Materia, Inc., Michael A. Giardello, President & CEO

(www.materia-inc.com)

Materia provides catalyst technologies that enable, enhance and streamline the discovery, development and manufacture of new pharmaceuticals, chemicals and polymeric materials. Mr. Giardello will talk about this Nobel-prize winning technology.

Idealab, Bill Gross, Founder & CEO

(www.energyinnovations.com)

Energy Innovations is a company based on an original concept developed at Idealab to generate affordable renewable energy. The company is building the world's first high-concentration solar power system designed for rooftop applications, called the Sunflower. By concentrating sunlight using inexpensive materials such as plastic and glass, the company can use a tiny fraction of the expensive photovoltaic material contained in traditional systems, thereby reducing the cost of solar significantly. The Sunflower will ship in 2007. Bill Gross will give the Keynote address.

Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Corp., a VIASPACE company

Carl Kukkonen, CEO

(http://www.dmfcc.com)

DMFCC is a provider of disposable fuel cartridges and intellectual property protection for manufacturers of direct methanol and other liquid hydrocarbon fuel cells. Using technology licensed from Caltech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Southern California (USC), DMFCC is developing proprietary products for distribution through a global standard network.

PowerMEMS, Carl Schulenburg, CEO

(http://powermems.com)

PowerMEMS Technologies specializes in the development of high energy density hybrid energy sources enabling lifetime power for small footprint systems.

Optimal Technologies, Roland Schoettle, Founder & CEO

(http://www.otii.com)

Optimal Tech pursues new opportunities related to large-scale dynamic network optimization in the electric power industry. Optimal develops "smart grid" power technologies that automate and optimize the supply and the demand side of energy and end-use systems.

For a complete list of presenting companies, please visit www.GreenTech2007.com.

More: A highlight of the conference will be an exciting venture capitalist panel that will include firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Battery Ventures, TPG Growth, Mohr Davidow Ventures and Rustic Canyon Partners. They will discuss areas for future investment and review their current portfolios.

When: Thursday, June 14, 2007

Where: Hilton Hotel; 168 S. Los Robles, Pasadena, 91101; 626.577.1000

Who: Confirmed Presenters Include:

Bill Gross

Founder of Idealab

Founder & CEO of Energy Innovations

Nathan S. Lewis, Ph.D.

George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry

California Institute of Technology

"Scientific Challenges in Sustainable Energy Technology"

Michael A. Giardello

President & CEO of Materia, Inc.

Tentative Topic: "Novel Chemicals, Plastics and Pharmaceuticals

from Renewable Sources through Chemical Catalysis"

Carl Kukkonen

CEO of Direct Methanol Fuel Cell Corporation

Chairman, CEO & Co-Founder, VIASPACE, Inc.

"Fuel Cells and Fuel Cartridges to Power Portable Electronics"

Carl Schulenburg

Founder & CEO of PowerMEMS Technologies, Inc.

"Energy Harvesting for the Next Generation"

Roland Schoettle

Founder & CEO of Optimal Technologies

"Setting the New Bar for End-to-End Power System Efficiency and the World's First True 'Smart' Grids"

Douglas L. Schulz

Senior Research Scientist, Center for Nanoscale Science & Engineering, North Dakota State University in partnership with Dept. of Defense & Alien Technology Corp. The center pursues research at the micro and nano-scale levels to develop practical materials, processes and devices with potential for world impact. "Renewables at North Dakota State"

Scott Allen

Co-Founder & Director of R&D, Novomer

"Catalytic Pathways to Green Plastics"

Rachid Yazami

President, Lifco, Inc (a new Caltech start-up)

"Materials Science Issues in Lithium-ion Batteries"

William Tumas

Program Director, Alternative Energy, Los Alamos National Laboratory

"Hydrogen Storage for Fuel-Cell Powered Vehicles"

© 2007 Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News

Australia could have a big biofuels industry if there is a strong alternative energy policy that is focused on new technologies, according to a leading grains research group.

Single Visions Grain Australia says biofuels are part of the solution for future energy demand because they are renewable and reduced dependence on fossil fuels.

However, another analysis maintains that crop-based biofuels are generally only viable with high levels of government support, and have at best a limited capacity to meet future energy needs.

These are two of the views on biofuels put forward by Australian and international experts in the latest edition of the Australian Farm Institute's Farm Policy Journal.

Single Vision chief executive Selwyn Snell, who co-authored the group's contribution with Matt Kealley, said in the short term, the Australian grains industry should concentrate on food and fibre production.

Then it could leverage grain prices against higher energy prices, positioning the industry as a "fast follower" ready to capture new and emerging markets and associated technologies.

"With 'second generation' technologies such as lignocelluloses conversion and pyrolysis, 'biomass' rather than 'food' becomes the primary feedstock for biofuel production," he said.

Costs of production decreased, energy outputs as a percentage of inputs increased fivefold, and the sustainability benefits were substantial.

Mr Snell said in a feedstock such as corn, for example, the stalk could produce similar quantities of ethanol as the grains themselves. There would be income from the stalk and the grains.

New and non-traditional crops such as trees and algae could become very attractive if the climate became more variable, he said. The ability to create such crops would be helped by the use of genetic modification technologies.

Farm institute executive director Mick Keogh said if all Australia's annual wheat and sugar output was diverted to ethanol production, it would only supply aboutd 20 per cent of Australia's current transport fuel use.

"The belief that biofuels have advantages in reducing greenhouse gas emissions is also questionable," he said.

Mr Keogh said such a policy could undermine Australia's growing beef and dairy exports to Asia, a trend that was reversing the long-term downward trend in prices for these products.

Large-scale diversion of grain to biofuels would also artificially inflate Australian grain prices relative to global prices, and make Australia's livestock industries uncompetitive.

Mr Keogh said grain-and sugar-based biofuels were the least-preferred option, with cellulose feed stocks (crop stubble or plant wastes) and new crop species suited to northern Australia more preferable.

"For biofuels based on an expansion of agricultural industries in northern Australia, governments need to urgently accelerate development plans for new agricultural areas and remove many of the regulatory constraints that currently exist," he said.

Copyright © 2007 The Age Company Ltd.

WOODBURY - Businesses and universities around mid-Michigan are preparing for a future powered by plants, not petroleum.

And Bruce Dale is adding his voice to those calling for more ethanol and less oil for cars, trucks, SUVs and the like.

But while the main focus for ethanol-powered vehicles tends to be on a corn-based alternative fuel, Dale sees a solution in other plants, too.

Dale, a Michigan State University professor who is researching methods of turning other plant materials into fuel, was one of the presenters at a half-day session General Motors Corp. hosted at the US BioEnergy Corp. corn ethanol plant in Woodbury that focused on alternative fuels.

"The age of oil is ending," said Dale, a professor of chemical engineering and materials science at MSU. "What we're really talking about is how to get around our dependence on petroleum."

Fossil-based fuels account for 97 percent of the fuel needed to propel cars and trucks, Dale said.

"Our society literally stops without liquid fuel," he said.

Dale sees a solution for the problem. Switching from petroleum-based products such as gasoline and diesel to ethanol would reduce demand for oil, create fewer hydrocarbon emissions and might make the U.S. less dependent on oil-rich areas such as the Middle East.

But corn alone won't provide that energy, Dale said.

Dale has worked for 30 years to find more cost-efficient ways to produce ethanol made from other substances - known as cellulosic ethanol. Sources for that kind of fuel can include rice husks, wheat straw and saw dust - things that had been considered waste.

A few years ago, it cost as much as $1.40 a gallon to produce cellulosic ethanol. But improvements in technology could bring the price down to about 60 cents a gallon in another 15 to 20 years.

Dale said that kind of ethanol could be sold for between $1.50 to $1.70 a gallon at the pump.

Minnesota-based US BioEnergy has plans to increase capacity from 300 million gallons a year to 1 billion gallons a year by 2009.

It has four ethanol plants and is building three more, said Kim Mitchell, vice president of engineering for the company.

And GM says its doing its part by developing more vehicles that can run on a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline.

"There is enough corn, and the potential of cellulosic ethanol is huge," spokesman Scott Fosgard said.

Copyright © 2007 LSJ.com

Firm specializes in underwriting and financial advisory services to renewable power and infrastructure sectors

TORONTO - Mr. Sasha Jacob, Vice-Chairman and CEO, Jacob & Company Securities Inc., announced that Mr. Ernie Eves, Q.C., former Ontario Premier and Minister of Finance, has joined Jacob & Company Securities Inc. ("Jacob & Company") as Executive Chairman. Jacob & Company is an independent investment bank providing underwriting and financial advisory services to companies in the renewable power and infrastructure sectors.

"Ernie and I met years ago when I was with the Ontario Government as a policy advisor. I have tremendous respect for Ernie. We're building a firm with a team of people who can provide significant value to our clients. Our goal is to be a global leader in this sector, and I believe we're on the right path to achieve that goal," Mr. Jacob said. "We believe our wide-reaching contacts, depth of knowledge and our proven ability to access capital on behalf of clients sets us apart from competitors in the field."

"I believe Sasha is the best investment banker in the renewable energy sector in North America and I'm very pleased to be part of Jacob & Company. It's an exciting opportunity," added Mr. Eves. "I plan to put to use my many years of experience from both the public and private sectors."

The firm, which is headquartered in Toronto, will primarily service small- to mid-cap issuers in North America and around the world. Since the launch of Jacob & Company in early 2007, the firm has either led or participated in nine financings valued at more than $100 million, with several other transactions under way. Mr. Jacob said that the company is on track to do $300 million worth of deals in 2007.

Mr. Jacob added that other industry professionals are expected to join the firm within weeks.

Mr. Jacob brings more than a decade of experience in the power and infrastructure sector, including founding and heading up the power and infrastructure practice at a leading Canadian investment bank. In addition, he held senior positions as Special Assistant to the Ontario Minister of Energy during the Province's electricity deregulation initiative in the late 1990s.

In the previous two years before establishing Jacob & Company, Mr. Jacob managed and structured over 20 transactions in the renewable sector, and participated in renewable financings valued at more than $1 billion.

In addition to his duties as Executive Chairman at Jacob & Company, Mr. Eves is Chair and Special Advisor to the Ontario Investment and Trade Advisory Council, Ministry of Economic Development & Trade. He is a member of the Canadian Board of Directors of CB Richard Ellis Limited, and serves in an advisory capacity to several private and public companies.

He is also widely recognized for his philanthropic work, especially in the area of post-secondary education for learning disabled disadvantaged young people through The Justin Eves Foundation.

Researchers say that camelina, planted on millions of acres of marginal farmland from eastern Washington state to North Dakota, could help power the nation's drive for cleaner energy.

"This is the most exciting crop I have seen in my 30 some years in this field," said Steven Guy, a professor at the University of Idaho and a crop-management specialist.

Researchers in Washington state, Oregon and Idaho say the results from test plantings of camelina are encouraging.

So far, the only farmers interested are in Montana, where more than 50,000 acres of camelina were planted this season. But a buzz is spreading.

It stretches from a Puget Sound biotech firm that's working to increase camelina yields by up to 50 percent to Capitol Hill, where lobbyists hope to persuade Congress to cover camelina under the federal crop-insurance program to reassure skittish farmers.

Camelina supporters say the plant can grow in more arid conditions, doesn't require extensive use of expensive fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides, and can produce more oil from its seeds than other crops such as canola, by some estimates for half the price.

"We actually think it might be the next crop," said Tom Todaro, chief executive of Targeted Growth, a Seattle biotech firm that's working to increase camelina yields "radically."

Known as gold of pleasure, wildfox, German sesame and Siberian oilseed, camelina seeds were crushed to produce lamp oil as far back as Neolithic times.

Direct cultivation declined in medieval times for unknown reasons. In recent years, small amounts were grown for use mostly in organic health products.

Copyright © 2007 Azstarnet.com

Ontario's electricity consumers have reduced peak demand by approximately 1,080 megawatts to the end of 2006, including 350 megawatts of naturally occurring conservation.

The five Ontario Power Authority-coordinated conservation programs delivered in 2006 resulted in annual savings of 378 million kilowatt-hours and a reduction in the summer peak demand of approximately 110 megawatts.

Ontario's local distribution companies reported achieving substantial electricity savings, including approximately 140 megawatts of peak-demand reduction and lifetime savings of 3.5 billion kilowatt-hours.

Amendments to the Ontario Building Code, announced in June 2006,

increased energy-efficiency requirements and will save Ontario an estimated

550 megawatts of electricity over the next eight years.

The Ozone Depleting Substances regulation, passed in 2006, will phase out remaining uses of chlorofluorocarbons in large refrigeration and air conditioning equipment and chillers, which could save between 50 and 175 megawatts of electricity.

The complete Supplement is available at www.conservationbureau.on.ca.

Love offers other simple tips for making summer more energy efficient:

For residential consumers:

Set your air conditioner two degrees higher than you otherwise might. You can also keep cool by closing your curtains and blinds during the day and only opening them to the cooler evening air.

Use major power-consuming electrical appliances-including washers and dryers, dishwashers, and swimming pool pumps-later in the day, after higher demand hours.

Light right-by using just the lights you need, when you need them-inside and out.

For small commercial consumers:

Set your air conditioner two degrees higher than you otherwise might.

Keep your doors closed to keep your cool air inside.

Light right-by turning your lights down during the day.

Schedule deliveries for cooler times of the day

For large commercial consumers:

Set your air conditioner two degrees higher than you might otherwise.

Turn off your equipment, including your computers, at end of day.

Wear business casual clothing to reduce air conditioning needs.

Indeed, a new United Nations report recently cautioned that the world's energy needs must be met in a sustainable and environmentally sound manner as more than one billion people currently live without electricity. There are cogent reasons to believe that alternatives such as the use of bioenergy can be useful in the effort to reduce poverty. The United Nation's recent study on the development was looked at through the lens of nine issues. These include poverty, health, food, security, agriculture, climate change, finance and trade.

There is no doubt that a global shift to biofuels will empower poor countries which are not naturally endowed with fossil fuels. Such countries will no doubt have the opportunity to leverage on this new development and become a part of the global industry. This will also improve access to energy and promote rural development. There is also evincing scientific evidence that greater global shift to biofuels is the most viable solution to halting the increasing degradation of the ozone layer and global warming. Not least, it is hoped that the use of biofuels will engender a reasonable degree of energy security in the world. In recent times, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) statistics, surge in oil prices have led some of the world's poorest countries to spend six times as much on petroleum as they do on health care.

It is morally imperative, therefore, for developing as well as industrialised countries to adopt the biofuels leaning, not just to mitigate the effects of debilitating global climate change but also to economically empower the poorest people in the world.

From another angle, bioenergy could potentially save hundreds of thousands of lives annually. This need is accentuated in developing countries where the "kitchen killer", smoke inhalation from cooking with fuels such as coal and biomass, or wood, dung and crop residues claims more lives annually than does malaria.

However, unless viable policies are enacted to protect threatened lands, secure socially acceptable land use, and steer bioenergy development in a sustainable direction, the environmental and social damage could outweigh the benefits. For example, giving consideration to food security, price increase in major biofuel sources such as sugar, palm oil, corn and soybeans could drive up the prices of basic foods, to the detriment of the poor, one of the most important targets in the formulation of biofuel policies.

We are of the opinion that the success of bioenergy as a viable alternative to fossil energy will largely depend, not only on good national policies on biofuel but also on global cooperation, especially between developing and industrialised countries. We hold this view because of the increasing economic interdependence among countries, rich and poor.

© BusinessDAY Media Ltd.

Windmill farms are cropping up faster than some rural municipalities can plan for so University of Guelph landscape architects have developed guidelines to help communities incorporate these towering structures without sacrificing their idyllic landscape.

Jim Taylor and Robert Corry of the School of Environmental Design and Rural Development recently conducted a study for the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs to develop best practices for siting wind energy facilities in rural Ontario. The report was based on research conducted for the Municipality of Grey Highlands on wind farm zoning.

“There’s been a whole shift towards renewable energy,” said Taylor. “Ontario was virgin territory for wind energy, and now all of a sudden operators of commercial wind generation are looking for places here. Small rural areas are having wind farms dropped on them.”

The recent move by the province to support renewable energy including wind energy has made it a viable economic business in Ontario, said Taylor. But with most wind turbines standing at least 100 metres high and the average wind farm stretching a couple of kilometres, this new form of rural industry can cause significant change to the rural landscape, he said.

“Wind generators are strong visual elements, and people react to them. Some like them and some hate them.”

One of the biggest concerns rural communities have about the towers is that they destroy the scenic view that attracts residents and tourists to the area.

In developing the zoning plan for the Municipality of Grey Highlands, Taylor and Corry considered the landscape as well as the impact on residential and recreational activities. Corry said spots near major roads, scenic viewpoints and residential areas are typically not suitable for wind farms.

“But in locations where there are trees nearby might work as a good place because the trees would act as a visual blocker,” he said.

The final plan developed for Grey Highlands includes three distinct zones: areas that shouldn’t have wind farms because the towers would conflict too much with the scenic value; areas that are physically sensitive to towers and should require an environmental assessment before an application for a wind farm is accepted; and areas that are suitable for wind generators because the towers won’t conflict with the scenery or any residential or recreational activities.

The researchers used field observations and geographic information system technology to model such factors as visibility, visual absorption capacity, visual quality and policy protection zones.

Since development of the zoning plan last year, a number of rural municipalities in Ontario have turned to it to help manage inquiries from companies, said Taylor.

“This methodology will help give municipalities an idea of how to approach the influx of wind farms and how to defend decisions on where these farms can and can’t go. Ontario’s rural landscape is going to change with the increasing number of wind farms, but our view is that it should be managed and well-informed.”

A growing demand for energy, coupled with an increase in prices, has led to consistent growth in Canada's oil and gas sector during the past 10 years, according to a new study.

The study, published in the online edition of Perspectives on Labour and Income, analyzes economic activity in three components of the sector—upstream, midstream and downstream—as well as trends in employment between 1997 and 2006.

In 2006, the contribution of the oil and gas sector to Canada's gross domestic product exceeded $40 billion (in 1997 dollars). In addition, during the past decade, employment in the industry increased at a somewhat faster pace than the national average.

Total employment in all oil and gas industries amounted to roughly 298,000 in 2006, a 22% increase from 1997, a slightly faster gain than the average of 20% for the economy as a whole.

In the upstream component, which covers oil and gas exploration, extraction and production, employment increased at three times that pace, about 65%, from 107, 000 to roughly 177,000. The majority (75%) of the jobs were in Alberta, with its vast oil and gas reserves.

The impact on wages was pronounced. In 1997, employees in oil and gas extraction earned 58% more per hour than the average worker. By 2006, this gap had widened to 80%.

For example, workers in oil and gas extraction earned on average about $30.36 an hour in 2006, compared with $16.73 for the labour market as a whole.

In terms of volume, crude oil production rose 21% between 1997 and 2005. In 1997, total crude production amounted to just under 112.7 million cubic metres, with a value of $15.9 billion. By 2005, the volume had increased to 136.2 million cubic metres, and the value had nearly tripled to $45.2 billion.

Natural gas production increased by about 8% in terms of volume, but because of higher prices, the value rose by more than 312%.

The midstream component of the industry includes pipelines, rail, truck and tanker transportation, and storage. The downstream component consists of refining and marketing, and includes refineries, gas distribution utilities, oil product wholesalers, service stations and petrochemical companies.

Combined, these two components contributed about $10.8 billion to Canada's gross domestic product in 2006, and employed around 121,000 people.

Canada is currently the world's eighth-largest producer of crude oil, pumping out about 2.5 million barrels a day. Current world demand is about 84 million barrels, while production stands at about 86 million barrels.