Florida presents its 3rd annual Farm to Fuel Summit

The state of Florida is holding its third annual Farm to Fuel Summit later this month (July 30-Aug 1) in Orlando. As in previous years its an agenda packed with discussion about the development in biofuels in Florida, widely considered to have some of the greatest second generation biofuels potential due to its plentiful agricultural waste and forest.

(Register here for the summit)

The summit will include an agronomists workshop dedicated to helping farmers understand what are the best fuel crops to grow in Florida. "For the first time we are developing information for the agricultural community about what crops we can grow here," says Jay Levenstein, deputy commissioner for Agriculture and Consumer Services. "We have a lot of information we can give them."

The summit will be attended by Ed Schafer, the US Under-Secretary for Agriculture, as well as Bob Dineen, head of the US Renewable Fuels Association.

Jack Youngblood, a member of the pro-football Hall of Fame (St Louis Rams) is expected to explain his interest in the biofuels potential of north Florida forestland, along with a group of other professional sports stars, including Ryan Klesko and John Smoltz (baseball) and Bobby Rahal (motor racing).

Panelists will look at the growth of biofuels infrastructure in the state, including pipelines and fuel storage terminals, as  well as  the development of second-generation cellulosic ethanol technology.

Among the panelists will be two names familiar to readers of this blog: Bradley Krohn, president of United States EnviroFuels in Tampa, will give a talk titled 'Construction of a Commercial Sugarto-Ethanol BioRefinery,' while Dr. Jose Sifontes, president of Sigarca in Gainesville will speak on 'Bioenergy and Agricultural Products from Animal Waste.'

- David Adams

UF study: Farmers & foresters can harvest big bucks from the carbon market

Florida’s farmers and foresters can reap hundreds of millions of dollars under proposed climate change legislation now pending in Congress, according to a new study released this week by the University of Florida.

The report, titled "Opportunities for Greenhouse Gas Reduction in Forestry and Agriculture in Florida," contends that farmers  can earn more than $340-million a year by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and selling emission credits under a federal cap and trade program like the one created by the Lieberman-Warner bill now under consideration.

“Our report demonstrates that we can combine the ethical imperative of responding to climate change with power of the market, while protecting Florida’s natural resources,” Dr. Stephen Mulkey, lead author of the report from the University of Florida School of Natural Resources and Environment, said in a press release sent out by the Environmental Defense Fund.

Among the report's findings: Florida farmers can reduce 7.36 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions from increased use of wood, energy crops, crop residues and ethanol as biofuels, for an offset value of  $147-million per year.

“We are always looking for new ways to help keep Florida’s agricultural producers profitable,” John Hoblick, president of Florida Farm Bureau Federation, said in the news release. “Giving them access to a voluntary market that will compensate them for their environmentally friendly practices is clearly a good thing and is something we are proud to be promoting.”

For links to both the full report and to an 8-page executive summary, click here. To read the EDF press release, click here.

--Craig Pittman

Florida e-grass farm might head to Texas

Biomass Investment Group, which planned a 20,000-acre "e-grass" farm and power plant in Florida, might instead build the farm in Texas, a company representative said Thursday.

The project also changed ownership to Innovative Energy Group of Florida based in Navarre, according to papers filed last week with the Florida Public Service Commission indicated the changes in their plans.

The company has been unable to find enough suitable land in Florida, said Robert "Schef" Wright, an attorney representing the project.

"We haven't given up on Florida," said Wright, "but we have not had success at getting 18,000 acres of land for 25 years at a price that would work."

Trouble finding the right property has already delayed the project two years. In May 2006, Progress Energy Florida agreed to purchase power from the company's planned 130-megawatt plant. The plant was supposed to come on line in 2009, but the in-service date has been pushed back to Dec. 1, 2011, Wright said. The company will try to have the plant working earlier.

The company plans to grow a fast-growing reedy grass known as arundo donax. Many environmentalists consider the grass an invasive species, and its growth is strictly regulated in California, which has spent millions of dollars trying to eradicate it.

Wright said he did not think the plant would be invasive in Florida or Texas. He also did not foresee any problems in getting the appropriate permission to grow the grass in Texas. The company plans to work with university agricultural cooperative services to help control the grass.

The grass would be heated and converted into a liquid fuel that would then be transported to the company's Florida power plant, probably by barge, Wright said. The company has not yet selected a site for either the farm or the power plant. Ideally, the farm would be located in southern, coastal Texas, near a port. The power plant would be located somewhere between Tampa and Apalachicola, again near a port, and near Progress Energy transmission lines.

If the fuel is shipped by fossil-fuel powered barges, will it still offset enough carbon dioxide emissions to be worthwhile from a climate change standpoint?

Wright said he was "99.9 percent sure" that the e-grass power plant would still produce less greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuel plants. However, the company has not yet looked into it.

"I'll agree with you that ultimately everything needs to be looked at on a total carbon cycle, and I can't say we have done that," Wright said.

-Asjylyn Loder, Times staff writer

Weeding out a potential biofuels problem?

Growers of plants for use as biofuels are looking for certain qualities in their crops: hardiness, a paucity of pests and diseases and the ability to outcompete other plants.

Unfortunately, according to a new report from the Invasive Species Council released at a global warming conference in Sydney, Australia, those are also hallmarks of invasive weeds, which government and farmers are trying to eradicate.

"It turns out that many potential biofuel species pose a weed risk," the council reported. "Some of the world’s worst weeds may be biofuel prospects for Australia—giant reed and spartina appear in the World Conservation Union’s list of 100 of the World’s Worst Invaders, and Chinese tallow tree is rated as one of the the 12 worst invasive pests in the United States."

"Australia should not try to solve one environmental problem by creating another," warned ISC spokesman and report author, Tim Low. "These plants have no proven value as biofuel crops but bad reputations as weeds."

In February St. Petersburg Times reporter Kris Hundley wrote about a Florida company that wants to grow the giant reed, also known as arundo, for use as a biofuel, despite objections from environmental groups and even from the chairwoman of the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council, University of Florida assistant professor Alison Fox. "Florida should not accept the risk posed by large acreage plantings of this species," Fox said. "The evidence is piling up that this is not a great idea.

To see the council's press release and find a link to the report itself, click here.

And to read the St. Petersburg Times story about arundo click here.

--Craig Pittman

The potential of biomass waste: organic humus and electricity

A report in today's St Petersburg Times describes how a Florida company, Mother's Organics Humus Farm, is planning to turn yard waste into organic humus to sell to local farmers. The company's founders are renewable energy enthusiasts who believe the nation's current energy crisis is here to stay - unlike the 1970s.

They are surely onto something - perhaps one of the least well understood and developed concepts in the emerging field of renewable energy: the enormous potential of biomass waste.

If you click on the biomass category on the left hand side of this screen you will more information about other projects in this field, including a number of waste-to-energy endeavors, seeking to turn biomass into electricity. Biomass Gas & Electric Co., an Atlanta-based alternative energy producer, is partnering with Progress Energy Florida to build one of the state's first, and possibly the largest, power plant that will convert wood waste into electricity.

Early on when we started this blog we featured Dr Jose Sifontes, a biomass to energy pioneer in Gainesville who turns the city's municipal waste into a clean-burning gas. He and others are exploring ways of capturing landfill gases to drive turbines to produce electricity. Florida horse manure is another source of potential energy. Dr Ann Wilkie at the University of Florida is one of the leading researchers in the field of anaerobic digestion for waste treatment. Her current program focuses on biogas generation from bioethanol and biodiesel by-products. As she likes to say; "Fossil fuel is fossil thinking."

 NASA is also funding research at the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC) in Cocoa to make hydrogen gas for the space shuttle from local landfill gas.

Click here to read today's story in the St Pete Times.

Click here to visit our biomass page.

- David Adams

Europe and biogas

Someone sent me this interesting article from Reuters on biogas use in Europe.

Click here for the full article.

Here are the highlights:

* Germany leads the world with around 70 percent of the global market and produced 1,100 megawatts of electricity from biogas last year, enough to supply over a million homes.

* Britain, which wants to raise its share of renewable energy, only produced around one-25th of this.

* Biogas prevents methane created by decaying organic matter from entering the atmosphere in its pure form, and is renewable. It is generated in two main ways: by putting organic waste in sealed containers, or by capturing gas emitted by landfill waste dumps.

* Almost all Britain's biogas comes from landfills, and is often converted into electricity.

* Landfill gas makes up a quarter of British renewable energy, giving electricity to some 900,000 households.

* Britain only recycles around 15 percent of its household waste. That's far less than most European countries like top recycler the Netherlands at around 60 percent.

* The European Union set a target of increasing renewable energies to 20 percent by 2020 in last year's Energy Review. It now stands at 2 percent in Britain, the country's Renewable Energy Association (REA) says. The EU as a whole sources 6.5 percent of its energy from renewables, with Latvia the highest at 47 percent, the EU says.

- David Adams

The dance of legislation, this time on energy

Having botched the immigration bill and failed to muster enough votes for a no-confidence vote on the attorney general, the U.S. Senate has now turned its attention to the subject of the nation's energy policy.

"With gasoline prices hovering near all-time highs, the Senate on Monday began debating a sprawling energy bill that has already kicked off an epic lobbying war by huge industries, some of them in conflict with one another: car companies, oil companies, electric utilities, coal producers and corn farmers, to name a few," the New York Times reported today.

"Industry groups have raced to sign up influential lawmakers and are nervously calculating how much regulation they might have to accept from the Democratic majority in Congress," the Times story noted. "Detroit’s automakers are lobbying hard against tough fuel economy standards, but they support increased production of ethanol and other alternative fuels."

According to the Los Angeles Times, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was promising tougher fuel-economy rules, which have been blocked for years by lobbying from Detroit automakers.

"The measure would boost fleetwide average fuel economy standards to 35 mpg by 2020, up from 25 mpg," the LA Times reports. "It would increase standards by 4% a year from 2021 to 2030. If passed, it would be the first increase in standards for passenger cars in about 18 years. The first increase could come in model year 2011."

But there's far more on the table besides fuel-economy standards for cars. The energy bill "would also ramp up domestic production of alternative fuels, from about 7 billion gallons projected this year to 36 billion gallons by 2022," the LA Times reports. "It would authorize funding for projects to capture greenhouse gases emitted by power plants and other polluters. It would promote energy efficiency in such products as light bulbs and big-screen TVs."

Although the Senate has set aside two weeks for debating the issues, the  New York Times reports, some of the most basic questions have yet to be dealt with: "Does 'clean' and 'renewable' energy include nuclear power? Should the government subsidize only 'renewable' fuels, like wind or ethanol, or should it subsidize 'alternative' fuels, including coal-based liquids, that might substitute for oil and reduce dependence on foreign oil?"

Stay tuned. Whatever happens, it's lliable to cost you money.

To read the full NYT story, click here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/washington/12energy.html?ex=1339300800&en=0e77afb0bcc82757&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

For the LA Times story, click here:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/la-na-energy12jun12,0,7081558.story?coll=la-home-center

--Craig Pittman

GAO: We're dropping the ball on biofuel

A new report released today by the Government Accountability Office paints a fairly unflattering portrait of the Department of Energy's biofuels efforts.

The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, says flat out that the DOE "has not yet developed a comprehensive strategic approach to coordinate the expansion of biofuel production with biofuel distribution infrastructure development and vehicle production, and has not evaluated the effectiveness of biofuel tax credits."

In 2006, the GAO reports, an estimated 4.5-million flexible fuel vehicles capable of operating on ethanol blends up to E85 were in use—an estimated 1.8 percent of the nearly 244-million U.S. vehicles. "The number may increase substantially because of a recent commitment by DaimlerChrysler, Ford, and General Motors to increase FFV production to compose about 50 percent of their annual production by 2012," the GAO said.

But where they get their fuel may be the problem. "From 2004 to 2006, annual U.S. ethanol production increased from 3.4-billion gallons to about 4.9-billion gallons, and annual biodiesel production expanded from 28-million gallons to approximately 287-million gallons," the GAO reports.

However, "existing biofuel distribution infrastructure has limited capacity to transport the fuels and deliver them to consumers," and "increasing the availability of E85 at fueling stations is impeded largely by the limited availability of ethanol for use in high blends."

And as for the taxes: The largest of the biofuel tax credits "cost the Treasury $2.7-billion in 2006," the GAO noted. Without some evaluation of whether it was worth it, "it is not known if these expenditures produced the desired outcomes or if similar benefits might have been achieved at a lower cost. "

To read the full report, click on:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07713.pdf

--Craig Pittman

Sarge, why does my tank smell like fried chicken?

A fascinating story in the Boston Globe last week highlighted a report encouraging a major user of fossil fuels to make the switch to alternative energy sources: the U.S. military.

"A new study ordered by the Pentagon warns that the rising cost and dwindling supply of oil -- the lifeblood of fighter jets, warships, and tanks -- will make the US military's ability to respond to hot spots around the world 'unsustainable in the long term,' " the Globe reported.

The study "concludes that all four branches of the military must 'fundamentally transform' their assumptions about energy, including taking immediate steps toward fielding weapons systems and aircraft that run on alternative and renewable fuels," according to the Globe.

"The Pentagon's Office of Force Transformation and Resources, which is responsible for addressing future security challenges, commissioned LMI, a government - consulting firm, to produce the report," the Globe reported. LMI's report is titled "Transforming the Way DoD Looks at Energy," and it is intended as "a potential blueprint for a new military energy strategy and includes a detailed survey of potential alternatives to oil -- including synthetic fuels, renewable biofuels, ethanol, and biodiesel fuel as well as solar and wind power, among many others," Globe reporter Brian Bender wrote.

"The military is considered a technology leader and how it decides to meet future energy needs could influence broader national efforts to reduce dependence on foreign oil," Bender wrote. "The report adds a powerful voice to the growing chorus warning that, as oil supplies dwindle during the next half-century, US reliance on fossil fuels poses a serious risk to national security."

The Globe noted that the LMI report says that, compared with World War II,  the military in Iraq and Afghanistan is using 16 times more fuel per soldier.

To read the whole story, click on:

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/05/01/pentagon_study_says_oil_reliance_strains_military/

--Craig Pittman

The end of garbage

Recycling has been around for decades, of course. Most municipalities now do it with newspapers, cans and bottles. Cities are getting better at is (San Francisco is tops), but so nowadays so are many large companies, such as Wal-Mart, Toyota, Nike and Xerox.

Click here to read an article in Fortune magazine looking at this new drive for "zero waste." Some are calling it the 'Next Industrial Revolution.'

"To achieve zero waste, everything that's no longer wanted will have to be made into something else. Sounds hard, but the idea is as old as nature, where one organism's detritus becomes another's food," the article points out.

Another angle not covered in this article is turning waste into fuel? That is increasingly being done at landfull sites, or with leftover farm waste, by various processes, including treatment with bacteria and heat, or with hydrolysis. 'Waste to energy' is the least well known form of alternative energy sources being experimented with around the world. But I predict we will be hearing a lot more about it.

Click here to visit the anaerobic digester project at The University of Florida.

- David Adams

2007 Farm Bill backs biofuels. Gov Crist chips in another $68 million.

The United States Department of Agriculture unveiled the 2007 Farm Bill today amid widespread expectation about what it might have to say about biofuels. Before you fall asleep it's worth noting that we only get one of these every five years, so they matter more than your average piece of legislation.

By all accounts this years' Farm Bill is potentially one of the most reformist in some time (see link to New York Times article below).

Last week president Bush set ambitious goals to increase domestic biofuel production seven-fold by 2017. But he didn't go into much details about how he plans to budget it. The Farm Bill gives us a better idea. On Wednesday Florida's new Governor, Charlie Crist also announced $50 million for biofuels (see below).

The Farm bill contains good news for biofuels advocates, and for the state of Florida, according to the state's Agriculture Commissioner, Charles Bronson.

He phoned me this afternoon to tell me the good news. Here's what he had to say.

Besides putting more money into 'specialty crops' (fruits, vegetables and nurseries) such as oranges and strawberries, Commissioner Bronson said the Farm Bill includes $1.6 billion for research into cellulosic ethanol technology. This money will be available to universities as well as private companies.

Bronson says this is the first time that the Farm Bill has been the vehicle for funding of energy crops. "They are supporting the president's idea of increasing biofuel production through cellulosic ethanol," he said.

Cellulosic ethanol can be made from almost any plant fiber, greatly increasing options for biofuel production which currently depends on corn in the United States, as well as sugar cane in other major ethanol producing countries such as Brazil.
Bronson says he believes cellulosic ethanol is especially well suited to Florida which has no corn. Florida's sugar cane is also dedicated to producing sugar granules. But Florida has many other potential fuel crops, as well as forest.

"This bill really lends itself to Florida's emerging biofuels industry," he said.
"I think it's going to be like the computer chip industry. As more and more people get involved, the more efficient and cheaper it will become to produce." He said the USDA predicts in the future ethanol could  cost as little as $1.20 - $1.30 a gallon to produce.

Another $2.1 billion in loans will be available to companies seeking to put cellulosic ethanol on the market.
"There's some serious money in here to help businesses in Florida roll out ethanol," he said.
"We know there are at least three of four companies poised to make a run at some form of ethanol production in the state, maybe as many as six. I'm very excited about it. We are quietly getting into the energy business."

In a press release Bronson noted that the Farm Bill complements his 'Farm to Fuel' Initiative launched last year. Bronson says he recognizes Congress will ultimately decide what the farm bill looks like, he
applauded USDA for putting forth a bold proposal.

Gov. Crist is asking the Florida Legislature to greatly expand funding for alternative energy, proposing $68-million in new spending and tax incentives for alternative energy.

Crist's proposed budget suggests the state spend $68-million on alternative energy funding. The proposal extends $17.5-million in grant programs from the current fiscal year, and offers nearly $1-million for a public education campaign on energy efficiency.

"Florida can become a leader in the production of alternative fuels," said Crist spokeswoman Vivian Myrtetus. "We must empower industry to make Florida the center of biofuel production. Increased ethanol production will further stimulate Florida's economy and create additional jobs."

Click here for more details form the USDA

Click here for St Petersburg Times coverage of Crist's biofuels announcement.

Click here for link to New York Times analysis, 'Agriculture Dept Urges Big Overhaul in Farm Policy.'

- David Adams

Is the energy revolution possible without coal and nuclear?

A new report says renewable energy in the U.S. can solve global warming without resorting to nuclear power or so-called 'clean coal.'

The report 'Energy Revolution: A Blueprint for Solving Global Warming,' is being released by a group of energy and climate change advocates, including ' Greenpeace USA, and the European Renewable Energy Council (EREC).

The report claims that nearly 80% of U.S. electricity can be produced by renewable energy sources while reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 72%. At the same time America's oil use can be cut by more than 50% by 2050 by using much more efficient cars and trucks (potentially plug-in hybrids), increased use of biofuels and a greater reliance on electricity for transportation.

The 92-page report, commissioned by the German Aerospace Center, used input on all technologies of the renewable energy industry, including wind turbines, solar photovoltaic panels, biomass power plants, solar thermal collectors, and biofuels, all of which "are rapidly becoming mainstream."

Click here for a full report from Renewable Energy Access.