Domestic Fuel

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has named Washington D.C. as the leading EPA Green Power Community. Combined, government, businesses, institutions, and residents in the nation’s capital are collectively purchasing nearly 756 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power each year. This is enough to meet 8 percent of the city’s total electricity use. All voluntary, this feat catapulted the city into the number one spot in the country on EPA’s rankings.

District leaders kicked off a District Green Power Challenge today during the District’s EPA Green Power Recognition Ceremony that was held at Phelps Career High School in northeast DC to encourage more residents and businesses to switch to green power. The first goal of the challenge is to increase citywide green power purchases by 33 percent by August 31 of this year in hopes of keeping their #1 ranking. This increase would also mean that the city’s electricity users are purchasing 10 percent from green power or 1 Billion kWh each year.

“This is a huge honor for Washington, D.C. and we are proud to be recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,” said Mayor Vincent Gray. “The purchase of green power by our citizens and businesses is cleaning our air and supporting growth of the clean energy economy. When we clean the air, we improve the health of our residents, and particularly our children. We are sending a message to other communities across the country that supporting clean power is a sound business decision and the right thing to do. I’m proud that the District of Columbia government is leading the way, purchasing 50 percent of our electricity through the Washington Gas Energy Services, Inc. wind power program.”

There are currently 36 Green Power Communities across the country. To be given the designation, a city, town or village must have government, business and residents that commit to purchasing green power in amounts that meet or exceed EPA’s Green Power Community purchase requirements. Qualifying energy sources include wind, solar, geothermal, biogas, biomass, and low-impact hydro-electric power.

“The District of Columbia is setting an excellent example for the nation by harnessing clean energy,” said Elizabeth Craig, Acting Director of EPA’s Office of Atmospheric Programs. “We hope the city will continue to increase its use of green power and that other communities will follow suit.”

A new issue brief was released on Energy Security as part of a series from The Ethanol Across America education campaign. The focal point of the report is to illustrate the negative impacts of continued dependence on imported oil.

U.S. Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) who recently released an amendment that would strip several anti-ethanol amendments out of the House approved Continuing Resolution, is co-chairman of the Ethanol Across America Campaign. He said of the Energy Security issue brief, “As a founding member of the Governors’ Ethanol Coalition in 1991 and a longtime member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, I have long recognized the role homegrown renewable fuels such as ethanol can play in reducing America’s dependence on imported oil. At a time of increasing unrest in the Middle East and rapidly increasing oil prices, it becomes ever more important to continue the development and technological advancement of renewable fuels. Nebraska’s fields and farms will continue to help meet demand for food, feed and fuel. This American productivity allows our farmers to be part of the solution in our nation’s energy needs while keeping our fuel dollars at home.”

Among the key points raised in the brief are the following:

• 1. In 2010, the U.S. spent $28 billion per month on foreign oil—a massive transfer of wealth during a period of economic hardship.
• 2. In January of 2011—traditionally one of the lowest demand months of the year, we spent more than $35 billion on imported oil.
• 3. Reliance on foreign oil has cost us more than $7 trillion over the past 30 years.
• 4. America spends $137 Billion annually defending Persian Gulf oil, adding more than $1 per gallon to gas prices.
• 5. Oil imports undermine energy security by delaying investment in the development of alternatives.

“Recent events in North Africa have made clear that oil prices are extremely volatile,” said Todd Sneller, Administrator of the Nebraska Ethanol Board (NEB) who is hosting an Emerging Issues Forum in Omaha Nebraska on April 7-8, 2011. “Oil topping $100 per barrel proves once again that we can’t afford an energy economy that is increasingly more dependent on imports.”

Sneller added that nationally, gasoline prices have climbed more than 29 cents per gallon since the uprising in Libya began in the middle of February, costing Americans an extra $108 million per day to buy the same amount of fuel. In Lincoln, Nebraska, gasoline prices spiked even more sharply, increasing 35 cents per gallon during the past two weeks, and in California and parts of the East Coast, per gallon prices have topped $4.

The USDA wants to know how livestock producers are using co-products from biodiesel and ethanol production.

This story from Ethanol Producer Magazine says the National Agriculture Statistics Service will be taking comments until March 28, 2011 with plans to release the results by next January:

NASS expects to contact 70,000 various livestock and poultry operations in early January to gain information related to their distillers co-products use during 2011. The survey will attempt to determine the rate of use of distillers co-products and various aspects contributing to their decision to use the feed, including nutrient values, product consistency, product form, product testing, inclusion rates, economics, shelf life, storage and transportation. The survey has been named the Distiller’s By-Products Survey in order to encompass all by-products, but Olbert said that focus could be narrowed to concentrate only on distillers grains. “That’s another reason why we need some input from the public and from stakeholders on what kinds of information they need from a survey,” he added.

You can submit comments to the USDA through email to ombofficer@nass.usda.gov. Reference docket number 0535-0247 in the subject line of the email.

Since today is the anniversary of the the birth of the first proponent of biodiesel, it is also National Biodiesel Day.

It was on March 18, 1858 Rudolf Diesel was born. As a proponent of using peanut oil in his diesel engine invention, Herr Diesel also became the first backer of biodiesel, thus today being recognized as National Biodiesel Day. This from the National Biodiesel Board:

The first compression ignition engine that Rudolph Diesel displayed at the 1900 World’s Fair ran on peanut oil and he designed it with a variety of fuels in mind. In a 1912 speech Diesel said, “the use of vegetable oils for engine fuels may seem insignificant today, but such oils may become, in the course of time, as important as petroleum and the coal tar products of the present time.”

Biodiesel is a cleaner burning, advanced biofuel made from readily available renewable resources such as soybean oil, canola oil, cottonseed oil, peanut oil, animal fat and even used cooking oil. The engines biodiesel is used in include semi-trucks, tractors, heavy construction equipment, boats, school buses, city transit buses, military equipment, diesel pickup trucks, passenger vehicles, home heating burners, electrical generators and almost every other diesel engine in the marketplace.

This week I read the book called “The Green Miracle,” by Clayton McNeff who is one of the creators of the Mcgyan Process. It’s the story of how in less than four years, with the inkling of an idea from a college student, a new multi-feedstock production technology was created to produce biodiesel.

In 2006, McNeff was contacted by one of his former undergraduate college professors, Arlin Gyberg, at Augsburg College located in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on behalf of one of his chemistry students, Brian Krohn. Krohn, a sophomore at the time, and now Rhodes Scholar, was going to conduct a 10-week summer research project on biodiesel. Krohn wanted to pursue producing biodiesel using a catalyst after his research uncovered some relatively unknown papers relating to the subject. As McNeff explains, a catalyst is something that speeds up a reaction and does not get consumed in a chemical reaction.

At the time, current biodiesel production was done by a chemical process called “based catalyzed transesterification.” In this process, oil and alcohol are chemically combined to produce esters (biodiesel) in a batch process where the reactants are put in a large tank, heated an stirred vigorously.

Krohn wanted to try using zirconia particles to catalyze the biodiesel reaction and although his experiments didn’t work, he sent along some papers to McNeff and that got his mind working in overtime – to the point where he called a meeting during which he suggested they try the very experiment that led to the Mcgyan Process discovery. The name came about after the research team that created it – Clayton McNeff, Arlin Gyberg and Dr. Ben Yan.

So how is this process different? It’s a continuous process where you combine an alcohol like ethanol and an oil like corn oil and run it through a reactor filled with a metal oxide catalyst. Then you add heat and pressure to the reactor and in a few seconds contact time the reaction is complete and you have biodiesel. This is all done without chemicals or water. And the Mcgyan Process has yet to meet an oil feedstock it couldn’t covert to ASTM standard biodiesel.

If you can shorten a less than four year story even more, after thousands of experiments to understand the chemistry of what they had, the team built a pilot scale facility and from there, a commercial scale 3 million gallon plant called Ever Cat Fuels (Ever Catalyst). In the middle of all of this, McNeff published papers about the findings, raised money, visited Washington, D.C., applied for DOE Loan Guarantees (which are nearly impossible to get for cutting edge, first-time technologies) and did all of this during the worst recession that this country has seen in 80 years.

While McNeff talks about how he believes this discovery and the consequent journey was “meant to be” it was not without its hardships. That’s in part what led he and his family to donate 5 cents from every gallon of biodiesel produced from Ever Cat Fuels to go to build a new science building at Augsburg College – the place where it all began.

I would be remiss to say that there are hundreds, if not thousands of researchers and entrepreneurs out there looking for the next breakthrough. It’s easy to get frustrated. The next time you do. Take a moment to read The Green Miracle. It won’t take long to inspire you and along the way, you’ll be reassured that America does in fact possess the willpower and the ingenuity to bring solutions to market to address our energy crisis today.

You can hear the story of The Green Miracle in Clayton McNeff’s own words in an excerpt of my interview with him: The Green Miracle

The largest photovoltaic solar power plant (PV) in the state of Colorado is now operating. The 19-megawatt (mW) Greater Sandhill solar power plant began generating power on December 22, 2010 and is now complete. It will generate enough power to meet the electricity needs of approximately 5,000 homes. The Xcel Energy and SunPower Corp. project was completed in nine months.

“Xcel Energy is pleased to provide solar energy from Greater Sandhill to our customers and eagerly anticipates adding more solar power in the San Luis Valley in the near future. This shows Xcel Energy’s commitment to working in the Valley to bring clean renewable energy to Xcel Energy customers throughout the state,” said Tom Imbler, vice president, commercial operations for Xcel Energy. “Our partnership with SunPower is vital in reaching our renewable energy goals at a reasonable cost to our customers.”

According to Excel, the plant uses SunPower Tracker systems, which generate up to 25 percent more energy than conventional systems and require the use of less land. The system works by tilting toward the sun as it moves across the sky, increasing energy capture and providing more power on hot summer days when utilities need it most.

“SunPower’s high-efficiency solar PV technology is competitively-priced for power plant applications, fast to install, and reliably delivers clean power, particularly during peak demand hours,” said Howard Wenger, president of SunPower’s utility and power plants business group. “We congratulate Xcel Energy for providing leadership in the promotion of large scale solar power development, and for demonstrating how renewable technologies are part of the solution to ensure the health of our economy and our environment.”

SunPower is also currently building the San Luis Valley Solar Ranch, a 30-megawatt photovoltaic solar power plant located on 216 acres of private, former agricultural land in Alamosa County. The project is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2011. Iberdrola Renewables developed, owns and will operate the San Luis Valley Solar Ranch but has contracted with SunPower to provide the technology and construct the project. The company will sell the electricity under a long term contract to Xcel Energy, for distribution on the region’s utility grid.

I’m sure there are people drinking green beer all over the world today but green beer is not just for St. Paddy’s Day. What, you ask? The U.S. Tax and Trade Bureau has recently approved Novozyme’s Ondea Pro, an enzyme originally introduced to the European market, to help make beer production more “green” aka sustainable. In fact, Danish brewer Harboe developed the first commercial beer using the enzyme entitled ‘Clim8 Beer’ just a few months prior to COP15. Nice timing, eh?

Now for those green beer drinkers in the States, raise your glasses and cheer for your greener beer.

“Ondea Pro enables brewers to create great-tasting beer while optimizing raw material utilization and reducing their carbon footprint – all with one simple process. It’s a real game-changer for the brewing industry,” says Soren Lund, Novozymes’ Marketing Manager for Brewing in the U.S. “With the long-term trend toward industrialization of the brewing process and ever-rising raw material prices, brewers are seeking effective solutions that do not jeopardize the consumer’s experience,” he says.

The resulting beer can be sold as a standalone product or it can be blended with traditional beer made with malt. Ondea Pro can also be blended into a different raw material mix of malt and barley in the beginning of the production process. Novozymes explains that malting barley requires soaking the grain in water to allow it to germinate. Next, the grain is then dried using both water and energy. Their enzyme allows you to avoid this step, thus reducing CO2 emissions (and water and energy requirements). Novozymes has also found that compared to the conventional brewing process, a 7 percent reduction in the amount of barley required to produce climate-friendly beer, thereby improving land utilization for society and decreasing operating costs for brewers.

”When we combined the fact that sustainable brewing is now a possibility in the U.S. with St. Patrick’s Day and our corporate brand icon of a green clover, it was an obvious choice for us to invite stakeholders to try some freshly-brewed green beer at our site today in North Carolina,” said Lund.

Bummer I don’t live in North Carolina because Novozymes is serving up some green beer brewed with Ondea Pro by Aviator Brewery of Fuquay Varina, NC during an event at their North American headquarters in Franklinton, NC today. In addition, the attendees will be also be served other food and beverages including crackers, bread and wine made ‘greener’ with the help of enzymes to present some of the many possibilities – and the different tastes of technology.

AE Biofuels has announced that it has received $3.5 million in financing from Third Eye Capital Corporation. The money will be used to restart and operate the company’s ethanol plant in Keyes, California. In November 2010, AE Advanced Fuels Keyes, Inc. (AE Keyes) received $4.5 million from the same company to repair and retrofit the ethanol facility. AE Keyes officials expect the plant to be fully operational by late April of this year.

AE Keyes took possession of the facility under a project agreement with Cilion, Inc. in 2010 and the revised project agreement extends the original lease from three to five years, with an early termination right at three years.

In other news, AE Biofuels also announced that it has signed a grain supply and services contract with J.D. Heiskell & Co. They also plan to market their wet distillers grains via A.L. Gilbert and Kinergy Marketing LLC with market their ethanol.

The plant also boasts some sustainability features. According to AE Biofuels, the Keyes plant ethanol production process has a 2.6:1 positive energy balance and near zero water discharge. In addition, the plant’s natural gas and steam powered turbine cogeneration unit generates nearly all of the operating electric needs of the plant (4.3 megawatts), thus eliminating dependence on the state’s electrical grid. The company said it also intends to introduce its patent-pending enzyme-based cellulosic ethanol technology at the Keyes facility and other California ethanol plants in 2011.

Once ethanol production commences at the Keyes facility, this will be the second ethanol plant to go back online in California this year with Pacific Ethanol bringing its Stockton ethanol plant back into production in February.

With gas prices inching upward, those who have low daily distance needs can save some cash with a solar electric vehicle. Those driving the All American solar electric low speed vehicle (LSV), manufactured by Cruise Car (in other words solar golf carts) are reporting they can travel up to 10 miles per day without having to recharge their vehicles using external power sources. This means the onboard solar panels are producing enough charge to keep the LSV’s at full power throughout the day eliminating the need for remote charging stations.

“Particularly in this environment of rapidly rising gas and energy prices, being able to take a facility’s low speed transport needs totally off-the-grid represents a huge savings in not only fuel costs but also the vehicle support infrastructure – no remote charging stations, wiring, etc.,” said Ken Chester, president of Cruise Car Inc. “Our All American welded aluminum space-frame and aluminum-alloy extrusions not only eliminate rusting, a huge problem in seaside environments, but the lighter weight has yielded the additional benefit of extending the All American’s range. This off-the-grid capability is not just a valuable savings, but is also vital in instances where transportation is mission critical non-withstanding grid outages.”

These LSV’s are best suited for municipalities, military bases, college campuses, corporate parks, resorts, federal agencies, and planned communities. Today, there are 24 different models available ranging from light utility to 14 passenger transporters.

Adam Sulimirski, general manager for Cruise Car general manager noted, “Hearing from some of our customers that they have not needed to charge their All Americans since initial delivery was quite frankly very pleasant feedback for us,” “We knew that in addition to improving performance of vehicle systems and individual components – integrating more efficient motors and transmissions and more powerful solar panels – that we had also lightened the vehicles considerably.”

“The combination of all these factors has resulted in a real benefit for our users – allowing some of them to take their electric vehicles totally off the grid and reducing their transportation energy costs to zero. When you add in the 30 percent federal tax grants that are now available and our proprietary leasing program that allows tax exempt organizations to benefit from the grant, we are providing significant economies for users of low speed vehicles,” concluded Sulimirski.

U.S. governors from Washington to New York to Texas are asking Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to change the way USDA reports the use of corn for ethanol production.

In a letter sent to Vilsack this week, the Governors’ Biofuels Coalition urged the change to reflect the fact that corn for ethanol usage produces livestock feed in the form of distillers grains in addition to ethanol. They argue that USDA’s current reporting methods distort the actual picture and provide ammunition for food versus fuel attacks on ethanol.

“In recent days, some pundits have even gone so far as to blame ethanol for the destabilization in Egypt,” wrote Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton in the letter representing the coalition. “Unfortunately, USDA’s monthly corn supply and demand reports provide support for this sensationalized reporting because they identify “corn demand for ethanol” without immediately noting this is gross demand, and not the net use of the starch portion of the corn kernel. This overstates the use of corn for ethanol by as much as a factor of two or more, and fails to inform the public about what is truly happening in the food and fuel supply chain.”

National Corn Growers Association President Bart Schott agrees with the governors’ assessment. “People are exaggerating the amount of corn that goes into ethanol,” Schott said. “While we are proud of the role ethanol plays in creating jobs, improving the environment and growing energy independence, we want to ensure that an accurate representation is made of the important work our growers are doing to meet all needs – for feed and food as well as for fuel.”

Read the letter here.

Legislation that would immediately repeal the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit, or VEETC, is drawing criticism from ethanol interests.

U.S. Senators Tom Coburn (R-OK) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) this week introduced the repeal as an amendment to the small business reauthorization bill, currently under consideration in the Senate. “The ethanol tax credit is bad economic policy, bad energy policy and bad environmental policy,” said Coburn in a release on the amendment. “I’m hopeful my colleagues on both sides of the aisle will take a stand against business-as-usual special interest giveaways and eliminate this wasteful and harmful subsidy.”

The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA), Growth Energy and the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) are all hopeful they will not, issuing their own releases urging the defeat of the amendment unless oil subsidies are eliminated as well.

From RFA: “Given Senator Coburn’s interest in what he deems unnecessary subsidies, we would encourage him to offer an amendment that would eliminate subsidies to oil companies posting tens of billions of dollars in profit quarterly. In lieu of that, the RFA urges the Senate to ignore this frivolous amendment.”

“We urge defeat of Sen. Coburn’s amendment as it is inequitable to have a debate about tax policy for one energy source—homegrown renewable fuels –without having that same debate about tax breaks for other competitive energy sources, including oil and gas. While we welcome a debate about future energy tax policy it should go through the appropriate tax committees and not on the whims of a senator from a major oil producing state,” said Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis.

NCGA President Bart Schott said, “We are disappointed that Senator Coburn is singling out the ethanol industry in his amendment to immediately repeal the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) while tax credits to the oil and gas industries remained untouched. The American ethanol industry provides and supports 400,000 jobs here in the United States during a time of economic uncertainty. In addition, in the past year alone, ethanol added more than $50 billion to the national Gross Domestic Product and displaced the need for more than 360 million barrels of imported oil, valued at $16 billion.”

There is currently no vote scheduled on the amendment. Last December, Congress extended the tax incentive for ethanol use until the end of this year.

It looks like Facebook is the big dog in the social media world according to you. Our last ZimmPoll asked the question, “Which social network do you use the most.” A majority say Facebook, 64%, followed by Twitter, 16%, YouTube, 8%, Linkedin, 5%, Other, 5%, Classmates.com, 1%, Flickr, !% and MySpace, 0%. I can’t remember when I’ve checked my MySpace account either.

Our next ZimmPoll is now live and asks the question, “When will planting season start this year?” It’s that time now that we’re in National Ag Week with spring just around the corner! Let us know what you think and thank you for participating.

ZimmPoll is sponsored by Rhea+Kaiser, a full-service advertising/public relations agency.

Some recent issues with biodiesel-blended heating oil in the Northeast U.S. might be because of a bad batch of petroleum, not the biodiesel mixed with it.

This blog post from Biodiesel Magazine says that the issue came up at this week’s meeting of the Oilheat Council of New Hampshire, where some members of the group had issues with coking of burners and getting product that “looked like asphalt:”

[Robert Sculley, the council’s executive director] says initially the perception is that the problems were thought to be caused by the bio portion of the fuel, a common scenario when problems occur with biodiesel-blended fuel. However, there has been no determination as of yet as to what the problem really is.

Sculley said at the end of the meeting the question was still, “Is it the biodiesel or could it be a bad batch of petro fuel oil?” He said Advanced Fuel Solutions’ Paul Nazzaro, who also works with the National Biodiesel Board, was at the meeting. Over the next couple of weeks, fuel sampling and investigation of equipment will occur, and more definitive answers should be available soon.

We’ll post more when we get it. Stay tuned…

The head of a company that produces biochemicals and biofuels says the chemical market, although smaller, is much more profitable than the renewable fuel market.

According to this piece from Biofuels Digest, during the recent BioPro Expo and Conference in Atlanta, Cobalt Technologies CEO Rick Wilson questioned the wisdom of focusing on biofuels when the better money is in biochemicals:

“Why make a $2 fuel when you can make a $5 chemical?” asks Cobalt CEO Rick Wilson, whose company was branded in the public eye as Cobalt Biofuels for several years, but has morphed towards “Cobalt Technologies” (its original name) and is squarely focused on the market for renewable chemicals for the time being. By any name, it’s a hot company, ranked #14 in the world in this year’s 50 Hottest Companies rankings.

“At our company, we produce n-butanol, normal butanol. That’s been produced for a long time, through the complex ABE process, using a lot of different traditional feedstocks. But the feedstocks are increasingly cost prohibitive. The usual barrier to using advanced microorganisms to produce biobutanol has been the rate of fermentation. In our process, we have dramatically overcome that, and accelerated the fermentation rate. Our fermentation time is four hours, compared to 72 hours with the ABE methods. So we have the opportunity to use low-cost feedstocks such as bagasse and wood biomass, to large-value markets where we have a significant cost advantage.”

Wilson admits the biochemical market is much smaller than biofuels, especially when you consider there’s $250 billion in jet fuel and nearly a $1 trillion in gasoline alone. But he says it’s a lot harder to turn a profit in biofuels.

New Jersey’s oldest and largest publicly owned utility has put in a 921-kilowatt rooftop solar at the power provider’s Central Division Headquarters.

With some help from Solis Partners, a leading developer and integrator of commercial solar power systems, Public Service Electric and Gas Company (PSE&G) put in the U.S.-made SolarWorld flat, glass-plated crystalline panels and Solyndra thin film panels, part of a plan by PSE&G’s plan to invest $515 million on 80 megawatts of solar projects around the state between 2009 and 2013:

“With the hard work and commitment of key state legislators, the BPU and utilities such as PSE&G, New Jersey has become the sixth largest solar market in the world and a national leader in installed solar capacity — second only to California,” said Jamie Hahn, managing director of Solis Partners. “PSE&G’s Solar 4 All program has been key to that achievement. This project exemplifies PSE&G’s commitment to transforming underutilized commercial rooftops into clean renewable energy sources.”

“These underutilized rooftop assets are the perfect platform for deploying distributed solar generation facilities where power is most needed,” said Weisman. “Rooftop solar produces during the hours of peak demand, and provides power to the areas of the grid that need it the most — large commercial and industrial users.”

The special cylindrical panels from Solyndra are designed especially for flat rooftops, covering more rooftop area and capturing more light than traditional solar panels.