Canadian ethanol emits 62 percent less greenhouse gas than conventional fuel, taking into consideration all stages of the fuel’s production from planting a crop to burning the fuel, a new report prepared for Canada’s biofuel industry. Reuters reports the results rebut a key argument against producing biofuels, that they use more energy than they can generate, said Gordon Quaiattini, president of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association. “We can clearly demonstrate that we are producing a fuel that reduces greenhouse gases,” he said. “The notion (of) a negative environmental result is just garbage.”

Today’s New York Times takes a look at the ethanol woes in the United States. For a more technical review of the issue, see “Ethanol: President Obama and the EPA Face A Tough Decision Soon.”

U.S. Unlikely to Use the Ethanol Congress Ordered

By MATTHEW L. WALD

WASHINGTON — Two years ago, Congress ordered the nation’s gasoline refiners to do something that is turning out to be mathematically impossible.

To please the farm lobby and to help wean the nation off oil, Congress mandated that refiners blend a rising volume of ethanol and other biofuels into gasoline. They are supposed to use at least 15 billion gallons of biofuels by 2012, up from less than seven billion gallons in 2007.

But nobody at the time counted on fuel demand falling in the United States, which is what has happened during the recession. And that decline could well continue, as cars become more efficient under other recent government mandates.

At the maximum allowable blend, in which gasoline at the pump contains 10 percent ethanol, updated projections suggest that the country is unlikely to be able to use all the ethanol that Congress has ordered up. So something has to give.

“The market is full,” said Jeff Broin, chief executive of Poet, a company in Sioux Falls, S.D., that produces ethanol.

In theory, the Environmental Protection Agency has the power to solve this problem by tweaking the mandates imposed by Congress, and it may act as early as next week.

Each potential solution would anger one interest group or another, so the agency has been subjected to fierce lobbying, including from members of Congress lining up behind various factions. One possibility is to raise the maximum proportion of ethanol in gasoline to 15 or 20 percent.

But that idea is opposed by some carmakers and pollution experts. They contend that high ethanol blends can cause damage to cars, including making catalytic converters run hotter.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers says it believes this could cause the converters, components that help control pollution, to fail at around 50,000 miles. They are supposed to last for 120,000 to 150,000 miles. “We are sensitive to the issues facing the ethanol industry, but the government must make decisions based on sound science,” said Dave McCurdy, president and chief executive of the alliance, in a letter to the E.P.A.

Another possibility is that the agency could waive the mandates requiring use of a large volume of biofuels. But that would anger farmers, who sell a great deal of corn to ethanol factories, and the members of Congress who represent them. It might also undermine the efforts of companies that are investing millions in factories to make ethanol from waste materials, like corncobs, straw and garbage.

“Ethanol is the only viable, competitive alternative to foreign oil,” said Tom Buis, chief executive of Growth Energy, the ethanol trade group that filed the petition with the E.P.A. to increase the blending percentage. “If we’re going to become less dependent on foreign oil, we’ve got to move forward.”

A third possibility is that the E.P.A. could announce that it is waiting for more data on how cars perform at higher blends, but that would merely put off the hard decision.

When Congress wrote the rules, in 2007, gasoline consumption had been growing for years, and it looked as if the nation would be able to use considerably more ethanol in the future. Gasoline consumption hit a peak of 3.4 billion barrels that year.

But gasoline demand fell in 2008, after soaring gas prices early in the year were followed by the economic crisis. Consumption was slightly less than 3.3 billion barrels last year, and it could end 2009 at about the same level.

With consumers buying more fuel-efficient cars these days, and carmakers rushing to bring even more of those to market, gasoline demand may not recover much in coming years, even as ethanol production soars.

As of yet, not all gasoline is blended with 10 percent ethanol, but that saturation point is rapidly approaching. Under the present rules, the nation could hit the upper limit of its ability to consume ethanol in 2011.

Mr. Buis and others argue that Congress or the E.P.A. must do something if the country is to move to a new generation of biofuels that do not compete with food crops. The possibilities include ethanol made from wood chips, waste paper or agricultural waste like straw and corncobs.

Congress has also passed mandates for the blending of this type of fuel, so that the nation’s total consumption of all renewable fuels, in vehicles and other equipment, is supposed to reach 36 billion gallons in 2022.

Perhaps the easiest way for the country to absorb all the excess ethanol would be to make wider use of an ethanol blend called E85, which contains 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Most cars on the road cannot use it, but in recent years, millions of “flex-fuel” cars have been sold, especially by General Motors. (Any car with a yellow gasoline cap can use E85.)

The problem is that at current prices, E85 does not make economic sense for drivers, and most of them use regular gasoline in their flex-fuel cars. That means gasoline stations have little incentive to install pumps for E85. The fuel can be found in the Corn Belt but is not readily available elsewhere in the country.

Gasoline was selling on average Thursday for $2.63 a gallon, while E85 was selling for $2.23 a gallon. That might make E85 sound like a bargain, but cars go fewer miles on a gallon of ethanol than of gasoline. Adjusted for that factor, E85 on Thursday was effectively 31 cents a gallon more expensive than gasoline.

A return of $4 gasoline might change things, by making E85 a relative bargain and spurring wider use. So would an unexpected spurt in total fuel demand. Otherwise, it is not at all clear how the nation’s coming surplus of ethanol can be absorbed.

Gregory M. Scott, executive vice president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, drives a flex-fuel car in the Washington area, but said he had never put E85 in it.

He said the amount of renewable fuel that Congress had mandated refiners to use, and the amount that can be blended for conventional automobiles, were on a collision course.

“At some point,” he said, “those two lines cross.”

Phil Berardelli (ScienceNOW Daily News) has published a neat story here on the benefits of a specific configuration of vertical-axis wind turbines (VAWTs; example here).

VAWTS, arranged in a pattern that mimics schooling fish, can provide a similar energy output to traditional, horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWTs) on approximately 1/100th of the land area. Thus, VAWTs, already a preferred design for conservationists because they appear to present a far lesser threat for bird collisions, could also provide a substantial benefit in terms of land use conversion. That is, of course, unless greedy developers simply take this information to mean that they can reap 100X the power output from the same enormous land area they want to develop . . .

Other cool VAWT links:

Greenestchoices

greenterrafirma

The organizers of the IndyCar Series has announced that the Brazilian city of São Paulo will stage the opening round of the 2010 season. “Scheduled for March 14, the event represents the return of Indy-style racing to Brazil thanks to the partnership between the São Paulo municipality, the Indy Racing League and TV Bandeirantes and BandSports,” says the press release. “São Paulo is already home to the Brazil Formula 1 Grand Prix staged at the Interlagos racetrack. Now the city concentrates two of the most important motorsports events worldwide.” Of course, the big difference from Formula 1 will be that the Indy cars run clean, since they use ethanol, from sugar cane, as opposed to fossil-based gasoline.

Packaging giant Tetra Pak has announced that it will undertake a trial of a green plastic made from sugarcane.  Today’s news release said Tetra Pak will purchase limited volumes of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) derived from sugarcane feedstock. The companies say this is “the first move toward using green polyethylene in the carton packaging industry.”

Braskem, one of the world’s leading petrochemical companies, will be producing green polyethylene at a commercial-scale plant in the second half of 2010. The announcement indicated Braskem would “begin supplying Tetra Pak with 5 Ktons per year of green HDPE from 2011, for use in the production of plastic caps and closures.” Earlier this year, Braskem announced that it would be supplying Johnson & Johnson with its green plastics for its Sundown brand of comestic products.

Braskem’s green plastic factory will use ethanol derived from sugarcane to produce ethylene, which will then be converted into polyethylene, the world’s most commonly used plastic. According to Braskem, this new polymer, while made 100% renewable raw materials, “has the same appearance and properties of traditional plastics in the final product, the difference is that it can capture CO2 from the atmosphere, i.e. one ton of green resin captures 2.5 tons of CO2.”

In India, the leading biofuel feedstock today is sugarcane molasses, which is processed to yield bioethanol that can be blended into gasoline (petrol). Sugarcane requires good land and large amounts of irrigation water, which are difficult for the poor to obtain. The bioethanol industry buys its molasses feedstock from the sugar factories. Sugar is the main objective of the sugarcane industry; molasses are simply a byproduct. As such, the unreliability of supply of molasses is a major constraint to biofuels development based on this feedstock.

Even though India is an agrarian economy, the energy potential of agricultural residues has not been realized till now by policy-makers and masses. Most of the biomass wastes are inefficiently used for domestic purposes in absence of reliable and cheaper source of energy. The main crops produced in India are wheat, maize, rice, sorghum, sugarcane and barley. India is among the market leaders in the production of these crops and has tremendous potential to convert lignocellulosic crop residues into ethanol.

E85 ethanol no cure for gas emissions: report – Winnipeg Free Press

“Ottawa’s push to use high-level ethanol fuel in cars is doing little or nothing to cut Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions nor will it, says a government briefing note prepared for Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt and obtained by Canwest News Service.”

We stumbled across this story in the local paper. As eco-drivers we are always curious about new sources of renewable fuels and new vehicle technologies that will improve fuel economy, reduce the cost of transportation, and most importantly reduce CO2 emissions. Bio-fuels have been a hot topic for some time, and governments have actively encouraged car makers to produce specially modified (e.g., E85 flex-fuel) vehicles that can run on both regular gasoline blends as well as the 85% ethanol 15% gasoline blends as they become available. As noted in the article, in reality, most of these vehicles will never have a drop of E85 in their tanks over the course of their lives on the road. It is only available in 4 locations around the country, none of them in Manitoba. Car manufacturers even get credits for selling these more “environmentally friendly” vehicles, regardless of the fuel actually used to run them.

The government of Manitoba currently mandates that suppliers of fuel much replace at least 8.5% of the fuel available for sale with ethanol. The most common  manifestation of this mandate is in the 10% ethanol/90% gasoline blend for sale at a some gas stations.

Dow Jones reports that “a surprise announcement Tuesday night to extend a tax break for Brazilian auto makers likely means greater-than-expected car sales in the first quarter of 2010.” Brazil’s government plans to keep the Industrial Production Tax (known as IPI) down at 3% for flex-fuel vehicles with small 1.0 liter engines for another three months. “The ostensible reason for the continued tax break is the environmentally friendly nature of the flex-fuel vehicles, which can run on either gasoline or ethanol.”

The report goes on to say, “’the decision covers literally about half of Brazil’s car fleet, as the majority of new car sales are small-engine flex-fuel vehicles. Larger engine flex-fuel cars will not benefit” anymore from the lower tax rates or gasoline cars of any engine size. The Brazilian government also said that it will extend the IPI exemptions for new truck sales to stimulate swapping of older, more polluting vehicles by new, less polluting ones.

The Brazilian ethanol producers did not miss a chance to praise the announcement, noting in a press release that since the advent of flex fuel cars in 2003, the country has avoided 75 million tons of CO2.

[via New York Times]

“Organic food is not only not better for the planet,” he (Agribusiness Syngenta CEO Michael Mack) said, in an interview at The New York Times building on Tuesday. “It is categorically worse.”  The problem, Mr. Mack said, is that organic farming takes up about 30 percent more land, on average, than non-organic farming for the same yield (though this varies by crop, of course). If the world wants to feed its fast-growing population on existing cropland — and Mr. Mack is clear that he does not want forests chopped down to clear more land for biofuel production, let alone food — then productivity becomes a key factor, he said.

Well that’s a lot of words!  Words from a major agribusiness CEO.  Not surprising, but worthy of discussion.  Critics often cite that organics are less productive than traditionally grown agronomic crops.  Lies lies lies.  Thus no new land is needed, and absolutely no “ecological disaster”.  I’m sure he has his own proprietary research, but his claims are definitely no more true than long term reports on organic productivity.  And uh… you use Atrazine and antibiotics for everything, and that’s not disaster for ecological systems?  Feminization of wildlife, antiobiotic resistance, major water contamination.  These are massive problems!

His talk on biofuels would have been fair 5 years ago but no longer.  Everyone is moving away from food-based biofuels like corn and for good reason.  Biofuels is too broad a term, but many types of these energy sources have nothing to do with food. Organics are not a fad.  More and more market share, more and more economies of scale, thus cheaper for everyone, and no longer just for rich paranoid parents.  This food renaissance is here, friends.

Stateside Contact: Michael Behm at mjb@stateside.com

MGA released several policy papers at its Jobs and Energy Summit in October. The Platform for Creating and Retaining Midwestern Jobs in the New Energy Economy notes that the Midwest is well positioned to create and retain jobs in a new energy economy, citing its biofuels industry, its well developed infrastructure and its potential for energy efficiency, wind power and significant underground storage for captured carbon.  

The MGA platform lays out several guiding principles for job creation in the energy sector:

• Enact policies that impact the Midwest as a region.
• Build on existing firms and industries.
• Position industry sectors for growth and better competitive advantage.
• Target creation and retention of quality jobs that provide career advancement and support middle-class families.
• Commit to sustainable principles.
• Encourage collaboration between workforce professionals and state entities.
• Identify and nurture private- and public-sector leadership.
• Produce outcomes that are replicable for different industries and regions.
• Encourage measurability and accountability within a framework that defines impacts and outcomes.

The Midwestern Energy Security and Climate Stewardship Roadmap: Advisory Group Recommendations consists of ideas developed by industry, agricultural, labor, environmental and governmental stakeholders convened by MGA to study the region’s energy sector. The roadmap notes that the Midwest, a manufacturing and agricultural center that serves the entire country, has historically benefited from low-cost coal and oil energy. The challenge and goal is to transform the region into “a fundamentally new, lower-carbon energy economy.” To that end, according to the roadmap, the Midwest must commit to:

• Immediate adoption of policies that encourage existing low-cost, low-carbon practices like energy efficiency.
• Modifications to the regulatory framework to remove disincentives for reduced energy use.
• Establishment of a stable regulatory environment for the development of renewable energy and technologies, such as carbon capture and storage.
• Adoption of policies to expedite research, development and commercialization of renewable and fossil energy technologies.
• Large-scale investment in the human capital necessary for an advanced energy economy to thrive, including consumer education, workforce and regulator training and technical assistance for business interests and entrepreneurs.

The Midwestern Energy Infrastructure Accord commits MGA to the development of a “robust energy infrastructure” that will put the Midwest at the forefront of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, fostering energy security and spurring jobs in low-carbon energy development and technology manufacturing. The infrastructure goals are:

• Expansion of electric transmission capacity in support of renewable energy development and distributed generation.
• Adoption of Smart Grid technologies and capabilities.
• Commercial build-out of carbon capture and storage.
• Deployment of refueling systems for biofuels and other advanced low-carbon transportation fuels.

The National Bobwhite Technical Committee has a new website. Check it out to learn more about one of our most challenging conservation issues in the 21st Century: The decline of Northern Bobwhite in the U.S.

Check out the Environment for the Americas to learn about plans for the 2010 International Migratory Bird Day celebration!

Today’s Wall Street Journal VentureWire says, “Anyone who’s been putting their green into the green stuff that grows in ponds — i.e., algae — may be set to hit the jackpot. Dow Jones Newswires reports that Capitol Hill is currently considering legislation which would boost the industry by expanding the definition of biofuels under the Renewable Fuels Standard to include algae-based fuels, and may grant companies algal biofuel tax credits as well.”

Enthusiasm for cellulosic ethanol has overshadowed the need for a close scrutiny of the product, and output for the biofuel has fallen short of targets, writes Dave Juday in the conservative magazine Weekly Standard. Then-President George W. Bush said a “pile of wood chips” would eventually power cars, but in reality, it can take as much as 90 years of tree growth to produce one 15-minute full-up of the renewable fuel, Juday adds. “It is time to wipe the slate clean, eliminate the cellulosic fuel mandate, and re-think U.S. biofuels policy,” he recommends

Where are biofuels going? Will European and American politicians now hesitate to turn more food into fuel, as food shortages in the third world create continued headlines? Is Chris Skrebowski, the internationally known editor of “Petroleum Review” correct when he says that the expansion of biofuels’ supply will be much smaller than recently believed? Or are the millions of new motorists that are expected in rapidly developing countries such as India, China, Russia and elsewhere going to decide the issue, by creating a huge new demand for fuels: just as oil supplies around the world are becoming scarcer and more expensive to exploit… (more)

Ethanol Producer’s Kris Bevill reports that “Purdue University has been awarded a $900,000 U.S. Department of Energy grant to conduct analysis of the global impacts of second-generation biofuels. According to Tom Hertel, ag economics professor at Purdue University and project co-investigator, the team’s research will be a continuation of previous work conducted policy alternatives and global land use impacts of first-generation biofuels.” Purdue’s Hertel was the author of the controversial land use analysis that the California’s Air Resources Board used in the Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

According to a post by Cindy Zimmerman in DomesticFuels.com, Sorghum use in ethanol on the rise and corn ethanol better watch out. “According to a survey by the United Sorghum Checkoff Program (USCP), 29 percent of the grain sorghum grown in the United States this year will be used to produce ethanol – a total of nearly 137 million bushels.” USCP Board Chairman, Bill Greving says this is very exciting news for the sorghum industry. “This study shows what we have always known, that sorghum ethanol yields are comparable to corn. In the past year, the price differential has greatly benefited the bottom line of ethanol plants using sorghum as a feedstock,” said Greving.

According to a report from Jamaica, the Caribbean island “is steadfast in its thrust to develop the local biofuels industry, producing ethanol from local feedstock and boosting exports of this highly valued fuel, under the Caribbean Basin Initiative (CBI).”

Jamaica’s Minister of Energy told local press that the Caribbean countries only met 71% of the total 2008 U.S. ethanol import quota of 452 million gallons. Jamaica exported 80 million gallons of Brazilian-made sugarcane ethanol to the United States and another 110 million gallons in 2008. According to Jamaica’s Energy Minister, the countries have never reached the capacity of the CBI ethanol quota, partly due to insufficient capacity, but production has been increasing over the past few years.

As expected, California regulators proposed new rules requiring petroleum-fuel sellers and other companies to comply with state greenhouse-gas emission-reduction rules starting in 2012 — three years earlier than initially proposed — and on top of the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) policy. The California Air Resources Board (CARB)’s proposed rules are to be finalized by December 2010 in order to implement a 2006 state law that requires industries to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, or about 25%. The state’s LCFS targeted a GHG reduction of at least 10% by 2020 in the state’s transportation fuels.

UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, announced that its renewable jet fuel process technology was used to convert second-generation, renewable feedstocks to green jet fuel for a biofuel demonstration flight by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

UOP’s process technology was used to convert oil from camelina, an inedible plant, to green jet fuel for the flight. One engine of a Boeing 747 was powered by a fuel mixture consisting of a 50/50 mix of the green jet fuel and traditional petroleum-derived jet fuel.

The flight, which took place at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, is the first green jet fuel demonstration flight in Europe and the first test flight to carry a select group of observers. UOP’s process technology was also used to produce jet fuel used in previous test flights conducted in the U.S., Japan and New Zealand. Test results from earlier demonstration flights showed that green jet fuel produced using UOP’s process technology performs as well, if not better, than jet fuel made from petroleum.

For more information, read the press release.

The “Washington Insider” section of DTN (link requires subscription) reported yesterday that, “The Environmental Protection Agency continues to work against a Dec. 1 deadline for making a decision about whether to increase the maximum ethanol blend rate for non-flex-fuel vehicles from the current 10 percent level to as much as 15 percent, as requested by Growth Energy. EPA over the past few months has indicated that it would like additional time for studies to be completed regarding this issue, notably how a blend increase would affect cars with over 120,000 miles on their odometers.

According to the report, “some sources report that EPA is considering allowing up to a 15 percent maximum blend beginning with 2001 model cars. If so, that would equate to around 80 percent of all cars on the road today. It also is possible EPA could make its decision contingent on final results from ongoing studies due to be released next spring into early summer, meaning the agency would miss next week’s deadline. [While] other sources are saying if EPA chooses to announce the blend level will remain at 10 percent, Growth Energy or someone else likely would resubmit the request for an increase, thus starting the process all over. That, in turn, would allow enough time for some of the pending studies to be completed for EPA to use in its decision-making.”

The U.S. ethanol industry could be entering a consolidation period wherein a few big companies dominate the field, writes Kris Bevill in this analysis for Ethanol Producer magazine. Two-thirds of the country’s 184 ethanol facilities are operated by major businesses and/or publicly traded companies instead of by farmer cooperatives, Bevill notes. Companies have the advantage of liquidity and can secure capital via the public markets to acquire small producers, said Todd Becker, CEO and director of Green Plains Renewable Energy. The industry, however, will still have room for the co-op model, in which the main goal is not “to make a fortune and get out,” said Randall Doyal, president of Guardian Energy.