New Energy Watch

GreenPrimary.org

Via Tom Friedman's column in the NY Times a few days ago, Turning the Election Green (login required), here's a link to a new organization that will strive to hold politicians' feet to the fire on energy issues in the coming elections. Sign up for their newsletter, and if you can help them, help. We'll be following up here.

GreenPrimary.org

ADM and Metabolix will make bio-plastic. What about Novamont's Mater-bi?

A press release today (4.23.07) says Archer Daniels Midland and their partners, Metabolix, will be producing "a family of high-performance natural plastics that are biobased, sustainable, and completely biodegradable," to be called Mirel Natural Plastics. The production plant is slated to spin up in 2008, with the aim to produce 110 million pounds of Mirel per year.

The PR headline says Mirel will be "the first biobased and fully biodegradable plastic." That probably depends on one's definitions. There's already an excellent material on the market called Mater-bi, made by the Italian company Novamont. This starch-based stuff is used to make all sorts of carriers and containers, like the gelato container and apple tray shown here, courtesy of Novamont. It's also the basis of ASTM-certified BioBags, which can take the place of polyethylene bags in most circumstances. The 13-gallon BioBag, which we use for office trash and shredded paper, is advertised through an Amazon link in the left-hand column of this blog.

Here's a good "Ten-Second Plastic Bag Lesson," found on the BioBags box:

"Regular polyethylene-based plastic bags can take over 100 years to degrade and are not compostable. Less that 2 percent of all plastic bags ever get recycled. Plastic bags litter our streets, backwoods, and waterways. Studies indicate that 100,000 marine animals and 2 million birds die every year from ingesting or being caught up in plastic debris.

Some manufacturers are blending additives to polyethylene to produce "degradable" bags. Unfortunately, this process fragments the bags into pieces that do not meet the ASTM D6400 standard for biodegradable and compostable plastic.

BioBag products are based on starch, vegetable oil and other renewable resources. No polyethylene is used in the production process. We are fully certified by the Biodegradable Products Institute to be 100 percent biodegradable and 100 percent compostable. Please be sure the biodegradable products you buy are properly certified...

BioBags are shelf-stable, just like paper towels, yet biodegrade quickly when exposed to nature's elements and micro-organisms, leaving no harmful residues behind."

It's a great time to be a farmer, isn't it?   

Tyson/ConocoPhilips versus the National Biodiesel Board

Well, here's a pretty kettle of fish. In the last few days, most of us have heard news reports (here's one from the NY Times) about the deal between Tyson Foods (their press release) and ConocoPhilips (their press release) to produce a form of renewable diesel biofuel from animal fat, and use it to supplement existing diesel supplies. Thousands of tons of fat rendered by Tyson from pigs, chicken, and cattle would undergo a thermal depolymerization process and be combined with hydrocarbon feedstock. The resulting fuel, according to the partners' PR, would be "a high-quality diesel fuel that meets all federal standards for ultra-low sulfer diesel."

The U.S. Treasury department likes the idea, and in April approved a request from the two companies to be able to qualify their product as a renewable fuel under the Energy Policy Act of 2005. This will net the partnership a dollar-per-gallon tax break.

Vehemently opposed to the deal is the National Biodiesel Board, which represents the nation's soy biodiesel producers (their press release). First, the NBB says the fat-based product doesn't meet the ASTM-D 6751 standard, that its environmental impact isn't known yet, and that if it turns out to be unreliable it could set back the entire biofuels industry. But what really seems to make the NBB see red is the dollar-per-gallon tax credit, which they say will put an extra burden on taxpayers who are already paying high prices for fuel. "Fuels should be fully evaluated for their impacts on all aspects of production and use. Each should be encouraged based on their own merits through the regulatory process -- like biodiesel has had to do -- not by exploiting an ambiguity in the tax code."

Well, there will be an extra burden, but it will be spread thin when all is in place -- a fraction of a fraction -- and while ConocoPhilips might not need the break, Tyson Foods, who are getting into a whole new sidebusiness, might deserve it. More to the point, soy farmers have been reaping rewards from government subsidies for years. This has given agribusiness the latitude and support needed for the serious exploration of soy-based fuels, and in fact the National Biodiesel Board has been at the forefront of responsible biodiesel development, helping to establish standards that will assure high-quality fuel, and encouraging member producers to adhere to those standards. All this makes their loud protest against the fat-fuel tax break sound a bit like sour grapes.

At NEW, we use certified soy biodiesel for a car, a boat, and a furnace, and can vouch for it up and down. But fair's fair. If there are tons of animal fat that can be made into fuel that will offset fuel from OPEC, well, why not? If Tyson and  ConocoPhilips can't meet ASTM standards, and machinery fails or doesn't perform right because of substandard fuel, then that will be a bad and undeserved strike against biofuels in the eyes of those who may never have experienced the good stuff. But let's give Tyson and ConocoPhilips a chance to do right before we accuse them of doing wrong. We need all the renewable fuel we can get. And fer cryin' out loud -- it's not as if America's soy farmers can't sell their crops. America's soy farmers are pretty well guaranteed a solid market and a premium price for every bean they produce for the knowable future.

As for the tax break sapping taxpayers and the U.S. Treasury, consider that CononcoPhilips/Tyson are talking about quickly ramping up production of fat-fuel to 175 million gallons per year. In the grand scheme of things, a subsidy of a buck a gallon is no big whoop, especially if it makes the difference between go and no-go. If those 175 million gallons were the exclusive oil supply in this country, they'd last us about eight days. Meanwhile, the war in Iraq costs about about $195 million every day. (Source: costofwar.com. Some estimates are as high as $300 million per day.) A string of eight days over there costs the American taxpayer $1,560,000,000.

We need every drop of biofuel we can make, whether it comes from soybeans, animal fat, algae, or voodoo. This is no time for bickering. We're strong supporters of the National Biodiesel Board, and think this  gamesmanship is beneath them. They need to accept (if not welcome) the fat-fuel effort and help Tyson Foods/Conoco Philips adhere to the excellent standards that they themselves have worked so hard to establish.

There's a good discussion of all this over at James Fraser's Energy Blog.

~ Doug Logan, New Energy Watch

Turning carbon dioxide into fuel -- with solar power

Clifford Kubiak, professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UC San Diego, has made a prototype device that uses solar energy to split carbon dioxide into separate components of oxygen and carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide is a poison, but it's also needed in many industrial processes, and more importantly it can be made into a liquid fuel. This isn't a new concept; it was studied during the last big fuel crisis in the '70s, but abandoned when the crisis eased. This time it's not only important for economics but because of the environmental crisis. The carbon dioxide load must be dramatically reduced, while alternative fuels need to be ramped up.

Professor Kubiak's device can't yet produce enough power from sunlight alone to sustain the process of splitting up the CO2, but with some tinkering, mostly with the material used to make a crucial semiconductor, there's great promise. Here's the full press release from UC Dan Diego.

Friedman: The Power of Green

Sometimes the obvious just isn't. Different groups of people can see the same situation with complete clarity and in completely opposed ways. Or they can be selective, according to their initial prejudices, about which observable things they use to make their judgments.

Even with irrefutable evidence that global warming is upon us, and already changing the weather in catastrophic ways, and that we humans are causing it, and that we U.S. citizens are causing more than our share -- even then, people are slow to notice, slow to believe, and agonizingly slow to react.

In trying to figure out how to galvanize the citizenry, Tom Friedman at the New York Times has been crafting his columns methodically, always banging the alarm bell, but also trying to appeal to as many sensibilities as possible, by relating and mixing the various urgencies of oil, energy, and environment. Some of the themes are practical and concrete, some are some psychological. Always, it seems, Friedman is thinking, "What will wake them up? What theme can I use this time? What angle can I take to get through?"

If you've read the last couple of posts here, also read Friedman's piece in the Times April 15 magazine section, April 15, "The Power of Green." The attitudes from the military, the media, and public are really beginning to dovetail.

~ Doug Logan, New Energy Watch

CNA Report: National Security and the Threat of Climate Change

Finally, the top brass are coming together to point out the relationship of the environment and terrorism: Increasingly, the effects of global warming will be droughts, floods, famine, and disease. The hardest-hit areas will be poor and unprepared. Meanwhile, the United States is, at least for now, the biggest single contributor to global warming. It doesn't take much of an intellectual leap to know where the blame will lie. Global warming, pollution, water crises, and the perception of an unfair balance of resources will promote even more desperate behavior in the countries and areas now spawning religious desperados. A paper co-authored by a group of 11 retired generals and admirals was recently put out by the CNA Corportation, a think-tank in Alexandria, VA. It's called National Security and the Threat of Climate Change" and is absolutely vital reading. If you take away one sentence from it, take this one:

"Climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world."

All of us have to keep hammering this point: Global warming and energy independence are national security issues. See the following links on this site for more:

RE:NEW (why this site is here, and what we're trying to do)

Also read:

Good paper -- Nexus: Oil and Al Qaeda (a related paper by Frank H. Denton, and hosted by americanenergyindependence.com)

~ Doug Logan, New Energy Watch

Product Review: PowerCost Monitor from Blueline Innovations

Here’s the PowerCost Monitor from Blueline Innovations in St. John’s Newfoundland. It shows you, at glance, how many kilowatts are being used in your house at any given moment. With the push of a button, it also shows you how much money you’re spending on electricity at the same moment. The numbers produced by the monitor can be very sobering if you’re paying about 19.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, as we are. (That doesn’t include the premium we pay for the 100-percent Connecticut Clean Energy Option.)

There are two components to the system -- the wireless monitor (2 AA batteries) that sits on your counter, and a sensor (2 AA batteries) that you fit to your electric meter. The sensor works on either electromechanical meters with spinning wheels, or electronic meters with digital read-outs. The Blueline website makes matters pretty clear, but you need to know which kind of meter you have. If you have any questions, give Blueline a call.

Our meter, for example, is electromechanical, but the electric company installed a circuit board that lets the meter-reader get numbers from the street. The circuit board obscures the front of the wheel. When we called Blueline, the tech on duty suggested that we try to jury-rig the sensor so that it could pick up the wheel movement from the side of the dome. We did this, with the aid of a couple of big rubber bands and plastic wire ties, then synchronized the sensor and meter, confirmed the signal, entered our electric rate into the monitor, and started getting readings immediately.

We’ve run the PowerCost Monitor for about six weeks, and have checked it against a full-month electric bill. It’s very accurate, and is easy to understand and operate. There are only four buttons, two used to choose displays for money being spent or kilowatts being used, one to clear the monitor and start again from zero, and one to sync the monitor and sensor during set-up.

Here’s why it’s a good thing: You walk past the meter and notice that it’s showing 1.2 kilowatts. You can hear the refrigerator compressor running, and you know you have a tower computer and big screen running in the other room. You have two CFLs on, one over the kitchen sink and one over the dining room table, but they only account for 30 watts together. So you wander around and find that your daughter has left two 60-watt incandescent lights on in her room, and there’s a 100-watt incandescent on for no particular reason in the front hall. You turn off those three lights and go check the monitor. Bingo, you’re down to one kilowatt. Those lights would have run all day with no one home. They would have used about 2.2 kWh, costing about 40 cents. If you’re that heedless every day, it adds up to $146 per year, not to mention the sap on the grid, the pollution, the global warming, and all that.

The PowerCost monitor is a good tool for letting you know what you’re burning and what you’re spending throughout the day. It costs about $150 U.S. Come to think of it, at the rate we’re going, this thing is well on its way to paying for itself.

~ Doug Logan, New Energy Watch

Wind generators: horizontal and vertical both needed

Good comment from Jeremy Stieglitz at Wind-Sail, Inc. on the relative merits of horizontal-axis versus vertical-axis wind generators. The point is that neither type will necessarily trample the other in the marketplace. Both types have their strong points, and raw wattage output is only one of them. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the VAWT hits its stride in tighter spaces, low-wind conditions, and in other circumstances. Read Jeremy's comment in full here. Also see his blog, which includes valuable discussions of energy policy, and highlights some of the concerns, obstacles, and incentives faced by green energy start-ups these days.

One last thing: The HAWT versus VAWT discussion is another example of the fact that the energy future will be reached by many paths and efforts. All reasonable, honest efforts must be encouraged, and all helpful paths recommended.

~ Doug Logan, New Energy Watch