Domestic Fuel

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has made it official, signing a bill that will require all diesel heating oil in the city contain at least 2 percent biodiesel:

“The final bill before me today is Introductory Number 194-A … [which] will significantly reduce pollution, promote the use of alternative fuels, create new ‘green’ jobs and vastly improve air quality throughout the City.

“Promoting the use of cleaner burning heating fuels is one of fourteen air quality initiatives from PlaNYC 2030 and I am pleased to say that the legislation before me today will do just that. Introductory Number 194-A requires that by 2012, the sulfur content of Number 4 heating oils be limited to no more than 1,500 parts per million and all heating oils used in New York City contain at least two percent biodiesel.”

The move won the praise of the National Biodiesel Board and local biodiesel makers and marketers, Sprague Energy and METRO Terminals:

“New York City is already the nation’s largest municipal user of biodiesel. We applaud the Mayor and City Council for building on that legacy by adopting a universal biodiesel requirement that will further improve air quality in the city,” said Shelby Neal, NBB’s director of state governmental affairs. “I would especially like to thank Councilman Gennaro, who has been a tireless advocate for this and other important environmental issues. His vision for a cleaner burning, green, and sustainable heating fuel is being realized.”

“As one of New York’s original biodiesel and Bioheat suppliers, we know firsthand what a positive impact the fuels have on the lives of New Yorkers,” said Steven J. Levy, managing director of Sprague Energy. “This landmark legislation is another huge step in reducing air pollution in the city, yet just another building block in cleaning the air we breathe for healthier, longer lives.”

“More than 70 years ago, my grandmother started a heating oil business here because she thought coal represented the past,” said Paul Pullo, who owns METRO Terminals along with his brother, Gene. “With biodiesel, America’s only commercially available advanced biofuel, we will take our business into the next generation again.”

One of the longest running and top rated Do-It-Yourself (DIY) shows on cable TV, “Man Caves,” will soon be rolling on up to transform a room or garage into a man’s dream room in a ROUSH liquid propane-powered E-350. The show, which airs on DIY Network, is in its seventh season and features a virtual rolling hardware store replete with construction materials in a truck.

“We are looking forward to having a ‘Man Caves’-size rolling tool box for the biggest season yet of ‘Man Caves.’ This thing is functional and just amazing,” said an enthusiastic Cameron, co-host of the show, upon seeing the new propane-powered van for the first time.

Thanks to Knapheide and Sortimo, there are a variety of organizational systems which allow the hosts, licensed contractor Jason Cameron and former NFL great Tony “The Goose” Siragusa, to quickly and efficiently complete any project at hand. The Knapheide Utility Vehicle will be mounted on the back of the ROUSH propane E-350 and will include a number of Sortimo S-, M-, and T-BOXXES to organize the tools and small parts it carries, many with adjustable shelves and dividers. The cargo area has retention poles to hold large parts and sheet material, as well as a bed slide to assist in loading heavy equipment or parts. This allows the “Man Caves” crew to be most efficient from the truck to the work site.

“Jack Roush has cars racing on TV nearly every weekend, but this will mark the first time that a ROUSH liquid propane-powered van will have a starring role on television,” said Joe Thompson, executive vice-president and general manager of ROUSH. “ ‘Man Caves’ is a program that has a very dedicated audience and it’s going to be exciting to have a ROUSH vehicle play a role in the space transformations they have planned for this season.”

Chris Weiss, Knapheide vice-president of engineering concluded, “Building the ‘Man Caves’ work van is a perfect opportunity to show off the organizational capabilities of the ROUSH/Knapheide Utility Vehicle. Our partnership with ROUSH helps us provide efficient work solutions for our contractor customers with the advantage of using green technology like liquid propane.”

The American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) has elected three new members to its Board of Directors, expanding grassroots and independent ethanol representation to the national advocacy association.

The new members are: David Kolsrud of Mid-Missouri Energy in Malta Bend, Mo.; Dave Sovereign representing Golden Grain Energy in Mason City, Iowa; and John Skelley, General Manager of Pinal Energy in Maricopa, Arizona.

Five other Board members were re-elected:
• Lars Herseth, representing Herseth Ranch of Houghton, SD – who currently serves as president of ACE
• Owen Jones, representing 4 Seasons Cooperative of Britton, SD – currently serves as treasurer for ACE
• Duane Kristensen, representing Chief Ethanol of Hastings, NE
• Randy Knecht, representing CHS Inc., of Houghton, SD
• Scott Parsley of Madison, SD representing East River Electric Cooperative

“Now more than ever it is important to have a strong grassroots base of support for ethanol, and our Board of Directors helps ACE give these grassroots advocates a voice,” said Brian Jennings, Executive Vice President of ACE.

Colorado-based Range Fuels reports the successful production of cellulosic methanol using non-food biomass at a Georgia biofuels plant in the first phase of an operation to ultimately produce next generation ethanol.

According to a Range Fuels’ press release, this first phase uses heat, pressure, and steam to convert woody biomass and grasses into a synthesis gas composed of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The syngas is then passed over a proprietary catalyst to produce mixed alcohols that are separated and processed to yield a variety of low-carbon biofuels.

“We are ecstatic to be producing cellulosic methanol from our Soperton Plant, and are on track to begin production of cellulosic ethanol in the third quarter of this year,” said David Aldous, Range Fuels’ President and CEO. The cellulosic methanol produced from Phase 1 will be used to produce biodiesel for transportation fuel markets. It may also be used in heating applications, as a fuel additive in gasoline-powered motor vehicles, or to power fuel cells.

Range Fuels plans to expand the capacity of the plant to 60 million gallons of cellulosic biofuels annually with construction to begin next summer. The Soperton, Georgia plant is permitted to produce 100 million gallons of ethanol and methanol each year.

Besides being home to some politicians who are blow-hards at times, New York City could be in line to have some giant wind turbines to feed the area’s energy needs (much better use of windiness).

This New York Times article says that the long-term plan has been to put up huge wind turbines in the Atlantic Ocean off Long Island. But some offshore wind turbines could end up much closer to the Big Apple:

Within three years, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey hopes to have five wind towers, each more than 280 feet tall, operating on the west side of New York Harbor. Nearby, the City of Bayonne, N.J., plans to install an equally large turbine to power a sewage-pumping station. Meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs is considering placing wind turbines on or near its hospitals in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

The city’s Economic Development Corporation has been studying the feasibility of putting turbines atop buildings, including a warehouse at the Hunts Point Cooperative Market in the Bronx. But the high hopes rest on a partnership, with utility companies and the New York Power Authority, that has designs on building a wind farm on about 65,000 acres of the Atlantic floor. The New York consortium said at the end of June that it would apply for a 25-year lease on the site, with hopes of generating as much as 700 megawatts of power there by 2016.

In addition, a proposed shore-based project on the border of Bayonne and Jersey City of five turbines producing up to 7.5 megawatts — enough to run at least 2,000 homes — could be up and running by 2013.

Recent multi-million dollar investments in algae-biofuel companies ($200 million IPO for PetroAlgae and $52 million to help commercialize Solazyme) is fueling some speculation of its own on how soon algae-based biofuels, in particular, biodiesel, might be available for consumers and when it would be commercially competitive.

This article from Biofuel Digest breaks down the “bears” and “bulls” views of these investments, as well as the Digest’s take on these developments:

A significant number of voices in the community continue to caution that algal biofuels are 10 years away, or likely to arrive at commercial scale only in the waning years of the existing Renewable Fuel Standard. However, we see increasing numbers of signs of commercial traction in the higher priced co-products area, such as nutraceuticals.

The other: well, let’s spell it out in three words. United States military.

The article goes on to point out the U.S. Navy or Air Force are working actively to have as much as half of their fuel come from renewable energy as early as 2016. The authors also did their history, making parallels to the British Navy’s conversion in the late 19th and early 20th centuries from coal to oil … and how that move helped put the Brits on top of the world’s navies at the time. It also led to the rise of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, now known as BP.

Iowa-based Renewable Energy Group (REG) has held a grand re-opening of its Seneca, Illinois biodiesel plant after taking over the 60 million-gallon-a-year biodiesel and glycerin facility from Nova Biosource Fuels.

REG celebrated the occasion with a ribbon cutting ceremony and by selling the first load of REG-9000 biodiesel from the refinery to Meier Oil of Ashkum Illinois last Thursday.

The REG Seneca facility has three side-by-side 20 mgy biodiesel process units, a technical grade glycerin refining facility, raw material and finished product storage as well as rail car and truck unloading and loading with the potential for barge transportation that had been idled for more than a year. This re-opening put 38 plant workers back on the job.

REG now wholly-owns five biodiesel production businesses and markets biodiesel in 49 states.

Foreign oil imports are up for the first time in 18 months according to the latest figures from the Energy Information Administration (EIA). The U.S. imported 65 percent of its oil, or 388 million barrels in July 2010, sending nearly $29.6 billion or $663,231 per minute to foreign countries. This is the highest number of barrels of oil imported in one month since January 2009.

T. Boone Pickens responded to the increase in oil imports in his monthly update and stated,” President Obama has pledged to eliminate Middle East oil dependence in 10 years, but the latest oil imports statistics show we’re not making much progress.  In July we imported 388 million barrels of oil, which is the highest total since President Obama took office in January 2009.”

He continued, It’s not hard to see that spending approximately $30 billion on oil month after month is hurting the economy. In fact, oil imports continue to make up more than half of the United States’ growing trade deficit.”

Pickens has repeatedly called for a comprehensive energy plan where natural gas plays a starring role, and is urging Congress to put energy back on the front burner when they return to D.C. in September.

Pickens is just one of dozens of organizations that have called for more effective energy policy but he is only one of few that focuses so heavily on natural gas as a replacement for liquid transportation fuels. Depending on what energy expert you believe, the country has either enough to last for hundreds of years, or for less than 20 years, if it is used as a primary fuel in the transportation sector.

The California Energy Commission (CEC) has announced that it has approved three ethanol producers and four ethanol plants under its Ethanol Producers Incentive Program (CEPIP). If and when the program actually begins, it will pay an incentive to corn ethanol producers who are producing more than 10 million gallons per year and operating in the state; yet today, only one plant is actually in production: Calgren Renewable Fuels LLC.

The purpose of the CEPIP is twofold; to increase the amount of biofuels produced in the state, and to move corn ethanol plants in the direction of reducing their environmental footprint as part of the Biorefinery Operational Enhancement Goal or BOEG obligations. To achieve these goals, the CEPIP was designed to provide economic assistance to ethanol facilities producing ethanol in California during difficult economic operating conditions. The life of the program is currently set at five years.

There are other states that have incentive programs but according to CEC spokesman Rob Schlichting in an article published in Ethanol Producer Magazine, California’s program is the only one that bases payments strictly on market conditions.

The payments are based on the crush spread CEC established would be 55 cents per gallon of ethanol. If the crush spread averages less than 55 cents per month than ethanol producers receive a payment of up to 25 cents per gallon with the total payment amount capped at $3 million. During months that the crush spread is greater than $1 per gallon, then producers will be required to pay back incentives at the rate of up to 20 cents per gallon of ethanol produced.

There are several ethanol plants currently idle in California due to financial difficulties and Schlichting noted that the program won’t be effective if you don’t have operational plants. He hopes that by getting the word out that producers have been accepted into the program investors will look more favorably on these plants.

Yet in true California ironic fashion, the program is indefinitely delayed due to the state’s financial mess. The program will not move forward until the state has a signed budget and other contractual issues are finalized, which could take months.

Dyadic International, Inc. reported a loss in second quarter revenues as compared to the same time period in 2009. Total revenue for the second quarter ending on June 30, 2010 decreased to $2.2 million compared to a reported $11.9 million the previous year. Total revenue for the first six months of the year was also down compared to 2009, with a reported $4.2 million so far in 2010 and $16.9 million in the first half of 2009.

The company attributes the second quarter decline in revenue to a decrease in licensing revenue and also reported that the lower revenue for the first six months was due to a decrease in licensing revenue as well as a decrease in research and development revenue.

“During the second quarter, we made significant progress in positioning Dyadic for future long-term growth by continuing to enhance our C1 technology and hiring key personnel and advisors to unlock the value of that technology primarily in the areas of biofuels and chemicals,” stated Dyadic’s President and Chief Executive Officer, Mark Emalfarb.

“We also laid the foundation to apply our C1 technology to the development and commercialization of biopharmaceuticals. All of this is now being pursued without the overhanging risk, cost and distraction of protracted stockholder litigation which we have put behind us,” Emalfarb concluded.

Isobutanol company Gevo, Inc. has filed a registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) relating to its proposed initial public offering (IPO). The company has not disclosed how many shares it plans to offer nor when it will file for the IPO, but early estimates put the total worth of the IPO as high as $150 million.

During the past few years, Gevo has purchased several corn-based ethanol plants and converted them to produce isobutanol which can be used as a specialty chemical or blended with fuel. The company plans to use the money raised from the IPO to purchase more biorefineries.

UBS Investment Bank and Goldman, Sachs & Co. will be acting as joint bookrunning managers, with Piper Jaffray acting as a co-manager for the offering. The company plans to list its shares on Nasdaq Global Market under the trading symbol “GEVO.”

The pursuit of new feedstocks for next generation ethanol has gone underwater.

Seaweed has been getting quite a bit of attention for its potential in ethanol production, especially in Asia. Most recently, scientists from Tohoku University and Tohoku Electric Power announced they have developed a technology to efficiently generate ethanol from seaweed such as sea tangle and sea grape, according to reports from Japan over the weekend. The technology reportedly uses a natural yeast and a new fermentation process that mixes finely cut seaweed with enzymes and blends it into a pulp. The scientists say they succeeded in producing 200 milliliters of ethanol from 1 kg of seaweed.

The idea of using seaweed for ethanol is also being researched in Korea and the Philippines, as well as in Chile. One of the benefits to using seaweed as an ethanol feedstock are that it grows quickly and allows for as much as six harvests per year. Also, since seaweeds do not have lignin, pretreatment is not necessary before converting them to fuels, making it potentially less expensive than other cellulosic sources.

“I am under no illusion that this book will settle the scientific debate over the roles of mankind versus nature in global warming and climate change. Quite the opposite. I am hoping that the scientific debate will finally begin.” These are the final words of author and climatologist, Dr. Roy Spencer in his new book, The Great Global Blunder.

While the mainstream media continues to report that global climate change is real and caused by man, Spencer argues that it is in fact real, but not manmade. He says that global warming is just part of a natural cycle. In fact, he said that cloud cover is one of the “feedbacks” (i.e. causes) of warming and cooling trends.

Spencer is not the first scientist to speak out against the theory that global climate change is manmade. Climate physicist Henrik Svensmark and award winning science writer Nigel Calder also believe that clouds are a cause of global warming. They lay out their theory in “The Chilling Stars A New Theory of Climate Change.”

Spencer argues that scientists who take a risk and offer other ideas for the cause of climate change, are not often published in scientific journals nor are their theories covered by the mainstream media who likes stories that bring the message of doom and gloom.

“Why am I willing to stick my neck out on an issue where there is so much momentum running in the opposite direction? Because the United States is making decisions on energy policy that will literally lead to death and suffering. The environmental lobby, activist news media, opportunistic politicians–and even a few Big Oil interests–have led the public to believe that we can “go green” in generating energy,” writes Spencer.
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In the latest forecast issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), corn farmers are on track for a record corn crop and yield per acre for this year. The numbers are estimated to surpass the records set in 2009. USDA expects farmers to harvest 13.37 billion bushels, 2 percent larger than in 2009. They are also projecting 165 bushels per acre, up from 164.7 bushels per acre last year, also a new high.

Renewable Fuels Association Vice President of Research Geoff Cooper notes that the record yields effectively demonstrate that U.S. farmers can meeting increasing demands without needing to expand acreage as well as meet the growing demands for food, feed and fuel.

“This will be the third 13 billion bushel crop on record and it’s worth noting that this year’s crop will be produced on nearly 6 million fewer acres than the first 13 billion bushel crop just three years ago. Once again, today’s report further undermines the theory that U.S. farmers will need to convert non-agricultural land to cropland to keep up with increasing demand. The rapid adoption of new technologies and practices is allowing the nation’s farmers to continue to produce more grain on fewer acres.”

To put the significance of the increase in perspective, this year’s estimated crop will be twice as large and the corn crop produced 30 years ago in 1980 but it will be achieved using only 4.6 percent more acres than in 1980. Also of note, the USDA projects that 4.7 billion bushels of corn will be processed into ethanol for the 2010/11 marketing year, producing approximately 13 billion gallons of ethanol.

Novozymes has announced that is has acquired Brazilian microorganism company Turfal in order to obtain direct access to the Brazilian bioagriculture market. Turfal develops and manufacturers microbes that stimulate the growth of crops, such as soybeans, by fixating nitrogen. These microbes allow growers to use less fertilizer and save money.

Turfal’s operations are located 25 miles from Novozymes’ Latin American headquarters in Curitiba and will become the platform for all of Novozymes’ sustainable agriculture business in Brazil.

“The main reason for the acquisition is that we want to expand Novozymes’ position within the market for sustainable agriculture,” said Thomas Videbæk, Executive Vice President, BioBusiness, Novozymes. “We see exciting growth opportunities on the Brazilian bioagriculture market, and Turfal will give Novozymes direct access to this market.”

Novozymes is stepping up its game as the company continues to position itself as a worldwide player to help meet the challenges of feeding a growing global population. Experts estimate that global agricultural production will need to increase by 73 percent in order to feed more than 9 billion people by 2050. One sustainable agricultural challenge is to increase yields without increasing the number of acres of cropland.

“The nitrogen-fixating inoculants from Turfal and Novozymes can help farmers reduce their need for nitrogen fertilizers by up to 80 percent on leguminous crops. This is a unique value proposition in a world where farmers are under pressure to increase yields in a sustainable manner,” said Videbæk.