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If you’re an ethanol advocate, there’s an app for that from the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA).

In this edition of the Ethanol Report, RFA president and CEO Bob Dinneen talks about the new app, what it does, who should use it, and why they developed it. He also comments on when we might yet see a final rule on the 2014 volume requirements under the Renewable Fuel Standard and how railway transportation issues continue to impact the industry.

Ethanol Report on New Advocacy App

Tell us about your organization and it’s role in the Advanced Bioeconomy.

Advanced Biofuels USA, a nonprofit educational organization advocates for the adoption of advanced biofuels as an energy security, military flexibility, economic development and climate change mitigation/pollution control solution. Our key tool for accomplishing this is our web site, 14,000+ indexed articles. Technology neutral, feedstock agnostic.

Tell us about your role and what you are focused on in the next 12 months.

In addition to trying to keep our library of posts of articles about biofuels and advanced biofuels up to date and comprehensive, we hope to publish an updated version of an easy-to-read engaging quick “Guide to Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts” which we will present to the new Congress this winter. We are looking for sponsors to help us give Congressional staff, reporters and the general public a better understanding of policy, products, technology and promise of advanced biofuels.

We would also like to publish a children’s book about the carbon life cycle from the point of view of a carbon atom. From the whoosh of of being flung into the atmosphere as CO2 through life in a plant, digestion and belching of a cow back into the air, through life as a fuel combusted in an engine to eventually becoming part of a leaf that falls to the ground, sleeps and dreams of its birth in the belly of a star. We’ll educate children as well as the adults who read them the book.

What do you feel are the most important milestones the industry must achieve in the next 5 years?

Taxing carbon and financially recognizing “externalities.”
Understanding how engines and fuels work together. And how renewable fuels can help engines work more efficiently, with less pollution and with greater health benefits, as well as climate change mitigation advantages–a milestone for industry, general public and policy makers.

If you could snap your fingers and change one thing about the Advanced Bioeconomy, what would you change?

I would increase the general public’s perception of the urgency for transitioning from fossil-based to renewable energy in all its forms, including the need to transition to renewable transportation fuels. Not only in the US, but around the globe.
Those using black soot-polluting cooking fuel would transition to home-grown ethanol or biodiesel

Of all the reasons that influenced you to join the Advanced Bioeconomy industry, what single reason stands out for you as still being compelling and important to you?

Reasoning that influenced getting in: When oil hit $150/barrel or gasoline hits $5.00/gallon in the US, and people are looking for a continuation of the country’s energy policy (i.e., cheap transportation fuel), we’ll be ready. Still compelling: This is an industry of wonderful people, true believers who will enable sustainable comfortable habitation.

Where are you from? 

Born and reared on the North Coast, Ohio, east of Cleveland in the foothills of the Appalachians. As an adult, lived in Washington, DC and Frederick, MD. Study of the United Nations System via Kent State University in Geneva, Switzerland and Europe.

What was your undergraduate major in college, and where did you attend? Why did you choose that school and that pathway? 

Political Science and German. I went to college to learn to be a good citizen–thus the political science. I’d learned a bit of Spanish and French in elementary and high school, but had no opportunity to learn German. I figured the world was a small place and I should know how to communicate in more than one language.

Who do you consider your mentors? What have you learned from them?

Too many people to mention. I tap into memories of something someone said once or how someone else lived; different lessons from each-sometimes what to emulate; and sometimes the lesson is what not to do.

My grandmothers influenced me greatly, each very different from the other. Both left their homes in their teens to seek their fortunes on their own in a land where they didn’t speak the primary language. They had interesting and successful lives even though at times they were penniless.

What’s the biggest lesson you ever learned during a period of adversity?

I love this question and learn a lot from the answers of others.
I’m still in a period of adversity. I am learning to have a long view while taking one day, one moment at a time. And valuing each moment.

What hobbies do you pursue, away from your work in the industry? 

Hiking. The Appalachian Trail is near home and wonderful. We are hiking it in one-day pieces; have finished Maryland and pieces of Pennsylvania and Virginia. It amazing to see how different each section is one from another along the same summit. Gardening. Herbs and vegetables. Watching CO2 gathered from air mix with water to arrange itself…

What 3 books would you take to read, if stranded on a desert island?

Moby Dick (a great gay fish story with lots of water, so I’d have hope for rescue)
Kama Sutra (I haven’t read it yet. If I was stranded alone–fodder for a healthy fantasy life; if with other(s) text for interesting experimentation)
Basic Manual about wilderness survival suited to the location; I know nothing of these things-never a girl scout.

What books or articles are on your reading list right now, or you just completed and really enjoyed?

My book club list:Clybourne Park Bruce Norris
Still Life with Bread Crumbs Anna Quindlen
My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel Ari Shavit
Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, The Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America Gilbert King
A Lesson Before Dying Ernest J. Gaines
A Call to Action: Women, Religion…Jimmy Carter

What’s your favorite city or place to visit, for a holiday?

Northern Ohio along Lake Erie. Visiting parents and get to “look at the lake” even when its too cold to swim. It’s so calming.Hawaii when I was in shape to windsurf. I’m trying to visit family, friends and interesting biofuels people where they live. Lately OH,TN, LA, PA, TX. Stories bring history, art, agriculture, architecture, panoramas.

Could diverting agricultural residues for cellulosic ethanol solve the problem of tilling agricultural residues into the topsoil — and help provide a path towards pristine soils not seen since the days of prairie sod?

DuPont says, amidst the focus on renewable fuels, cellulosic ethanol’s potential contribution to sustainable agriculture can get overlooked.

“The secret to soil health,” says DuPont’s John Pieper simply, in speaking with the Digest, “is that all the things above the ground should really stay above the ground, and all the things below the ground should stay below the ground. That’s Nature’s way, how it was intended.”

Pieper should know, after more than 20 years with Pioneer Hi-Bred working with growers, and after years as a grower himself. “The negative is tillage, it can kill the soil structure, as all the microbes and the ecosystem that build up in the ground are tossed around and the soil structure is disturbed. What you have is basically an agricultural equivalent to residential landfill. Things are not where they are supposed to be.”

As Marion Owen, author of Chicken Soup for the Gardener’s Soul observed, “Healthy soil is chock-a-block FULL of living things such as plant roots, animals, insects, bacteria, fungi and other organisms. It’s a jungle down there…Roto-tilling destroys the network of fungal hyphae that gives soil structure. This includes the mychorrhizal network that is so important to plants.”

The rising yields problem

Pieper pauses. There’s a problem. “But the farmer has to get some of the biomass off the field at the end of the season, in most areas. Some of that material is needed, but the more corn we produce by increasing yield, the more corn stover we’re producing, and the grower has to do something with it, and for many growers that means tilling it back into the ground.”

Pieper has a point. Nature had much lower productivity in mind when she came up with corn. Just a few generations ago, yields were a couple of dozen bushels per acre, and the biomass left on the soil after harvest would have been well short of a ton per acre. But now, yields are rising, and biomass is rising along with the corn.

This year, corn yields will average 172 bushels per acre, according to USDA, and that means something like 3 tons of corn stover biomass on the field, after harvest. In areas of Iowa where the productivity reaches 240 bushels per acre, there can be four tons of stover per acre, or even more.

There’s no one we know that believes that an infinite amount of biomass left on the field is a good idea for soil health and farm productivity. There’s some disagreement about exact amounts. But somewhere around 1 ton per acre is emerging as a consensus. And that’s where cellulosic biofuels can come in handy. You see, one of the reasons all the biomass is left on the field, and one of the reasons why growers are ultimately tilling, is that there’s no good economic use-case for the biomass.

How much can be removed?

Today, it’s changing. Growers are realizing payments in the $70 per ton range for biomass, before harvest costs. Plus, improvements in soil productivity and consequent savings in fertilizer costs. That market is bringing biomass off the field, and ultimately encourages no-till farming, since there’s no biomass that needs to be “landfilled”.

How much, 20 percent, 30 percent?

“We’d very much like to get away from percentages,” says Pieper, “because it is really a finite amount, and as yields change the percentages change. So it is better to think about how much needs to be left on the field, in tons per acre, and then the rest can be lifted.”

In a recent Digest story we looked at optimal acres, but Pieper encourages growers to think not only in terms of optimal acres, but feasible acres.

“In looking at the data,you see continuous corn being the best for cellulosic, because you have that biomass every year, but corn-soy rotation will work just as well in the corn years. So, while continuous corn acreage can be thought of as “optimal”, there are more acres in corn-soy rotation and they are very feasible for a biomass harvest program.

“We think in terms of 40 million tons of biomass, or enough to support 100 biorefineries, and as much as 2.8-3 billion gallons of ethanol. Now, of course there are sources beyond corn stover, such as the woodbasket, that will take you much farther. But there is plenty of opportunity with corn stover and it’s there and the economics work.”

DuPont’s Nevada cellulosic biofuels plant, as of August. The core technology and fermenter units can be seen at center; at left center, biomass intake; at left, storage and distillation

Macedonian government joins as signatory for MOU. 100 million liter cellulosic refinery could start construction in 2016.

As much of the advanced biofuels industry heads for Kansas to take part in the opening ceremonies for Abengoa’s cellulosic ethanol refinery in Hugoton, news arrives from Skopje, Macedonia that the Republic of Macedonia today joined a MOU to facilitate the development of the cellulosic ethanol market in the Pelagonia region between Ethanol Europe and DuPont. 

According to DuPont, “This collaboration agreement brings together three critical components for the preparation of detailed feasibility studies for a commercial scale 2G ethanol plant to supply the European market.”

Macedonia’s Minister for Foreign Investments Bill Plaveski told media following a signing ceremony in Skopja that “The project includes a construction of modern biorefinery with a capacity of 100 million liters. The project, a five-year investment of EUR 250 million, will create 1,000 jobs. The plant’s construction should start in 2016 and be completed for two years.”

Signing the MOU today were (from left) Jan Koninckx, global business director for Biorefineries at DuPont, Macedonia’s Minister for Foreign Investments Bill Plaveski and Ethanol Europe Renewables Limited President Mark Turley.

What’s in the MOU, exactly?

The government of Macedonia will facilitate the project in establishing a viable supply chain using energy crops, increasing local production of cereals and oilseeds, and offering incentives for renewable biomass electricity for the nation’s power grid. 

In turn, Ethanol Europe will create an investment plan with the intent to develop the sustainable agricultural supply chain, project design, project financing, and construction of a 100 million liter biorefinery. 

For it’s part, DuPont will license the cellulosic ethanol technology currently being commercialized at its Nevada, Iowa biorefinery, supplying the enzymes that unlock the sugars in biomass and advising on development of a sustainable agricultural supply chain.

 The stakeholders speak

“We believe the Macedonian Cellulosic Project can reassert Europe’s leadership in the bioeconomy,” said Eric Sievers, CEO, Ethanol Europe.  “This project provides a road map forward on how Europe can replace fossil fuels with biofuels that add to global food security.   The European Parliament must create a stable, renewable energy policy environment that encourages investments in advanced biofuels innovation to enable projects like this to bring economic and social as well as substantial job creation to underdeveloped regions of rural Europe.  We are very pleased to have obtained the support of a technical partner of the caliber of Du Pont for this project” 

“Today’s announcement is further acknowledgement of the viability of DuPont’s integrated biorefinery model,” said Jan Koninckx, global business director for advanced biofuels at DuPont. “This project is particularly significant for its use of purpose grown energy crops as the primary feedstock. Ethanol Europe’s success in developing a highly efficient first generation ethanol facility in Hungary has been a key factor in our decision to partner with them in introducing our technology to Europe.” 

More on Ethanol Europe

Ethanol Europe Renewables is perhaps best known for its 240 million liter corn ethanol plant called Pannonia Ethanol, which opened in 2012 as a joint venture of the Fagen and Turley families. At the time Pannonia opened, the development company announced its intention to build a second ethanol plant in Mohacs, Hungary, about an hour away from the first plant. “Hopefully, by the end of the summer we will be ready to announce our third [location], which is not in Hungary,” Sievers says.

By 2014, the tune had changed and the CEO of Ethanol Europe Renewables says Europe’s Renewable Energy Directive had killed off private sector investment in biofuels, and that only a clear and stable policy that guarantees certainty in the European market until 2030 will reverse that trend. He argued that what is needed is a zero-ILUC policy that focuses on crops that would not have been grown otherwise.

Growing momentum in Europe for advanced biofuels

So, this new direction towards cellulosic ethanol offers significant opportunities in central Europe for EER — with European struggling primarily over food-for-fuel and indirect land use change issues. In this case, utilizing purpose-grown energy crops provides a potential way around the roadblocks to investment that have grown around the first-generation feedstocks such as corn and rapeseed in the EU.

The news comes just hours after Italian government created a 0.6% advanced biofuels blending mandate by 2018, the first in Europe to set up such a policy to boost demand for next generation fuels. That figure will increase to 1% by 2022. Beta Renewables produces 75 million liters per year at its facility in Crescentino and the country expects three more cellulosic ethanol plants to come online in southern Italy during the next year.

And it follows news from last week that Biochemtex and Beta Renewables announced an agreement with Energochemica SE for the construction of a 16.5 million gallon (55,000 ton per year) cellulosic ethanol plant. The plant, which will be constructed in Strazske, Slovak Republic, will also generate power and steam. The project is commencing immediately and the start-up of the plant is anticipated for the first half of 2017. The plant will utilize non-food biomass as its feedstock and is expected to deliver “cost-competitive ethanol” according to the project sponsors.

For cellulosic fuels, the greenhouse gas emissions savings are substantial. DuPont noted  that GHG savings from the Macedonian Cellulosic Plant’s ethanol could exceed 100% under the methodology of the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive, “all while having no adverse impacts on food security”.

The Bottom Line

Since the technologies have been coming along for some time, it would be overstating it to suggest that cellulosic fuels are a new direction for the EU — they have been hard at work on them for some time. But this certainly adds materially to the sense of momentum. Slovakia, Macedonia, and Italy — all in one month. There’s little doubt that cellulosic ethanol capacity is rising fast.