March 2, 2010
 Happy March, everyone! Say goodbye to universally crappy February and hello to the month when Coca-Cola, pancakes, the rubber band, and the parachute were invented. None of those things directly relate to ethanol or green energy, granted, but the world would be in pretty sad shape without pancakes. Or rubber bands, quite frankly.
As it is, we’re living in weird times. The relationship between Democrats and Republicans has gotten more caustic and spiteful than ever, to the point where ANY legislation sent to Congress will run aground, energy legislation being no exception. But state governments, hoping to reverse a wheezing economy and ballooning unemployment, “are increasingly courting renewable energy companies with stringent new rules mandating that a share of their state’s electricity come from renewable sources.” Generally, these “renewable portfolio standards” require that utilities either produce or buy renewable energy. Specific percentages and timelines are left to the individual states: New York wants 24% green energy by 2013, while Michigan only wants 10% by 2015. Maine, ever the overachiever, has its sights set on 40% by 2017.
This move towards green energy is rooted in studies finding that “almost 300,000 clean energy jobs could be created nationwide by 2025.” It’s not quite the 800,000 jobs we lost a year ago, but it’s still an impressive figure from a field wide open for innovation and growth. The most common sources of green energy are wind and solar power, but everything from ethanol production (yay!) to dredging up geothermal energy to torching biomass is being considered. Even the clean coal people are still building castles in the air. It’s so wide open that CO Democrat Max Tyler and FL Republican Lee Constantine are pushing for almost the exact same green energy bill for their respective states - their mandates only differ by 10%.
Finally! We’ve been cheerleading the economic benefits of green energy production for what seems like ever, and so have a lot of other, more prominent bloggers and public figures and people with good sense. Hopefully Washington won’t let things get too desperate before acting on the states’ momentum.
September 14, 2009
All righty, back to ethanol! And just in time, too, because it’s becoming more and more apparent that the sun is rising on cellulosic ethanol production.
First of all, there are a lot of processing plants being built and put to use; “Several companies…announced in June at the International Fuel Ethanol Workshop and Expo…that they have already produced cellulosic ethanol from demonstration plants or will do so within the year,” and as if that wasn’t good enough news, “they are producing between 70 gallons and 85 gallons of biofuels.”
This rush of productivity mirrors the optimism found in a study released by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratory (and sponsored by General Motors, of all people), who “found that large volumes of cellulosic biofuels could be produced from already identified biomass sources and resources without displacing crop production.” The study also made a longterm projection that cellulosic biofuels could compete with oil by 2030, a speculation based on future oil prices and accelerated development of feedstocks.
We don’t think we need to explain how awesome this news is for ethanol supporters, especially in the face of the smug naysaying we’ve had to put up with over the years. The big question is, of course, how cellulosic biofuels will be introduced to the marketplace if predictions come true and widespread production happens by 2011, but as it becomes more apparent that there is room for them in said marketplace, the laws of supply and demand will take their course. Hell, this might be fodder for another one of our lists…
August 10, 2009
As a follow-up to our last post about Obama’s electric car support, here’s an article from the Christian Science Monitor that makes an interesting point: many of the companies receiving federal money under the President’s initiative are battery manufacturers. Most electric and hybrid car batteries are foreign-made, even in cars assembled here, and Obama doesn’t want batteries to become the new oil, an import-only resource that leaves us dependent on other countries and colors our international relations. Not saying there will be battery wars or anything, but it is important that we produce at least some of these technological components here.
Although if there were battery wars, we hope America would seize control of the Giant Energizer Bunny before our enemies did.
August 5, 2009
In an effort to combine staving off economic woes with his pledge to continue bolstering alt. fuel efforts, President Obama has announced $2.4 billion in grants, divided among 25 states, to develop next-generation electric cars and recreational vehicles.
Obama made this announcement in Elkhart County, Indiana, an area that he’s adopted as a weathervane for his administration’s effectiveness; Elkhart jumped from under 10% unemployment to nearly 20% in a year, which has spurred the president to pay them a visit and let them know that he will do his best to make sure no new Detroits are birthed from the recession. This current idea of his promises to encourage new investments, create jobs, and continue greening up the American lifestyle. We’re glad he’s tying all those strings together, because as nice as platitudes about a greener world are, they don’t mean anything without funding behind them. And these technologies could - and should - be a way to revitalize struggling communities without propping up failed industries or creating new company towns around them.
Here’s a list of the grant recipients in PDF format, and just for fun, here’s what Obama was telling Elkhart County a year ago, during his campaign for the presidency:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
June 25, 2009
Just got a note from a reader about something of much interest to us, and presumably our readers as well:
If you didn’t already know, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (the so called “cap and trade bill”) is up for a vote on Friday.
Please, please, PLEASE take some time to e-mail - or better yet, call - your congressman to ask them to vote in favor of this bill. While it’s not perfect, it would represent real progress in trying to cut down on CO2 emissions and fight man made global warming.
It’s only up for a vote in the House of Reps on Friday, so you only have to e-mail/call your House member. It’s likely to be a VERY close vote, too… Hardly any Repubs are voting in favor, and a large chunk of Democrats are either undecided or planning to vote no.
Just to reiterate how important it is that we make our voices heard on this - today at my internship, I took 13 calls opposing the Clean Energy Act, and only one call in favor of it. Holden does represent a very conservative district, but I know there must be more people than that who favor the bill. Contacting your congressman about this is really important… If he/she only hears from people who oppose the bill, it makes it hard for them to vote in favor.
If you don’t know who your congresspeople are (shame on you! shaaaaame!), you can look them up here. Now go make a difference!
May 15, 2009
 Considering how hot it is outside, we thought it fitting to mention that we just got linked to the 2009 Solar Decathlon, hosted by the US Dept. of Energy, in which 20 teams of students compete to “design, build, and operate the most attractive and energy-efficient solar-powered house.”
Each team puts a crew together, raises funds, and works with contractors to build their solar-powered house, then they move them to the National Mall in DC and rebuild them there. When that’s done, the houses are opened up to the public and judged in 10 contests to determine an overall winner. Aside from the obvious educational factor at work here, the idea behind this event is to educate the public about conservation and solar energy use, and demonstrate that “Zero Energy Homes” are both possible and comfortable. The dates for each stage are listed below:
- Oct. 8-16—Teams compete in 10 contests
- Oct. 9-13—Houses are open to the public
- Oct. 15-18—Houses are open to the public
- Oct. 19-21—Teams disassemble their houses
As for the Decathletes themselves, they come from all over; teams have been put together at Cornell, Penn State, Virginia Tech, and Universidad de Puerto Rico, and that’s just a handful of the participants. The full list of teams is here.
There are also opportunities for private entities to sponsor the event, or individual teams - in our next post, we’ll list some companies who should sling a little money at this project.
February 4, 2009
As the title indicates, there’s good news and bad news on the ethanol front these days.
First the bad: the industry is going broke. There are a lot of leaks in the hull of the SS Ethanol right now, not the least of which are “volatile corn prices wreaking havoc on balance sheets…declining ethanol and gasoline prices…a massive slide in demand… [and] record-tight credit markets.” The full effect has been brutal. Ethanol plants are shutting down left and right as the companies backing them go under when banks don’t renew their loans or grant new ones. Renew Energy is the most recent casualty; they filed for bankruptcy earlier this week.
The good news is that the USDA wants to bail the industry out, going as far as releasing $25 million in biomass research funding last week, and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said that “the USDA has a role, I believe, in helping to develop and promote…practices that will increase and enhance management efficiencies, which in turn will allow more of these producers of ethanol to stay in business.” In English, that means the government will help ethanol manufacturers who know what they’re doing and why.
Also, researchers at the Dept. of Energy’s laboratory in Brookhaven have developed a direct ethanol fuel cell, which they say can “oxidize ethanol and produce clean energy in fuel cell reactions” by “breaking carbon bonds at room temperature and efficiently oxidizing ethanol into carbon dioxide as the main reaction product.” Ethanol is unique in that it produces carbon dioxide instead of acetalhyde and acetic acid, which don’t really do much for generating power.
So if nothing else, the government is willing to pitch in and help develop biofuels, which is pretty amazing when you consider how besotted with oil money our political structure is. Stay tuned to the Corn Car News Desk for further updates.
January 28, 2009
There’s a new post coming in a day or two, but we decided to do some remodeling around here - no sense having this cool logo if we’re not gonna use it, right? Right. We’re gonna turn this blog from a humble text-based adventure to a full-blown graphicstravaganza! Or something. Anyway, stay tuned for an actual post, and read about the Dept. of Agriculture’s plans for ethanol promotion in the meantime.
January 14, 2009
 While Corn Car is none too fond of the airline industry for a variety of reasons (for example, they beg the government for money every year, evidently surprised by the fact that taxpayers are sick to death of their terrible service, price-gouging, and inconsistency), we will give those evil bastards credit where it’s due - they’ve really put some effort into testing new biofuel mixtures in their planes. Last week saw Continental Airlines fly a Boeing 737 across the Gulf of Mexico using a combination of regular jet fuel and a biofuel made from algae and jatropha oil, which is pretty powerful stuff whose host weed can be grown almost anywhere.
This was the first effort from an American plane, but jatropha-based fuel has caught on internationally. According to the Chicago Tribune, “Air New Zealand became the world’s first airline to fly a plane powered partly by jatropha-based fuel,” and “Japan Airlines is planning a test flight using fuel refined from camelina, a flowering weed.” Evidently this flurry of activity is based around the idea that yes, fuel prices have fallen due to economic turmoil, but the airlines don’t want to be left with Pete in hand when they go up again. Smart.
Aviation industry experts are cautioning against any undue excitement, noting that it will be years before biofuels start replacing traditional fossil fuels, if they ever do. But they always say stuff like that, so their underwhelmed response was hardly surprising. This is an important step for biofuels, and a promising one given that algae and jatropha weed aren’t food crops. Well, not for humans, anyway. Besides, it’s kind of neat to think that the viscous crap growing on the underside of your dad’s boat, or Eddie Van Halen (pictured at left), could help power an airplane.
October 10, 2008
With the economy bobbing in and out of the shitter on what appears to be an hourly basis, it’s hard to tell whether or not financial promises made now will be kept. But as far as we know, the US Dept. of Energy is set to invest $26 million in a large-scale cellulosic ethanol plant near Sault Ste. Marie in Chippewa County, Michigan. According to the linked article, “the new facility will manufacture 40 million gallons a year of ethanol fuel from non-food sources – mostly wood waste from Upper Peninsula forests along with some agricultural biomass,” and is eligible for no end of government grants and tax credits due to its low carbon footprint. Mascoma Corp. is heading the project, and their CEO calls the proposed plant “one of the first and largest commercial-scale facilities of its kind.”
In addition, POET is anticipating $76.3 million from the DOE “to help it push forward with its work to commercialize cellulosic ethanol production technology.” This is the second installment of an initial $80 million grant to help the company gather resources, design, build, and continuously operate Project Liberty, a joint venture of POET and the DOE that’s been described as “an integrated corn-to-ethanol and cellulose-to-ethanol biorefinery.” The idea is to upgrade the existing infrastructure of corn ethanol to produce its cellulosic counterpart, a move that POET CEO Jeff Broin says “will continue to improve corn ethanol and accelerate the commercialization of cellulosic ethanol.” That sentiment is awfully familiar, but we’ll be damned if we can place it.
Of course, all this depends on whether or not the global economy collapses and the survivors revert back to an agrarian hunter-gatherer society. But assuming that doesn’t happen, things are looking up!
— Next Page »
|
