New Energy Watch

Dynamic Fuels, Tyson Foods: Jets Can Fly on Animal Fat

Renewable Energy World points to a partnership between Dynamic Fuels and Tyson Foods to produce biofuels from rendered animal fat as one of 2010's big renewable energy projects.

Biofuel made from animal fat is high-quality energy, with an outstanding cetane value -- high enough to be refined into the aviation fuel mentioned in Tom Friedman's U.S.S. Prius column. Producing fuel from  millions of pounds of animal fat and grease that would otherwise go to waste is sensible and responsible.

Here's a YouTube clip of the Dynamic Fuels/Tyson Foods Fat-to-Fuel Process.

And to go way back to 2007, here's a post describing the reaction of the National Biodiesel Board to Tyson's partnership with Conoco-Philips for the processing and delivery of animal-fat biofuel.

-- DL

The U.S.S. Prius - NYTimes.com

God bless them: “The Few. The Proud. The Green.” Semper Fi.

via www.nytimes.com

Energy Storage and The Grid | Renewable Energy World North America Magazine Article

These types of energy storage are primarily driven by a need on the part of utilities for load balancing, since it's expensive for them to constantly adjust the output of traditional power generation systems as the load varies. Energy storage may even allow them to offset or delay the requirement of additional power plants, such as a gas-fired "peaker" plants.

via www.renewableenergyworld.com

Good article, and good comments so far below, outlining some of the options for energy storage, which is important for balancing and evening out the flow of power in the grid. It will also be increasingly important for individual homes, apartment complexes and farms as hybrid on-grid/off-grid energy use evolves.

-- DL

Natural Resources and the Environment - Dot Earth Blog - NYTimes.com

Andrew C. Revkin At an energy innovation conference in Washington, Alexis Madrigal of Atlantic magazine led a discussion involving three top energy officials from the Obama administration on government and military programs that could trigger big breakthroughs that cut energy waste and greenhouse emissions.*

via dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com

AquaDuct: Pedal-Powered Water Filtration

A few years ago, Google set up a contest to promote "zero-emission inventions that transform human energy into unprecedented results and can help save our planet, one pedal stroke at a time." We did a post about it, leading to a PDF called Seat of Power, which discusses a bicycle-alternator-battery contraption we made years ago to generate and store electricity. Google's Innovate or Die contest is over, and the winner is...

Ban Single-Use Plastic Bags

Macroalgae Scale-up: Bio Architecture Lab Partners with Statoil

Jim Lane of Biofuels Digest interviews Daniel Trunfio, CEO of Bio Architecture Lab, on the recently announced partnership between BAL and Norwegian oil giant Statoil:

How Big Will Big Algae Be?

This is another good example of the potentially symbiotic relationships that can be forged between small research labs and large corporations than can deliver the funds, development support, and delivery infrastructure needed for alternative fuel sources, particularly biofuels, to come to scale.

Make no mistake -- Statoil is an offshore drilling company. But like Exxon Mobil, BP, and other petro-behemoths, Statoil is looking ahead to the day when the costs of finding and extracting oil become crippling for all concerned, and popular demand for newer, cleaner fuels becomes intense. They're all going to want their pipelines and tankers to be full of the new stuff.

-- Doug Logan

Big Business and Clean Energy

This article by Michael Butler of Cascadia Capital in RenewableEnergyWorld is a very good encapsulation of what has happened to the clean energy industry in the past few years -- feverish optimism and activity, followed by dashed hopes, malaise, and dejection linked to the economy, Republican obstructionism, and the inability of the Obama administration to get off the mark in the clean energy development race. But in the middle of all this, American business, big business in particular, has figured out how to tap into the essential enthusiasm of the movement, bring in the discipline of real business plans and real business development, and get cleats in the ground for the real, sustained push. This is a story that is likely to have a happy ending, even if some of the heroes who get the job done were not among the heroes who took to the field early.

Clean-Energy Rebirth Parallels to the Internet | Renewable Energy World.

-- Doug Logan

From Jonathan Hiskes in Grist: 10 Ways to Kick the Offshore Oil Habit

Here's a good article emphasizing the importance of efficiency, conservation, better thinking, better habits, better engineering. The emphasis is on top-down encouragement and decisiveness, which is what has to happen if things are to work on the necessary grand scale.

The quickest, most powerful, most cost-effective, and easiest-to-implement solutions to oil dependence are increased efficiency and increased conservation. Period. Absolutely bring on the alternative energy projects, but let's also run with what will work right now. It's up to the government to make these simple and effective solutions mandatory, and up to the rest of us to make them a positive part of the culture.

10 Ways to Kick the Offshore Oil Habit by Jonathan Hiskes in Grist.

Friedman: No Fooling Mother Nature

Tom Friedman, in the NY Times, has consistently understood and explained the connections between clean energy, national security, job creation, and climate support. He has not argued forcefully enough for conservation and efficiency, which are the two most powerful forces we can bring to bear in all of those areas except maybe job creation. Even so, he is the best voice we have in this country for laying out correct policy choices.

Friedman's column, No Fooling Mother Nature exhorts the leadership to use this horrific Gulf spill as a call for serious policy change. All the Obama administration has to do is follow his lead.

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Doug Logan