Articles from Alternative Fuel News

Tennessee's Biomass Innovation Park Breaks Ground

Yesterday, Dallas Tonsager, the Under Secretary for Rural Development for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was on hand for the groundbreaking ceremony for Tennessee's Biomass Innovation Park. The park is a unique campus that will develop technology to integrate and optimizes the entire biomass supply chain. It will also be the site for a $5 million Department of Energy-funded high-tonnage switchgrass bulk handling system.

The Biomass Innovation Park will provide harvesting, handling, storage, densification, pre-processing, and transportation for multiple feedstocks including switchgrass, and serve as a foundation for all biomass feedstock used to create biofuels, biochemicals, bioproducts, biomaterials, biopower, and bioenergy. The 21-acre park is located adjacent to the Genera/DDCD demonstration-scale biorefinery in Vonore.

"This facility will integrate biomass receiving, storage, separation, pre-processing, and compaction. It will initially process up to 50,000 tons of switchgrass but is designed to handle a wide range of energy crops and other biomass feedstocks," said Genera President and CEO Dr. Kelly Tiller. "We will also have energy crop R&D demonstration plots onsite, as well as some demonstration scale novel conversion processes and technology.

Switchgrass studies are currently underway and more than 6,000 acres of switchgrass are being grown by local farmers within a 50 mile radius of the plant. Genera has contracted with the farmers to convert the switchgrass to cellulosic ethanol. The first phase of construction will completed by the end of 2010, in time to store and process switchgrass from the fall harvest.

"The Biomass Innovation Park will be a unique and valuable asset in answering many of the questions farmers, biorefineries, and the entire bioenergy industry are asking about sufficient, sustainable, scalable, cost effective supply chains for energy crops;" concluded Dr. Tiller.

San Jose, California is the latest city to install a Networked Charging Station for electric vehicles (EV). The station was installed by Coulomb Technologies and is part of a $37 million ChargePoint America program that will eventually offer hundreds of free stations for public and home charging throughout the Bay area. Coulomb has the largest established base networked charging stations worldwide with more than 700 stations shipped to 130 customers.

"Coulomb's first customer was the City of San Jose and we're pleased to be back, both to welcome the electric vehicle transformation to Silicon Valley and also to bring jobs to install and maintain electric vehicle infrastructure," said Richard Lowenthal CEO of Coulomb Technologies. "Thanks to our $37 Million ChargePoint America program, San Jose will be one of the first cities in the nation to enable its residents to buy vehicles that don't pollute and don't depend on oil."

Coulomb is working with Ford, Chevrolet and Smart USA, three companies that have announced that they will introduce EVs in the Bay area in upcoming months. The first two ChargePoint America stations are now installed at the McEnergy Convention Center parking center. The program goal is to install 5,000 charging stations in nine regions of the U.S. including Austin, Texas; Detroit, Michigan; Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Jose/San Francisco, California; New York, New York; Orlando, Florida; Bellevue/Redmond, Washington; and Washington D.C.

"The installation of San Jose's first ChargePoint America station is an important step forward in our efforts to make the Bay Area the Electric Vehicle capital of America," said Mayor Chuck Reed. "Our partnership will Coulomb Technologies is the perfect example of how Silicon Valley can lead the world in clean tech innovation and create new jobs in our community."

Coulomb's ChargePoint Network is open to all drivers of plug-in vehicles and provides authentication, management and real-time control for the networked electric vehicle charging stations. ChargePoint Network's unique features also include a ChargePoint iPhone App, location of unoccupied charging stations via smart phones and charging status sent to you by SMS text or email notification.

The biggest fleet of flexible fuel vehicles in the United States now has access to 85 percent ethanol fuel.

The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) and Protec Fuel joined representatives of the Norfolk Naval Base and Navy Exchange Service Command (NEXCOM) in Norfolk, Virginia to cut the ribbon and open the new E85 pump. In addition to providing fuel for the Navy Fleet and city fleets, the station is open to the general public.

Norfolk is home to the largest fleet of vehicles using alternative fuels in United States. As the largest Naval complex in the world, the Norfolk Naval base has 2,585 flex-fuel vehicles (FFV) in their fleet. "When the largest fleet in the state of Virginia is fueling their vehicles with alternative fuels like ethanol, it shows the strong desire to rely more on domestic made fuel and less on foreign oil," said RFA Director of Market Development, Robert White. "With the Navy taking this lead, we only hope that it will promote the use of America's fuel throughout the rest of the U.S."

Todd Garner, Managing Partner of Protec Fuel said they are proud to be partnered with NEXCOM and The US Navy by building and opening this new E85 station. "The Norfolk Naval E85 station, serving the largest Naval base in the world, will effectively serve the general public and the large flex-fuel fleet vehicles simultaneously," said Garner. "Economic and environmental benefits aside, this station and E85 will help get our troops home and strengthen our national security through domestically produced fuels."

Read more here.

Ethanol production probably had less impact on global commodity prices in 2008 than many were saying at the time.

A newly released working paper, entitled "Placing the 2006/08 Commodity Price Boom into Perspective," from the Development Prospects Group at the World Bank, concludes that "…the effect of biofuels on food prices has not been as large as originally thought, but that the use of commodities by financial investors (the so-called "financialization of commodities") may have been partly responsible for the 2007/08 spike."

Authors of the report, John Baffes and Tassos Haniotis, argue that energy prices, as well as speculation, played significant roles in the non-energy commodity price spikes seen in the recent past. "We conclude that a stronger link between energy and non‐energy commodity prices is likely to have been the dominant influence on developments in commodity, and especially food, markets," says the report. "Demand by developing countries is unlikely to have put additional pressure on the prices of food commodities, although it may have created such pressure indirectly through energy prices."

Another point they make is that biofuels only represent 1.5 percent of worldwide grain and oilseed use. "This raises serious doubts about claims that biofuels account for a big shift in global demand. Even though widespread perceptions about such a shift played a big role during the recent commodity price boom, it is striking that maize prices hardly moved during the first period of increase in US ethanol production, and oilseed prices dropped when the EU increased impressively its use of biodiesel. On the other hand, prices spiked while ethanol use was slowing down in the US and biodiesel use was stabilizing in the EU."

In a 2008 Policy Research Working Paper, authored by Donald Mitchell, lead economist for the World Bank's Development Prospects Group, which claimed 70-75 percent of the increase in food prices that year was due to biofuels and the related consequences of low grain stocks, large land use shifts, speculative activity and export bans.

So, this new paper is a big about-face from the 2008 view and actually says what most biofuels advocates were saying all along, according to Renewable Fuels Association president Bob Dinneen. "In reversing course, this World Bank report reaffirms the marginal role biofuels play in world commodity and food prices," said Dinneen. "The RFA has long noted that ethanol production has continued to increase while corn prices have now returned to normal levels. Volatile oil prices, speculation, and adverse weather conditions all played far more significant roles in driving commodity prices to record and near record prices."

It is interesting to note that these "working papers," although released by the World Bank, done by World Bank economists and posted on the World Bank website, come with a disclaimer that says they represent "work in progress" and that the findings "are entirely those of the authors" and do not necessarily represent the views of the World Bank.

Link to July 2008 working paper.
Link to July 2010 Working Paper.

LS9: the right technology to scale up biofuel production

The biofuel market is turning into a diverse romp of venture-backed companies auditioning different microbes, catalysts and feedstocks, all with the same goal: to quickly, efficiently and cheaply transform renewable, non-food products (ranging from sugar cane to switch grass to carbon dioxide) into viable forms of fuel that can work in today's gas tanks.

The problem is, almost all of these players hit the same ceiling: they can't figure out a way to inexpensively scale with the technology they have. But biofuel startup LS9 may have just changed that.

The company's scientists have published a paper, academically titled "Microbial Biosynthesis of Alkanes," claiming that they can now implant genes into E. coli that allow the bacteria to directly churn out alkanes - otherwise known as the hydrocarbons in car and jet fuel - in one step. This is a major breakthrough for the field, one that has been chased for years.

Littlefield, Texas may be cotton country, but they are going green with biodiesel

Photo from: http://www.texasgreen.biz/index.html

LITTLEFIELD, TX (KCBD) - In the heart of Littlefield's cotton industry, you will find a biodiesel plant called Texas Green. Anyone can use their alternative fuel with little or no modifications to their car, simply if they have a diesel engine.

Jeffrey and Jerry Bigham started the alternative fuel plant three years ago when they noticed they could provide energy to local people from local products. "It is a local fuel and can be used locally. So we can take our products you can take cotton seed oil, you can take tallow, you can take waste vegetable oil from our restaurants," says Jeffrey Bigham.

Texas Green uses mostly beef tallow, or animal fat from local slaughter houses, mixes it with chemicals to create their biodiesel fuel. "Clean it up and recycle it and make it into a fuel we can use in our tractors to plow the fields of cotton or sort them. Or to use it in our diesel trucks that we use to move our cattle or work on our ranches," says Bigham.

Bigham says some states have mandates put in place that forces gas stations to use a percentage of biodiesel in every gallon of diesel fuel. "For instance in Minnesota, 2 percent of biodiesel has to be in every gallon of fuel sold," says Bigham.

Bigham says these mandates limit the use of foreign oil and better yet recycles local products instead. "One of the most famous biodiesel stations is in Texas Carl's Corner, where Willie Nelson has his truck stop. That truck stop has three million gallons per year bio diesel. Willie Nelson is very, very supportive of biodiesel and uses biodiesel blends of the material he makes and sells it to the truckers right there," says Bigham.

The benefits of biodiesel, according to Bigham, include it's the safest fuel to store, use and handle, along with reducing greenhouse gas emissions. "Our biodiesel is a 90% greenhouse reduction over regular diesel fuel," says Bigham.

Another benefit, Bigham says is biodiesel is completely tax free in the state of Texas, which can save people some green in their wallet. "Biodiesel is not taxed in the state of Texas, so basically every gallon of biodiesel that a service station uses they save 20 cents," says Bigham.

The Bighams say they continue to learn new techniques to make better biodiesel fuel everyday. Currently they are not in commercial production, but they hope in the future to have their own biodiesel pump located at their plant for local farmers and people in the community to use.

Connecticut adds 5% biodiesel to their heating oil, new mandate is law

Peter Aziz, President of Bantam Fuel, testified before the legislature's Environment Committee in March and explained Bantam Fuel's success with its Bantam BioHeat fuel over the last four years.

Legislation that will reduce sulfur and require increasing levels of biodiesel in home heating oil supplied by Bantam Fuel and other Connecticut oil dealers has been signed into law by Gov. M. Jodi Rell effective July 1.
Rell's approval of Senate Bill 382 came after the legislature, which heard testimony from Bantam Fuel President Peter Aziz, voted in support of the measure.
Aziz testified before the legislature's Environment Committee in March and explained Bantam Fuel's success with its Bantam BioHeat fuel over the last four years. Bantam BioHeat, Aziz testified, doesn't cost more than regular heating oil, performs well in cold weather, and burns with greater efficiency.
Improved efficiency, Aziz said, means customers use less fuel and save money. Bantam BioHeat features a biodiesel component (an organic renewable resource) equaling 5 percent. A greater biodiesel component means less sulfur being emitted in the form of greenhouse gas.
"Passage of the law is great news for Connecticut fuel consumers," Aziz said. "Their heating oil will be cleaner, more reliable and have a significant renewable energy content."

I am also happy to see more biodiesel going into the heaters of America, surely we can heat our own homes with out own fuel. This is a real success story, glad to hear the state of CT is on the ball.

New York will add 2% biodiesel to all heating oil, another green mandate

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times--Bins like this one will be installed in buildings across New York City as a result of a new law.

It was like Earth Day for the New York City Council on Thursday as members passed legislation to improve air quality and expand recycling programs.

As announced earlier this week by the City Council speaker, Christine Quinn, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, one of the new laws will halve sulfur levels in a common type of home heating oil, No. 4, starting in October 2012. The law also will require that biodiesel fuel make up at least 2 percent of all grades of petroleum heating oil.

With the enactment this month of a New York State law that will drastically reduce the sulfur content in No. 2, the most common type of heating oil, the city's action is expected to make an important dent in soot pollution and asthma cases.

The City Council also approved a package of bills ushering in the first major overhaul of recycling laws adopted in 1989. The new laws will increase plastics recycling, put more recycling bins in schools and public areas and allow residents to recycle hazardous waste like paint.

"This is a big day for the environment in the council," said Eric A. Goldstein, environmental director for the Natural Resources Defense Council in New York City. "These bills represent evolutionary, not revolutionary, change. Slow but steady wins the race."

Another environmental group, the Environmental Defense Fund, praised the improvement in heating oil as a way of reducing the hospitalization rate for children with asthma and raising the failing grade the city now gets from the federal government for its air quality. In a report last year, the group said that about 9,500 buildings in the city burning the dirtiest grades of heating oil – No. 4 and No. 6 – account for more pollution than cars and trucks.

New Yorkers burn more than one billion gallons of heating oil a year. Bloomberg administration officials said they were working on a plan that would further limit the use of No. 4 and No. 6 heating oils by phasing out the boilers that burn them.

Here is an opportunity to save millions of gallons of foreign oil and clean up the air of a very dirty place. I hope this will lead other cities to do the same thing and add biodiesel to heating oil.

Earlier this month, the 25x'25 Alliance released a progress report on where the nation is in terms of the goal of meeting 25 percent of our energy needs with renewable resources by 2025, and they held a press conference with representatives of all the major renewable energy sectors to talk about the report and what still needs to be done.

In this edition of the Domestic Fuel Cast, we will hear from each of those representatives – Tom Buis with ethanol group Growth Energy; Bob Cleaves of the Biomass Power Association; Brad Collins with the American Solar Energy Society; Karl Gawell from the Geothermal Energy Association; and Rob Gramlich with the American Wind Energy Association – as well as 25x'25 steering committee co-chairman Reid Smith.

Listen to the Domestic Fuel Cast here. Domestic Fuel Cast

You can also subscribe to the DomesticFuel Cast here.

Get Green LLC, Lucky Stop and Growth Energy have teamed up to offer the first blender pump offering mid and high levels of ethanol west of the Rockies.

The Lucky Stop station in Las Vegas offers ethanol blends of E30 and E85 and owner Mike Maalouf is pleased to offer his customers a choice. "Everyone is struggling with the way the economy is right now. By installing E30 and E85 this creates more choices for the consumer, but also assists with lessening our dependency on foreign oil," he said. There are 13 other E85 stations in Nevada, but this is the first to offer an additional blend. The new blender pump opened for business on July 12 and Maalouf reports that his sales have already increased by 30 percent.

Growth Energy provided Lucky's a grant through their 2010 E85 and Blender Pump Program. Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy noted that the recent certification of Dresser Wayne and Gilbarco blender pumps by Underwriters Laboratory will help promote the installation of blender pumps across the country to help decrease our dependence on oil.

"We are pleased to assist Lucky Stop with the opening of the first blender pump west of the Rockies," said Buis. "Every blender pump we install will help make our country more energy independent and more secure, all while giving consumers a choice at the pump that includes domestic, renewable ethanol. Growth Energy is pleased to have been able to assist in Lucky Stop's efforts and we remain committed to assist with additional blender pumps across the nation."

Filed under: Biodiesel, EV/Plug-in, Hybrid, UK

The coalition Government is absolutely committed to low carbon growth, tackling climate change and making our energy supply more secure. We are sending a clear signal that Britain is open for business and that we are committed to greening our economy. This will ensure that the UK is a world leader in low emission vehicles.

Gallery: Smart ED

Continue reading UK approves $7,800 incentive for ultra-low carbon vehicles

UK approves $7,800 incentive for ultra-low carbon vehicles originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 17:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Biodiesel from butter, the list of feedstocks never stops growing

Butter could provide an eco-friendly raw material for making biodiesel fuel. Credit: USDA, Agricultural Research Service

The search for new raw materials for making biodiesel fuel has led scientists to an unlikely farm product - butter. In a new study in ACS' bi-weekly Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, they report that butter could be used as an eco-friendly feedstock, or raw material, for making diesel fuel.

Michael Haas and colleagues cite rising global demand for biodiesel, and the desire to expand the feedstock base, as motivating factors for their research. The United States alone has committed to producing 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022, a major increase from the current annual production level of about 11 billion gallons. Most of that was ethanol.

Biodiesel production, now approaching 1 billion gallons annually in the U.S., is also slated to increase. As researchers seek additional and affordable feedstocks for biodiesel production, these scientists turned to butter, one billion pounds of which are produced annually. Could surplus, spoiled, or nonfood-grade butter be used to make biodiesel at competitive prices?

In an effort to find out, the scientists recovered the fat from a quarter-ton of butter and converted it into the fatty acid esters that constitute biodiesel. They found that the resulting material met all but one of the official test standards for biodiesel. The study concluded that with further purification or by blending with biodiesel from other feedstocks butter biodiesel could add to the supply of biobased fuel for diesel engines.

Sure it makes sense that butter would make good biodiesel, and as far as a food source, they are talking about spoiled stock not fit to eat, which now probably goes into the landfill.

Minnesota's Farmfest gives away soy-based biodiesel as a prize

A crowd gathers at Farmfest to watch a debate between Republican U.S. Senator Norm Coleman and his DFL challenger Al Franken. In addition, various other politicians attended the annual event. (MPR Photo/Mark Zdechlik)-Photo from: http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2008/08/05/farmfest1/

GILFILLAN, MInn. - Two-thousand dollars of biodiesel will be given away at Farmfest Aug. 3-5.
Stop by the Minnesota Soybean booth, No. 618, or the Agricultural Utilization Research Institute booth, No. 612, to enter the drawing. Four prizes will be given away, each worth $500.
Drawings will be held daily. Winners will be contacted by phone after the show. Contestants must be at least 18 years old.
This contest is made possible by AURI and soybean checkoff funds invested by the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council.
It's been a part of Farmfest for the last three or four years, said Veronica Bruckhoff, Minnesota Soybean field representative.
"It's really popular," she said. "We get tons of people who come down and visit us and look for it."

I used to love the farm-oriented stuff at the Minnesota State Fair even though I am a "city boy", and I would guess the people of Minnesota were among the first to embrace biodiesel-just a hunch.

Practicing what they preach, Rothsay Biodiesel runs their own fleet on biodiesel

Photo from: http://www.ec.gc.ca/EnviroZine/english/issues/69/feature1_e.cfm

GULEPH, ONTARIO, CANADA - Rothsay Biodiesel, a division of Maple Leaf Foods Inc., said that its program to fuel its own fleets with biodiesel blends reduced carbon output by approximately 700 metric tons in 2009 -- the equivalent to removing approximately 130 cars from the road.

Three of Rothsay's truck fleets have been fueled with biodiesel blends since 2009, bringing the total number of trucks in the fleet program to 137. In 2009, the fleets consumed more than 600,000 gallons at an average blend rate of 9.2 percent. They traveled a combined 3.3 million miles with no mechanical issues or decrease in mileage, Biodiesel Magazine reported.

Rothsay biodiesel is a renewable fuel made by converting animal fats and recycled cooking oils into an environmentally sustainable alternative fuel that reduces greenhouse gases (GHG). The fuel can be used in all diesel engines today without modification.

Because of the fuel's success, Maple Leaf Foods plans to expand its biodiesel use, Mike Paszti, director of technical services and innovation for Rothsay, told Biodiesel Magazine. Use of the fuel has had no measurable impact on vehicle maintenance programs, reliability or performance.

"Rothsay's on-road fleet experience is proof of the positive benefits of blending biodiesel in Canada," said Canadian Renewable Fuels Association Chair Doug Hooper. "In everyday use and all weather conditions, Rothsay's biodiesel delivered top performance and, importantly, reduced the harmful greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution and smog that is associated with fossil diesel use."

If it can work in Canada, it can work anywhere, cold as it sometimes can be there. I have always had much respect for Canada in how they handle their medical system and their biodiesel.

Alabama A&M University shows off donated biodiesel processing system

Michael Mercier / The Huntsville TimesDr. Ernest Cebert, research associate professor of plant breeding/genetics at Alabama A&M University, shows off a biodiesel processing unit that was donated by Willbrook Solutions.

HUNTSVILLE, AL -- Two companies in Huntsville are partnering with Alabama A&M University to convert used vegetable oil into biodiesel fuel to help run campus buses.

Under the partnership, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Alabama will donate about 100 gallons of used cooking oil each month from its cafeteria and a small Huntsville business, Willbrook Solutions, has donated a $15,000 prototype biodiesel processing unit to A&M's Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences to produce the fuel.

The biodiesel fuel will be used to operate buses that are part of the university's  transportation system.

"Waste vegetable oil is a valuable resource," said Dr. Ernest Cebert, research associate professor of plant breeding/genetics at A&M. "It's not very pretty but, once processed, it can run a diesel engine."

That amount of waste oil will be used to create 80 to 90 gallons of biodiesel fuel, according to Jim Bolte, the president of the Toyota plant in North Huntsville.

The bioenergy effort, Bolte said, "fits right in to what we're doing with our sustainability plan activities."

In 2008, a solar panel was put into service at the Toyota plant to generate enough energy to light parts of the plant. Toyota has planted about 2,500 trees on its property and hundreds more across Huntsville, said Bolte.

"We try to reduce, reuse and recycle everything," he said.

Kendell Phillips, Willbrook Solutions' CEO and president, said the company began four years ago as a Department of Defense contractor, but is moving into the alternative energy field.

"We cannot continue for the rest of our existence" so heavily dependent on petroleum-based oil, said Dr. Robert Taylor, dean of A&M's School of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. This partnership with industry is very important now, he said.

Willbrook Solutions is also sponsoring a scholarship for a work-study program for biofuel development. The A&M student chosen for the scholarship is Dexter Williams of Selma, a junior majoring in mechanical engineering technology.

What a great thing to donate to a school-a biodiesel production unit. I hope students all over the country are being exposed to positive views of biodiesel as we see in this case.

Filed under: Biodiesel, Diesel, Volkswagen, USA

Continue reading Recycling gone wild: turn your VW Jetta TDI into a Smyth Performance G3F

Recycling gone wild: turn your VW Jetta TDI into a Smyth Performance G3F originally appeared on Autoblog Green on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 10:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

More state vehicles in Minnesota are able to use up to 85 percent ethanol in their tanks, according to the American Lung Association in Minnesota.

So far this year, state agencies used 437,063 gallons of E85, a 25 percent increase over last year. Those figures come from the state's SmartFleet Committee, a group tasked with helping agencies comply with Executive Order 04-10, issued by Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

The Faribault Academies, a campus of educational facilities serving deaf and blind Minnesotans, topped all others in the SmartFleet quarterly report, using E85 75 percent of the time they bought fuel. Another standout was the Minnesota Office of Higher Education, which reported 73 percent E85 use during the first half of the calendar year. In terms of sheer volume of E85 used, the state Department of Transportation used 170,617 gallons of cleaner-burning E85 in six months, compared to 376,312 gallons of gasoline and 690,798 gallons of B5 biodiesel blend fuel.

The American Lung Association in Minnesota supports the use of E85 and biodiesel fuels in both public and private vehicles, as part of an overall strategy to reduce and prevent air pollution.

The California Air Resources Board (CARB) is far from over on discrediting biofuels as part of their mandated policy known as the Low Carbon Fuels Standard (LCFS). For the past year, the ethanol industry has been embroiled in a fight for proper reflections of biofuel's indirect greenhouse gas emissions, aka indirect land use. Now, CARB has created a working group to study soil sustainability provisions of biofuels. The specific crops under review at this time include corn ethanol, sugarcane ethanol, wood based fuels, palm oil, and soy biodiesel.

Today, CARB held a meeting to discuss this topic. In the proposed agenda, CARB offered several "loose" categories to be considered including carbon content, erosion, crop rotation, nutrition/chemical use, productivity, and crop expansion. I'll kick myself for saying this, but I'm surprised they didn't include water.

While I'm not sure what exactly has driven this new LCFS dimension of discussion, I can speculate that several recent events have in part led to this recent course of action. One is the Dead Zone/hypoxia issue which resurfaced when several scientists began calling the Dead Zone a bigger environmental catastrophe than the BP Oil spill. Corn and corn ethanol are being charged for creating the Dead Zone through its use of pesticides and fertilizers used in production.

Second, Friends of the Earth has been vocally opposed to how corn is produced and to corn ethanol (actually, to all current and future biofuels) and is currently engaged in a national campaign to end production of corn ethanol and reassess corn production methods.

While I do believe that soil sustainability is an area to be reviewed in general, I do not agree that you can regulate biofuels policy on this issue. Not only that, but like indirect land use, a theory not based in sound science, petroleum is not being held to the same standards. No where on the agenda is a discussion of the soil, or land implications of global petroleum production.

Last week, the University of Nebraska finally acknowledged that there are in fact, "indirect land use" effects of petroleum. Mainly transportation and war and released a study that examined these possible effects. More studies need to be conducted on this topic and I think they will.

As California moves to create more LCFS provisions on biofuels, consumers must call for CARB to consider the environmental implications of petroleum production. For the past three months, we have seen, first hand, some of the implications of oil with the Gulf of Mexico oil spill compliments of BP.

But we don't need a spill to have land impacts of petroleum. Drilling, chemicals and water are all elements of production. What about the emissions spewing from our refineries? CARB has created a list of hazardous chemicals that can't be used in biofuels production, but where is the list of chemicals that can't be used in petroleum production as part of these provisions?

I realize that I sound like a broken record when I say this, but you cannot hold biofuels up to a standard that can't be achieved, and not hold petroleum up to the same standard. If our goal is to produce more environmentally and sustainable fuels, then let's do just that.

One agricultural economist is disputing the findings of another when it comes to the impact on the domestic ethanol industry of removing the existing blenders tax credit and the associated tariff on imported ethanol.

In dueling commentaries posted Tuesday on "The Hill's Congress Blog," Iowa State University's Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) director and professor of economist Dr. Bruce Babcock, and ENTRIX technical director and agricultural economist John Urbanchuk share differing opinions about the impact of allowing allowing the current 45-cent-per-gallon ethanol blender's tax credit (Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit, or VEETC) and 54-cent-per-gallon ethanol tariff to expire at the end of this year.

Babcock did a study, funded by the Brazilian sugarcane industry, that found there would be only a "modest" impact on the industry if the VEETC and tariff went away. Urbanchuk, who has done numerous economic studies for the U.S. ethanol industry, disagrees. "That's true only if you take a "Field of Dreams" view of the ethanol industry: If we mandate that Americans use more ethanol, then someone, somewhere will produce that ethanol," Urbanchuk writes. He says that "removing the tax credit would encourage the export of another U.S. industry."

Meanwhile, Growth Energy notes in a blog post that the Babcock study assumes that the U.S. market will be able to utilize intermediate ethanol blends, such as E15, that will increase demand. According to the Babcock paper (top pg 12), "The key assumption here is not EPA approval, but rather, that EPA approves implementation of intermediate blends in a manner that increases the market demand for ethanol enough to sell 15 (billion gallons) at 75% of the price of gasoline." Growth Energy says, "That is the essential contribution of the paper: if the ethanol industry gets access to a bigger share of the market, the government supports aren't as important." So, in other words, both views could be right, depending on whether or not the market is increased to 15 percent.

USDA researchers are studying the use of butter as a feedstock for biodiesel.

According to a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, scientists with USDA's Ag Research Service looked into the concept of making butter that would otherwise go to waste into biodiesel.

Michael Haas and colleagues cite rising global demand for biodiesel, and the desire to expand the feedstock base, as motivating factors for their research. The United States alone has committed to producing 36 billion gallons of biofuel by 2022, a major increase from the current annual production level of about 11 billion gallons. Most of that was ethanol. Biodiesel production, now approaching 1 billion gallons annually in the U.S., is also slated to increase. As researchers seek additional and affordable feedstocks for biodiesel production, these scientists turned to butter, one billion pounds of which are produced annually. Could surplus, spoiled, or nonfood-grade butter be used to make biodiesel at competitive prices?

In an effort to find out, the scientists recovered the fat from a quarter-ton of butter and converted it into the fatty acid esters that constitute biodiesel. They found that the resulting material met all but one of the official test standards for biodiesel. The study concluded that with further purification or by blending with biodiesel from other feedstocks butter biodiesel could add to the supply of biobased fuel for diesel engines.

Read more here.

If you have an iPhone and would like to get Domestic Fuel posts fast and easy on it, there's now an app for that. ZimmComm New Media this week introduced the Agwired iPhone app that allows quick access to all of ZimmComm's on-line publications, including DomesticFuel. The app is now available for iPhone users to download, free of charge, in the Apple iTunes store.

The app offers one-touch access to all the latest news and information in the agribusiness and agricultural marketing world posted on Agwired.com, including audio, photos and video, and connections to other ZimmComm news sites. The AgWired App features a news tab drop down menu to select ZimmComm News Network feeds as well as individual news on AgWired.com by category.

ZimmComm owns and operates four web-based news sites that are now accessible from the new iPhone app: Agwired, focused on news from the world of agribusiness; Domestic Fuel, which is all about renewable energy – from ethanol and biodiesel to wind and solar; World Dairy Diary for the dairy industry; and Precision Pays, which focuses on information about precision agriculture technology.

The Ethanol Report podcast received a Golden ARC award this week from the Ag Relations Council in the newly revived competition that includes new social media categories. Chuck Zimmerman, president of Domestic Fuel's parent company ZimmComm New Media received the award Tuesday, presented by ARC President Deron Johnson, during the Ag Media Summit (AMS) in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Matt Hartwig of the Renewable Fuels Association attended the summit of agricultural journalists this week and exhibited at their Info Expo for the first time. In this edition of the Ethanol Report, he talks about how RFA has been successfully using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook to communicate, and also about a new blog they recently launched called the E-xchange. Matt also discusses the Export Exchange event they are hosting with U.S. Grains Council in October to promote exports of the ethanol co-product DDGs for livestock feed.

Listen to or download the Ethanol Report podcast here. AMS Ethanol Report

Subscribe to this twice monthly podcast in iTunes by following this link.

Freedom Environmental will provide Pristine Biodiesel with yellow grease

Photo from: http://www.pristinebiodiesel.com/

ORLANDO, Fla., Jul 27, 2010 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- Freedom Environmental Services (Pink Sheets:FRDM) announced today that it has begun weekly delivery in the estimation of as much as 12,000 gallons of yellow grease to Pristine Biodiesel for refining into biodiesel. The contract will pay Freedom $1.75 per gallon and provide up to several thousand gallons (TBD) of biodiesel for its service fleet of 23 diesel trucks.

Michael Borish, CEO, Freedom Environmental, said, "This is one of many new revenue streams we plan to leverage out as part of our recent merger with Brownies Environmental. We now have the capability to deliver thousands of gallons of yellow grease picked up from our paid service contracts to our processor for additional revenue. We believe, but cannot guarantee, that this contract alone represents over $1 million in annual revenue for Freedom," said Borish.

Bio Diesel is made from sustainable renewable resources, that are abundant and available right here in the United States. It is made from plant oil, animal fats and even recycled grease and works in conventional diesel engines. Bio Diesel significantly reduces harmful emissions. Bio Diesel is better for the environment because it is made from renewable resources and has lower emissions compared to petroleum diesel. It is less toxic than table salt and biodegrades as fast as sugar. Since it is made in the USA from renewable resources such as soybeans, its use decreases our dependence on foreign oil and contributes to our own economy.

New Mexico: B5 biodiesel mandate kicked in July 1

Photos from: http://www.riovalleybiofuels.com/News.html

This month, New Mexico joined a handful of states mandating the use of biodiesel. All state agencies, political subdivisions and public schools operating on-road motor vehicles are now required to use at least B5.
After July 1, 2012, the B5 mandate will extend to consumers, and unless the state agriculture and energy departments find that the state has an insufficient supply of biodiesel, or the price of biodiesel significantly exceeds the price of diesel fuel for at least two months, the mandates will stay in effect. Rio Valley Biofuels, a biodiesel producer in Anthony, N.M., hopes the mandate will cause the government fleets to use more biodiesel, plant operations manager Jed Smith told Biodiesel Magazine.
Some government fleets however, didn't need a mandate. The South Central Solid Waste Authority, a state agency responsible for management of solid waste in Las Cruces and Dona Ana County, has already run B20 blends in the majority of its diesel vehicles for the past three years.

I did not know that New Mexico was such a biodiesel-friendly state, but then again, why not? Many artists live there and the clean environment will stay that way longer with biodiesel.

Training diesel mechanics on the virtues of biodiesel

Photo from: http://alameda.peralta.edu/apps/comm.asp?$1=20605

In the past year, more than 750 diesel technicians and students have been trained on the benefits and use of biodiesel through an educational program established by the Iowa Biodiesel Board. The program, which is specifically targeted at Iowa's diesel mechanic community and community college instructors, aims to increase professional knowledge on biodiesel and its performance in diesel engines. The program is fully funded by a grant from the Iowa Power Fund.
During the first year of the program, continuing education courses aimed at diesel mechanics in the workforce were held at all 15 of Iowa's community colleges. A two-day "train the trainer" course was also offered for college faculty in September 2009, where instructors were provided with biodiesel curriculum and had the opportunity to interact with industry experts.

Programs such as this one help spread the word about biodiesel and what it can do for a diesel system. I would hope no diesel mechanic can get out of school with SOME biodiesel training.

Biodiesel merger: Universal Bioenergy to acquire Norcor Technologies in North Carolina

Image from: http://domesticfuel.com/2009/03/30/homegrown-biodiesel-behind-magic-fuel-bus/

IRVINE , Calif., Jul 28, 2010 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) -- Universal Bioenergy Inc. (Pink Sheets:UBRG), an alternative energy company, announced today that it is has signed a Letter of Intent to acquire Norcor Technologies Corporation, an energy, technology and facilities services company, headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Norcor Technologies, provides a broad range of products and services which are primarily for use in the Health Care industry, Military Facilities, and the U.S. Department of Transportation. Its primary focus is selling biodiesel, transportation fuels, energy services and facility energy efficiency retrofits. Norcor's management states that they are in discussions with the U.S. Military for a contract to provide several of their bases with approximately $49,000,000 in biodiesel and transportation fuels, over the next one to three years. They are also evaluating the building of a new biodiesel fuel blending facility, and a solar energy plant in the U.S.

Staten Island, NY to add more biodiesel to heating oil in an effort to clear the air

Staten island Advance/William AlatristeJames Genarro, chairman of the City Council’s Environmental Protection Committee, speaks during the announcement of new legislation to reduce harmful sulfur in home heating oil at Metro Fuel in Brooklyn.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- New heating oil standards could mean a breath of fresh air for Staten Islanders.
The city and state have teamed up with a pair of laws that will drastically reduce the amount of sulfur in home and residential heating oil -- and, hopefully, the risks of asthma and lung disease along with it.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn announced legislation that cuts in half the amount of sulfur allowed in No. 4 heating oil -- used mostly older high-rise buildings -- to 1,500 parts per million. The legislation, expected to be passed at a City Council meeting Thursday, also requires all heating oil used in the city to contain 2 percent biodiesel fuels, which are often made from used grease collected at city restaurants.

I'm calling the environmental movement out for supporting nothing and opposing everything.

Not too long ago, I was proud to call myself an environmentalist. Today, I'm bordering on embarrassed to admit that I support sustainability programs. The cause of my distress is what is happening under the carpet among environmental groups. On the surface, they look squeaky clean, but when you pull back the carpet you find years of dust and dirt.

The result is crippling the system so that the status quo remains unchanged.

Are they doing this unknowingly? It's hard to imagine a community founded on integrity and steeped in the honorable tradition of academia could blatantly miss the truth on the intellectually definable myths about renewable energy.

For example, for more than 30 years, environmental organizations have attacked the oil and gas industry in the name of environmental integrity. During this same time, these same groups have aided Big Oil in its attack of the biofuels industry in the name of subsidies. The irony is that ethanol subsidies such as the ethanol tax credit (VEETC) and the ethanol tariff are subsidies that actually go to the oil industry – not the ethanol producer.

Until recently, the oil industry was not attacked for the hundreds of billions of subsidies they receive nor were they held accountable for their greenhouse gas emissions until the University of Nebraska conducted an indirect land use emissions study from petroleum transportation and protection – mainly war.

How did everyone miss this?

Environmentalists shout that we must stop using oil and gas. Their solution-that everyone seems to have missed – more oil and gas. This is supported through their claims that biofuels are bad. Hydrogen? Ha. Plug in? Patience? Natural Gas? Never. In essence, the environmental movement is preserving our dependence on dirty fossil fuels.

In the last decade, environmental organizations that have been heralded as the watchdogs of the planet are now taking money from the same industry they are purporting to be saving us from – oil. In case you didn't notice, this is a conflict of interest. Google some of the top biofuel critic studies by academia and you will likely find a trail of gifts and grants by major oil companies.  Look at the board of directors and you will find a tangled and interconnected web of renewable energy foes.

Many consumers revere and monetarily support these groups, but beware. They have won our trust. Now they are using it carte blanche to hide their true intent: halting the recovery of our economy and placing our national security at risk.

But wait. Aren't these organizations policing environmental criminals on our behalf?

Who is policing them?

In the past two years, Congress has dragged the oil, biofuels, banking, agricultural, and auto industry to Washington, D.C. for a series of Congressional hearings to probe into their transgressions. They have even dragged in baseball players accused of abusing steroids. Yet they have never called environmental organizations to the halls of justice and asked them to defend their funding and research shenanigans.

We don't have a decade to determine our future strategy. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not advocating that we move forward blindly – as our country appears to be doing now. That would be an injustice. What I am proposing is an across the board analysis of all the potential strategies and solutions on the table. This means we must start vocally questioning the actions of environmental organizations. They need to become more transparent.

On behalf of American consumers, I am making an official request for Congress to hold a Congressional Hearing, this year, to look into the actions, funding, research, and programs of the most influential environmental groups. It's high time we see what's behind the curtain so we can make more educated policy decisions.

A California-based biofuel maker that extracts its feedstock oil from algae and uses that oil for several other products has its first customer.

OriginOil, Inc. has announced that it is shipping a Quantum Fracturing™ System, the first unit in a multi-phase commercialization program, to Australian company MBD Energy Limited:

"This is a major milestone for OriginOil and represents our first revenue event," said Riggs Eckelberry, CEO. "We are excited to support MBD Energy, a leader in the global race to help coal-fired power plants absorb their massive CO2 emissions using algae."

In May, the parties agreed on a multi-phase commercialization program under which OriginOil will supply MBD Energy with its algae-to-oil technology platform in progressively larger installations. Subject to the success of the initial test phase, MBD will purchase significantly larger systems to serve its power station projects in Australia, beginning with a one-hectare pilot plant at Tarong Power Station in South Eastern Queensland, and expanding to full production sites at all three of MBD's power station projects in Australia.

OriginOil's Quantum Fracturing System will make nutrients, such as CO2, able to stay suspended in water longer, and that allows algae to feed more efficiently.

New ethanol blender pumps from Dresser Wayne and Gilbarco Veeder-Root have received final safety certification from Underwriters Laboratory, which will help fuel retailers meet increasing demand for renewable fuel by dispensing mid to high ethanol blends along with conventional gasoline, according to ethanol industry group Growth Energy.

"We want to simplify alternative fuel adoption so retailers can feel more confident about embracing this developing energy segment," said Scott Negley, Dresser Wayne director of Alternative Energy Products. "With this approval, our entire eco fuel product portfolio is now UL certified. This helps our customers achieve and maintain regulatory compliance as they add eco fuels to their product offerings."

Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis notes that final certification for this fuel dispensing equipment is an important step toward providing higher level blends of ethanol directly to consumers to help decrease our dependence on oil. "Every blender pump we install will help make our country more energy independent and more secure, all while giving consumers a choice at the pump that includes domestic, renewable ethanol," said Buis.

The Dresser Wayne dual hose ethanol blender blends gasoline and ethanol in both dispenser hoses enabling it to offer low blends on one hose for conventional vehicles and mid- to high-level blends on the other hose for flexible fuel vehicles. UL has also extended certification to include Gilbarco Encore blenders with the flexible fuel option.