Domestic Fuel

Animal health and nutrition leader Alltech recently wrapped up its first conference on algae.

This company press release says the invitation-only conference, entitled “Algae: The Growth Platform,” was the company’s first international conference, drawing 60 attendees from around the world to Lexington, Kentucky:

“This conference is important to the region, to the state, and to the future of science. What science needs is a ‘game changer’ and algae are going to be that ‘game changer’,” said Dr. Pearse Lyons, president and founder of Alltech.

Algae can be used in animal feed, food supplements, pharmaceuticals, bioremediation and biofuels. Several of these industries were represented among the international audience and lively group discussions were inspired by the specific challenges and opportunities for algae production in agriculture, environmental and renewable energy applications.

Another part of the conference included Alltech cutting the ribbon on its new algae facility in Winchester, Kentucky, a facility with more than $200 million worth of equipment that will help the company research and perfect commercial operations.

A company that is bringing one idled biodiesel plant in Iowa back to life is working one getting a second one operational.

The Keokuk (IA) Daily Gate City reports that Enervation, which is already getting the former Tri-City Energy plant back up to speed (see Joanna’s post from Jan. 25, 2011), has acquired a 60 million gallon per year biodiesel plant in Algona, Iowa:

After months of negotiations, Enervation’s founders, Paul Tantillo and William Dollard have come to an agreement to purchase the Algona biodiesel plant from the bank for an undisclosed amount. The 60 million gallon per year plant completed in 2007 never became operational and requires a significant amount of work to conform to the Enervation plan for the property, Tantillo said.

“While the plant as it stands cannot produce positive cash flows, we have a strategic plan for the Algona location that enables the facility to thrive and to fulfill its promise to the community for the jobs so sorely needed in the area,” Tantillo said.

Enervation’s founders also say they want to make the biodiesel plants work without any government grants or the federal $1-a-gallon biodiesel tax credit.

Look for Mr. Peanut to come to a neighborhood near you riding in his biodiesel-powered Planters Nutmobile!

As part of its sustainability efforts, Planters has launched its Naturally Remarkable campaign to highlight the company’s efforts to work and act more green. From Mr. Peanut’s Facebook page:

“Not only does the new Planters Nutmobile run on biodiesel, it harnesses the power of sunlight and wind. Just like me. Everyday.”

For more on Planters’ sustainability efforts and biodiesel-fueled Naturally Remarkable Tour, check out the company’s website.

In a move that is already generating plenty of controversy (and I’m sure plenty of comments on this blog), the California State Senate has voted to require utilities in the state to get one-third of their energy from wind, solar and other renewables by the year 2020.

The Los Angeles Times reports the measure moves up the requirement from 20 percent and is bringing about backers and opponents:

“Right now we can begin to create the jobs that this state so desperately needs,” said state Sen. Joe Simitian (D-Palo Alto), the bill’s author.

In a report two years ago, the California Public Utilities Commission said energy costs would probably go up 7.1% if a third of electricity came from renewable sources. A spokeswoman for the agency said Thursday that some renewable energy prices have since declined, so the increase would probably not be so high.

In addition, the state’s Public Utilities Commission says it might take $115 billion to put in the facilities to generate that much renewable energy. On the upside, it could create 100,000 to 200,000 new jobs. No word on whether Gov. Jerry Brown, who campaigned on the 33 percent target, will support the measure should it pass the state Assembly, as it is expected to do.

Officials at Lawrence Livermore and Sandia California national laboratories have debuted a pair of hydrogen-powered shuttle buses.

This article from Patch.com says the Ford E-450, nine-passenger vans will be tested as they shuttle people around the two campuses:

The demonstration will test how well the hydrogen-powered vans and their fueling stations stand up to the normal wear and tear.

Air Products and Chemicals, Inc., is providing hydrogen gas fuel. It also built and installed hydrogen fueling stations at the LLNL and Sandia campuses.

The vans will be able to run 150 miles between refuelings. Of course, the only emission from the burning of hydrogen is water.

In an effort to make its brown trucks run green, shipping giant UPS has added 48 heavy tractor trucks that use Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).

This company press release says the new semis will be used in the western United States starting later this year and will produce 25 percent fewer greenhouse gas emissions:

“This is an important step not only from an environmental standpoint but from the viewpoint of U.S. energy security,” said Mike Britt, UPS’s director of vehicle engineering. “Liquefied natural gas is a cheaper, cleaner-burning fuel that is better for the environment and more sustainable than conventional diesel. And it’s also a fuel that’s in abundant supply inside the United States; it doesn’t have to be imported.”

Manufactured by Kenworth, the LNG tractors are powered by Westport HD Systems and initially will pull trailers on a transit lane linking Ontario, Calif., and Las Vegas, Nev., along with UPS’s 11 existing LNG tractors. UPS is the only private delivery company using this technology in its fleet and now has more than 1,100 natural gas-powered vehicles in service.

The release goes on to say that UPS operates 1,914 alternatively fueled vehicles, including those running on Compressed Natural Gas, propane, and electric, as well as hybrid electric vehicles, with this green fleet covering more than 185 million miles over the past decade.

Deepwater wind energy turbines off the coast of Maine could be producing electricity that is cost competitive with conventional generation techniques within the next 10 years.

The Portland (ME) Press Herald reports that a study from the University of Maine shows that floating giant wind turbines 10 miles off the coast could be producing electricity for just 8-10 cents a kilowatt hour, on par with current costs:

Building floating platforms on land and towing them to their deepwater locations will be much cheaper than erecting turbine towers on the sea floor, researchers say. Seabed turbines are common in Europe and are the preferred design for proposed wind farms in shallow waters off the East Coast of the United States.

Dagher and his associates are in touch with roughly four dozen companies around the world involved in offshore wind. The study, Dagher said, will save a prospective bidder years of research and millions of dollars. He is hopeful that the study’s detailed data will entice at least a couple of qualified developers to consider Maine over other locations where the potential for deepwater wind energy is being considered. “This will give Maine a major leg up,” he said.

Maine will test a 25-megawatt pilot floating offshore wind project off Monhegan Island with hopes of producing commercial-scale wind energy amounts by 2020.

An American maker of wood pellets has acquired a deep water port, and that should help the company receive, store and load more than 3 million tons of woody biomass for export each year.

Biomass Magazine reports that Enviva LP will expand its shipping capacity with the deep water port terminal in Chesapeake, Virginia:

The location is one of a few on the Eastern Seaboard suitable for the export of wood pellets and will serve as the shipment point for pellets manufactured at Enviva’s recently announced plant in nearby Ahoskie, N.C. The new plant will produce 330,000 tons of wood pellets annually from more than 600,000 tons of raw supplies, according to Enviva.

“The Chesapeake region has for a long time been a key nexus of international trade in the United States,” said Enviva CEO John Keppler. “We are particularly excited to be one of the first green economy manufacturers to rebalance the flow of trade in favor of exports from this port in Virginia.” The company said the terminal purchase is a reflection of its commitment to ensuring the safety, reliability, sustainability and quality of its product. It also allows the company to better satisfy growing overseas demand for wood pellets.

The port will be able to handle ships with more than 44,000 tons of Enviva pellets on board. Most of Enviva’s customers are in Europe, but company has been expanding its U.S. base.

Solar panels, wind turbines and methane digesters are big hits on American farms and ranches, that according to a new survey from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The 2009 On-Farm Renewable Energy Production Survey, the first-ever nationwide survey that looked at renewable energy practices on America’s farms and ranches, shows that these types of energy sources have increased significantly over the last 10 years, with 8,569 operations making renewable energy across the country:

“These results indicate that farmers and ranchers are increasingly adopting renewable energy practices on their operations and reaping the important economic and environmental benefits,” said U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “At USDA we are committed to natural resource conservation, prosperity and energy independence in rural America. This survey gives us a benchmark against which we can measure our future successes.”

On the state level, California leads the nation with 1,956 operations producing renewable energy, accounting for nearly a quarter of all operations in the United States participating in this practice. Texas, Hawaii and Colorado were the other major states where farmers on at least 500 or more operations were producing their own renewable energy.

The survey goes on to show that farmers in nearly every state were able to save money by using their own, homegrown, renewable energy. More information is available here.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has given the green light for E15 ethanol to be used in vehicle years 2001-2007. But what about older cars and trucks?

In this edition of the Domestic Fuel Cast, we listen in to part of the presentation by Ricardo, an internationally recognized automotive and engineering firm, at the Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit, where the company made the case that E15 is OK for vehicles made between 1994 and 2000.

We hear from Ricardo’s Rod Beazley, who explains why they looked at this group of cars and trucks, the challenges involved in the testing, and why the fuel tanks were actually more likely to corrode from the outside and not from the E15 on the inside (the picture on the right is quite telling).

It’s an interesting presentation, and you can see the slide show here and hear what Beazley has to say here: Domestic Fuel Cast

You can also subscribe to the DomesticFuel Cast here.:

An Indiana-based oil exploration, production, refining and marketing company (including biodiesel) says reinstatement of the federal $1-a-gallon biodiesel blenders credit is helping make the green fuels competitive with non-renewable petroleum products.

CountryMark of Indianapolis says biodiesel blended fuel prices at the farmer-owned cooperative are reflecting the difference the credit is making:

“The biodiesel blender tax credit of a dollar per gallon has biodiesel blended fuels very competitive in the marketplace,” says Jon Lantz, CountryMark Vice President of Marketing. “In light of this change, we encourage fuel buyers to talk with their local cooperative about biodiesel-blended fuels.”

CountryMark Member Cooperatives will be working diligently to reach out to school transportation directors, municipalities, county highway departments, fire departments and emergency vehicle managers in the coming weeks to talk about the benefits of B20 and the new prices which have been reduced by the passage of the biodiesel blenders tax credit.

Last year, CountryMark bought 750,000 gallons of biodiesel for blending and hopes to blend 3 million gallons of B100 into diesel fuel this year.

The USDA is working on matching the best places to build biofuel refineries with the areas that have the best feedstocks to produce the green fuels.

This Agricultural Research Service article says they’ve been looking at the potential in the Pacific Northwest:

[ARS] agronomist George Mueller-Warrant, plant physiologist Gary Banowetz, and hydrologist Jerry Whittaker calculated that the 6.2 million tons of straw left over from the production of Pacific Northwest cash crops could be used to produce more than 430 million gallons of biofuel. ARS is USDA’s chief intramural scientific research agency, and this research supports the USDA priority of developing new sources of bioenergy.

The team ran its calculations for facilities that had three different scales of annual production. Small-scale facilities could process 1,100 tons of straw, medium-sized facilities could process 11,000 tons of straw, or large-scale facilities could process 110,000 tons of straw.

Even discounting the amount of straw needed to be left on the fields, ARS researchers’ results found there would be enough feedstock for 6,200 small facilities, 660 medium facilities, or 64 large biofuels facilities.

Usually we talk about alternative energy being used on the roads, but this time, I’d like to introduce you to a technology that harvests energy FROM the roads.

Continuing my conversation from yesterday with New Energy Technologies’ President and CEO John Conklin, he tells us today about MotionPower, that captures the kinetic energy produced by moving vehicles.

“If solar and wind energy can be used to generate electricity for commercial and residential use, we began to wonder, ‘why can’t automobiles and trucks?’”

Conklin says more than 250 million vehicles drive about 6 billion miles each day on this nation’s roadways, providing a great feedstock for this new technology. Only about 15 percent of the energy in transportation fuels actually moves the vehicle; the rest is lost to the moving parts of the engine. And of the 15 percent, 10 percent of that is lost to the rolling resistance known as braking. Capturing that lost energy is the basis of the MotionPower technology.

He adds that MotionPower is really divided into two types of energy-capturing technologies: one that uses a mechanical treadal-type of system that generates the electricity from a deceleration area, such as an off-ramp or a low-speed road area; and the other that uses a peristaltic system that pushes a fluid through the mechanism to take advantage of wave motion energy generation (which would be used more commonly with heavy-duty trucks).

“With kinetic energy being related to mass and velocity, we can develop systems to target low-speed automobiles, high-speed automobiles and heavy trucks,” Conklin explains.

Conklin says these technologies are very close to being installed in our roads and sees 2011 as key to his company’s commercialization efforts.

Listen to more of my conversation with Conklin here: John Conklin, New Energy Technologies, part 2

As part of a bigger expansion plan, a biodiesel maker from Wisconsin is adding a 24-hour biodiesel fueling station, as well as using a truck that runs on biodiesel with an electric backup.

SunPower Premium Cold Flow Biodiesel‘s Cumberland, Wisconsin station will have B11, B20 and B99 blends available plus a winter additive to increase engine performance:

“The owners of SunPower Biodiesel are ecstatic that the dream of locally grown fuel – available to the public – is now a reality for the people of Northwest Wisconsin,” said SunPower CEO Ron Ruppel. “We welcome all consumers to try our fuel, and are confident that all will agree that locally grown diesel fuel is superior to all the other available diesel fuels in our marketing area. We envision the day when none of us in rural America will be held hostage to imported oil!“

Any equipment, machinery or vehicle that normally runs on traditional diesel fuel can run on biodiesel, a cleaner-burning and renewable form of fuel. SunPower’s biodiesel has a higher cetane rating, has 10 times the lubrication properties, and produces up to 50% less emissions than petroleum diesel fuel–making it a greener fuel alternative that is just as efficient as petroleum diesel. In a 60,000 gallon market test, SunPower’s biodiesel users reported more power, cooler-running engines and increased mileage. SunPower also uses biodiesel in its fleet, and recently added a hybrid diesel truck that uses biodiesel and an electric-back up. The new hybrid truck has an increased fuel economy of 20-30 percent, and meets emissions, anti-idling and noise regulations. The purchase of the truck and fueling station equipment was made possible with substantial funding from the Wisconsin Clean Transportation Program and is the first of its kind in the state from the Wisconsin Kenworth dealership.

Company officials say the new Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS2) is helping SunPower move forward with this expansion.

Missouri-based MFA Oil Company, a farmer-owned cooperative, has partnered with Aloterra Energy to form a biomass venture.

This MFA press release says the new company, MFA Oil Biomass LLC, will pay about 1,700 family farmers to grow miscanthus for use as a biomass fuel and possibly ethanol in the future:

[T]he 2008 Federal Farm Bill created the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP), a federally‐funded initiative that encourages the development of renewable energy sources. MFA Oil Biomass will synergistically combine the benefits of growing miscanthus as a renewable energy source with the BCAP incentives that encourage farmers to grow a biomass crop.

The first priority for MFA Oil Biomass is to secure BCAP funding. Under current guidelines, BCAP will reimburse farmers up to 75 percent of planting costs and pay an annual rent payment while farmers wait for their crops to mature. Once the crops mature, farmers will be eligible to receive two years of matching payments for their tonnage, up to $45 per ton beyond the selling price. Land that is currently in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is excluded from the program.

So far, MFA has signed up about 250 farmers to grow more than 12,000 acres of miscanthus and hopes to eventually have that number up to 150,000 acres.