Domestic Fuel

The Sundance award winning documentary, “FUEL” is set to open up in 150 theaters across the U.S. tomorrow. The “FUEL” team will be on hand in New York for the nationwide premiere, which is being hailed by people who have had the opportunity to pre-screen the film as “eye opening,” “insightful,” and “powerful”. The film was directed by Josh Tickell (who is also the star) and produced by Rebecca Harrell.

A little background. The film was nearly a decade in the making. Born in Australia, his family moved back to his mother’s home state of Louisiana where he lived near the dozens of oil refineries. The pollution was tremendous and the consequences to the health of his family and neighbors was oftentimes devastating. As he grew older, he knew there had to be a better way to produce fuel than oil. The answer: biodiesel. It’s environmentally friendly and sustainable. So he began his journey in his “Veggie Van,” which he drove across the country on used restaurant grease and promoted the benefits of biodiesel.

I had the opportunity to preview the film and I must say, despite my not agreeing with everything in the film, overall, it was very inspiring. The film does a wonderful job of delving into all areas of the issues that affect the success of biodiesel. And I must say the graphics were sensational, well-placed and informative. Some areas that were really well done include the way Tickell lays out the world’s current love-affair with oil and the consequences that will ensue if the world continues down this path. He also does a great job of discussing America’s current energy policy.
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Canadian company Enerkem has broken ground on a new energy research facility.

This company press release says the advanced waste-to-biofuels facility is a partnership with the City of Edmonton and the Government of Alberta,:

The research facility, a collaboration between Enerkem, the City of Edmonton and the Alberta Energy Research Institute (AERI), will focus on the conversion of various types of waste from industrial sectors and from the municipal sector, to produce green transportation fuels and chemicals. It will be adjacent to the commercial waste-to-biofuels production facility, which will soon begin construction and will at term produce 36 million litres of ethanol per year.

“Enerkem is proud to take part in this unprecedented project that will keep more waste out of landfills, will reduce GHG emissions and will allow for the production of green transportation fuels,” said Vincent Chornet, President and Chief Executive Officer of Enerkem. “The joint energy research facility and our commercial waste-to-biofuels production facility, demonstrate our company’s leading position in waste processing and in the production of advanced biofuels.”

The facility is expected to be done by the first part of next year.

The First Coop Association held a grand opening celebration today from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. for their new ethanol and biodiesel pumps. The station, located on Hwy. 71 South in Sioux Rapids, Iowa featured free food and ethanol and biodiesel specials.

The First Coop Association is one of many stations to take advantage of the Renewable Fuels Promotional Assistance Program sponsored by the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association (IRFA) and the Iowa Soybean Association. Through the Renewable Fuels Promotional Assistance Program, Iowa Corn and IRFA partners with retailers for grand openings for E85 and ethanol blender dispensers. Iowa Soybean and IRFA partners with retailers for grand openings for biodiesel dispensers.

Retailers interested in installing an E85 or biodiesel dispenser can apply for a grant from the Iowa Department of Economic Development.

There are currently 129 E85 facilities in the state of Iowa.

Global Biodiesel Producer Lake Erie Biofuels today announced a name change to HERO BX and a new technology pathway for the future of biofuels.

CEO Leonard Kosar says America needs a hero in the biofuels business. “HERO BX stands for high-quality biodiesel and that is what we produce everyday using multiple feedstocks,” said Kosar. “In the future, we will utilize our proprietary blending technology to determine what the most efficient and cost competitive second and third generation feedstocks are and add them to our feedstock portfolio. We are not only a biodiesel company, we are a fuel technology company.”

Kosar says their biodiesel production strategy involves using multiple feedstocks primarily from vegetable oils and waste oils. “What most second and third generation biofuels are not doing today is actually producing biodiesel,” said Kosar. “HERO BX is producing superior biodiesel today using first generation feedstocks from waste oil to catfish oil, to vegetable oil, and tomorrow we will add to our feedstock portfolio the most efficient and cost competitive second and third generation feedstocks such as camelina and algae.” He stressed the need to control the feedstock supply, rather than have it control them.

HERO BX is supporting the new award winning documentary “FUEL” starring and directed by Josh Tickell. The film is launching nationwide this month. “We are a major supporter of the film,” Kosar said. “We don’t support everything in it, certainly in its position with oil companies, but we do support the full story that it gives on what biodiesel is and how it fits into energy policy over the next decade and what it means to America.”

HERO BX, formerly Lake Erie Biofuels, LLC, started operations in 2007 and is Pennsylvania’s first large-scale biodiesel production facility. A fully accredited BQ-9000 producer and marketer of biodiesel, HERO BX is the leading producer of biodiesel in the United States and distributes its fuel around the world.

Audio from the HERO BX announcement is posted here:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.7MB)

A group that touts its efforts to promote “the sustainable production and equitable distribution of energy and food in communities across Minnesota” has issued a report on the renewable fuels used for transportation in this country.

The Minnesota Project’s Transportation Biofuels in the United States: An Update looks at many of the issues regarding biofuels in this country, including food vs. fuel and Indirect Land Use:

[W]e do intend for Transportation Biofuels in the United States to act as a tool to provide an overview of the current status of major developments in the biofuels industry. We highlight recent changes in biofuels production processes, biomass development, and federal level policies such as the Biomass Crop Assistance Program. We also review unavoidable issues including the food versus fuel debate and the difficult indirect land use change debate. Our intention is not to criticize, cheerlead, or otherwise deny or approve particular results or arguments. Instead, our purpose is to provide information, pose questions, and seek objective analysis of the information that is currently available. Only through an open discussion may we most effectively find root problems and appropriate solutions. We believe that through honest evaluation and analysis, this wave of biofuels will not only stay together, but carry us all in the right direction.

The report breaks down what’s going on with biofuels into three main areas: technology, policy and issues. You can download the report here.

Big Oil is out astroturfing once again, this time under the guise of the group “Energy Citizens,” a front group set up by their Washington lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute. The goal of this effort is to stage rallies across the country in an attempt to kill the clean energy and climate plan now being considered by Congress.

It’s not only the biofuels industry that has had enough. Operation Free, a coalition of leading Veterans and national security organizations is fighting back and has denounced the claims of Energy Citizens and its ‘Oil Dependence Tour’ and cites that the groups efforts threaten our national security. Spokespersons for Operation Free note that they strongly support immediate Congressional action on clean energy and a climate plan that breaks the country’s addiction to oil, tackles global warming and enhances national security.

During a press conference held by the Florida Veterans, participants noted that you, “don’t often see veterans coming together to talk about national security,” as well as said that, “for us, there’s not a huge jump between energy and national security”.

Jason Whitaker, a 10 year Army veteran with multiple deployments, has seen first hand the devastation caused by climate change. He said, “There are few challenges facing America that are more urgent than climate change. Denial is no longer an acceptance response. The stakes are too high and the consequences are too serious.”

A pair of three-year National Science Foundation grants will help the St. Louis-based Donald Danforth Plant Science Center continue its biofuel research.

This press release says one of the awards is a $550,000 grant awarded through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act that will support research that explores regulation of plant metabolism, an important part of biofuel research:

Dr. Oliver Yu, associate member, Danforth Plant Science Center will serve as the principal investigator on the project.

Yu will investigate how enzyme interactions in a metabolic process direct the flow of plant resources in the metabolic pathway that leads to production of lignins. For example, when plants are under attack by pathogens, specific enzyme interactions may direct simple molecules (in this case, monomers derived from phenol) to polymerize into lignins that re-enforce cell walls to prevent further invasions by the pathogen. However, under strong ultraviolet light irradiation, the plant uses the same pathway to establish new enzyme interactions that would produce flavonoids (a group of UV protectants) from the same phenolic monomers. Yu and his team of researchers hope to identify how enzyme interactions are established under various conditions and how these interactions alter the direction and flow of a particular pathway, leading to production of various compounds from a common starting molecule.

Dr. Dilip Shah, associate research member at the Danforth Center, picked up the other NSF grant worth $500,000 and a two-year $271,000 award from the Consortium of Plant Biotechnology Research, for his research aimed at learning more about fungal pathogens and how to control the diseases that they cause.

The work is seen as important for feedstocks, such as corn and soybeans.

Researchers will be gathering in St. Louis next week for the “Algae-to-Energy Research and Development in the South” meeting.

The Center for Evergreen Energy in conjunction with The Southern Growth Policies Board and The Southern Agriculture and Forestry Resource Alliance (SAFER) is hosting the meeting of southern algae researchers on August 26th at the Regional Chamber and Growth Association’s office in St. Louis at One Metropolitan Square, Suite 1300:

“Algae-to-Energy Research and Development in the South,” [is] a gathering of scientists and stakeholders in the southern United States who are researching effective and innovative ways to convert algae to biofuels. This gathering will be the first of several events related to algae biofuel research and development that the Center for Evergreen Energy will host.

August 26th, 2009 8:00 am – 5:00 pm

The event is free, including lunch, as long as you register by Monday, August 24th, 2009. After the August 24th deadline, there will be a $25 charge to attend the event.

Yet another study has found that Searchinger et al.’s paper on Indirect Land Use was not based on ‘sound science’. According to researchers Professor John Matthews and Dr. Hao Tan, from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, the Searchinger paper is more ideology than science and is seeking to put biofuels in the worst possible light. In addition, they say, alternative approaches are more likely to be fruitful in genuinely evaluating effects of biofuels grown around the world. This from the new report, “Biofuels and indirect land use change effects: the debate continues”.

Their efforts revealed that the framework used started with assumptions as to the diversion of grain to ethanol production in the U.S. but then extrapolated these parts of the world, such as sugarcane growing in Brazil, which are actually much more bio-efficient. Professors Mathews and Tan’s analysis concluded that Searchinger et al. failed sound scientific standards on many fronts and that government agencies relying on Searchinger et al. findings for evaluating biofuels would be better served by utilizing other controls.

“Indirect land use change effects are too diffuse and subject to too many arbitrary assumptions to be useful for rule-making,” stated Professor Mathews. “The use of direct and controllable measures such as building statements of origin or biofuels into the contracts that regulate the sale of such commodities would secure better results.”

According to Matthews and Tan, there are six ways Searchinger et al. fell short:

1. 1.    Direct plantings of biofuels crops around the world are ignored, and instead a spike in U.S. corn-based ethanol is considered a trigger.
   2.    The U.S. spike is met exclusively by growing corn, but other ways of meeting the U.S. spike, all involving fewer GHG emissions, are ignored.
   3.    The U.S. spike met entirely within the U.S. – without regard to trade (such as half of the spike being met by Brazilian sugarcane and imported into the U.S.).
   4.    The Searchinger et al. calculations of carbon release are based on trends recorded in the 1990s but are projected forward up to 2016.
   5.    Improvements in biomass yields around the world are not considered.
   6.    The U.S. spike leads to indirect effects around the world without regard to regulatory limits (even in the U.S.).

“If you wished to put U.S. ethanol production in the worst possible light, assuming the worst possible set of production conditions guaranteed to give the worst possible set of indirect land use effects, then the assumptions would not be far from those actually presented in the Searchinger et al. paper,” commented Dr. Hao Tan. “Frankly, better science upon which to base rule-making is available today.”

If you’d like to participate in the debate, then consider attending the Land Use Conference in St. Louis hosted by NCGA (Aug. 25-26). They will be discussing current models, limitations and develop recommendations for future science and policy.

WorldAutoSteel has released a 2nd iteration of the automotive materials parametric Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model, which allows for broader evaluations of automotive materials, powertrains, fuels, and vehicle total energy consumed. The study showed that celluosic E85 is the best fuel to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as compared to all other alternatives, including hybrid technology and fuel cells. This phase 2 LCA model is a successor to the Phase 1 model and was released under the expertise of Dr. Roland Geyer of the University of California’s Bren School for Environmental Science.

“This report reinforces the promise of ethanol as the cleanest, greenest fuel for our cars even when compared to hybrid and fuel cell technology,” said Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy.” Today’s ethanol plants are 60 percent better than gasoline and cellulosic ethanol can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by even more – as much as 86 percent. Unfortunately, an arbitrary government cap on the amount of ethanol that can be blended with gasoline is stifling the development and commercialization of second-generation biofuels and needs to be increased. Further, we need automakers to manufacture more flex-fuel vehicles so they can utilize higher blends of ethanol. These common sense solutions can speed up the introduction of cellulosic ethanol to the marketplace, making America’s homegrown fuel even cleaner and greener, while creating green collar jobs and reducing our dependence on foreign oil.”

The Phase 2 model incorporated several new features including adding magnesium and several composites to the materials that may now be evaluated for their emissions from manufacturing through use and end-of-life; advanced powertrains including diesel and fuel cells; the ability to evaluate the impact of biofuels and other ag sources for the production of these fuels; and the capability to produce an analysis of total energy consumed over a car’s life cycle to compliment the total greenhouse gas emission analysis.

You can download the model here.

For the past several months, grants and incentives have been released to help keep the biofuels industry moving forward and successful. One set of programs that were launched through the stimulus package gave $1.7 billion dollars for business and industry loan guarantees - but very few are taking advantage of this program. This according to Dallas Tonsager, keynote speaker during the 22nd Ethanol Conference & Trade Show, and Under Secretary for Rural Development with the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development (USDA).

Under this program businesses are eligible for working capital refinancing, machinery and equipment, real estate and construction, business development, and expansion. Also under this initiative, USDA Rural Development will consider loan term adjustments as part of a comprehensive business stabilization strategy including adjustments in interest rates, principal reduction and loan terms.

According to Tonsager, another action item of his department is to implement the renewable energy provisions of the 2008 Farm Bill. In addition to the $1.7 billion mentioned above, these provisions provide another $1 billion in funding. In addition, the American Recovery Act funding provides $11 billion to develop a smarter grid, $6.3 billion for state and local renewable energy and energy efficiency efforts, and $600 million in green job training. Tonsager pointed out that updating technologies at current ethanol plants that will increase the plants energy efficiencies qualify for this funding.

The funds will expire on September 30, 2010 so the time is now to learn more about them, and Tonsager encourages people to contact their local state office. You can see pictures from Tonsager’s presentation as well as pictures from the entire conference in our Flickr photo album.

The University of Wisconsin-Superior will play host to the upcoming Bio-Fuels and Energy Independence Symposium, bringing together researchers from laboratories, universities and businesses around the Midwest to talk about the latest work in biofuels technology.

This story from KBJR-TV in Duluth, Minnesota says the symposium runs from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 3, at UW-Superior’s Rothwell Student Center:

The symposium is organized by American Science and Technology, based in Chicago.

The event is free and open to the public.

Go to the meeting's Web site, www.amsnt.com/BEIS.htm, for more information.

Advanced Biofuels USA is now officially recognized as exempt from Federal income tax under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue code making the organization qualified to receive tax deductible donations.

The purpose of the organizations is to promote public understanding, acceptance, and use of advanced biofuels; to promote research, development and improvement of production, marketing and delivery of advanced biofuels; and to improve advanced biofuels crops and products.

The organization is in the process of fundraising for a number of special projects, including the development of a curriculum-based educational series for K-12 science classes to help students and teachers understand the basics of plants, algae and other organic materials and how they can be converted to advanced biofuels, as well as expanded online educational products such as webinars and educational videos on advanced biofuels.

I always love to report when a fellow Iowan finds his way back home again.

After serving for the past six years as a research assistant for U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) in Washington, D.C., Grant Menke has been hired as the Biofuels Manager for the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association (IRFA). This IRFA press release has details:

“It is certainly an honor to be joining the IRFA team,” said Menke. “The renewable fuels industry is crucial to Iowa’s economy, so as an Iowa farm boy, I am especially grateful and excited for the opportunity to serve in this role at IRFA.”

“IRFA is excited to have someone with Grant’s experience and work ethic joining our team,” stated IRFA Executive Director Monte Shaw. “This is a challenging time for biodiesel and ethanol producers and the addition of Grant will help us more quickly respond to the needs of our members.”

Congratulations, Grant!

There's a new radio show in town… and its focus is something near and dear to the hearts of many of you who read this blog.

On this edition of the Domestic Fuel Cast we'll talk to Sean O’Hanlon, Executive Director of the American Biofuels Council and host of "Pure Energy," a new radio show on Miami's 880 AM WZAB, Monday nights from 6-7 EDT.

O'Hanlon says while most people focus on clean, green and sustainable, his show will feature the economic side of it – job creation, cost savings, cost competitiveness and the opportunity to invest in various technologies and companies in renewables.

During the recent debut show, O'Hanlon welcomed Dr. Robert Zubrin, author of the book Energy Victory. Zubrin makes the case that the only way we can break the control foreign oil has on this country and the world is to require more vehicles to be flex-fuel… burn a variety of fuels from ethanol to biodiesel to other renewable products. In addition, in this Domestic Fuel podcast, Zubrin berates the concept of Indirect Land Use as just a crazy idea.

You can check out Pure Energy on WZAB's Web site and soon to come to Pure Energy's Web site. And you can listen to our conversations with O'Hanlon and Zubrin here: DFCast-8-07-09.mp3

You can also subscribe to the DomesticFuel Cast here.