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Category Archives: Bioenergy
White Lists: A Proactive Approach to Risk Reduction for the Bioenergy Industry
As a result, an entrepreneurial industry is emerging focused on identifying bioenergy crops that will help fill the gap. However, one risk associated with the species and genotypes under development is their potential, once planted over vast acreages across multiple environments, to become established pests beyond the cultivation site. The U.S. has multiple examples, from kudzu to hydrilla to tamarisk, of plant species intentionally introduced for agriculture, forage, erosion control or horticulture that have become invasive. These harmful invaders represent fewer than 10 percent of species that have moved beyond their native range, but their spread has impacted agricultural production, navigation and biodiversity. These species now require extensive, expensive — and often carbon-based — control efforts.
These harmful invaders share many characteristics with bioenergy crops: highly productive with little need for irrigation or fertilization over a broad range of environments, rapidly regrowing after harvest, and having few pests. While these benefits are valuable in a bioenergy crop, it is important to consider the potential invasiveness of these species to avoid the risk of creating one environmental problem as we attempt solve another.
To reduce the potential that a biofuel crop will become invasive, scientists are using risk assessment tools that can screen non-native plant species prior to investment in cultivation. These screening tools allow for commerce in valuable, non-invasive species, while excluding the species that cause damage. This preventative approach is well established in the U.S., where we have long-standing national and state regulatory policies to prevent impacts of non-native species to agricultural productivity, and more recently, natural areas. The current tools have been demonstrated to accurately distinguish more than 90 percent of harmful plant invaders from non-invaders.
My colleagues and I have used one such risk assessment tool to evaluate the potential invasiveness of 120 plants under consideration or cultivation as bioenergy feedstocks, published recently in BioEnergy Research. Our intent was to develop a list of species that have a low risk of becoming invasive and could be incentivized for research and cultivation. Conversely, we hope that species predicted to become harmful invaders would not be incentivized under federal or state policies. This preventative and proactive approach provides greater regulatory and financial predictability for both industry and agencies.
Of the 120 species, there were 24 species native to the U.S. identified as posing no invasion risk when cultivated within their native range. Examples of these species include honey locust, tulip poplar and switchgrass. More interestingly, more than 25 percent of the non-native species evaluated using the risk assessment tools were predicted to have low risk of becoming invasive. These species includes sugarcane, sweet sorghum, giant miscanthus (sterile cultivars), sugar beets and field mustard, along with corn and soybeans. Combined, there are 49 native and non-native species on the ‘white list’ for bioenergy crops.
As more species and cultivars are proposed to help meet the substantial renewable energy needs of our nation, more risk assessments will be necessary to identify the truly green renewable alternatives to petroleum-based energy sources. Our work demonstrates that these alternatives do exist, and we do not have to accept invasion risk as a trade-off for reducing risks associated with rising carbon dioxide levels.
Lead image: Bioenergy via Shutterstock
Are UK Renewable Energy Contracts Hurting Consumers?
“The department argued that the early contracts were necessary to ensure continued investment, but its own quantified economic case shows no clear net benefit from awarding the contracts early,” said Margaret Hodge, chair of the committee and a member of Parliament for the opposition Labour Party. “If the department had used price competition, it should have led to lower energy prices for consumers.”
The Department of Energy Climate Change awarded the so- called “Final Investment Decision Enabling for Renewables” contracts in April to ensure certainty for investors ahead of the introduction of a permanent system of contracts planned for the end of the year. The contracts guarantee a fixed price per megawatt-hour and were meant to spur investment.
‘Chronic Underinvestment’
“This government has been dealing with a legacy of chronic underinvestment and neglect in our energy system,” Energy Secretary Ed Davey said in a statement. “To keep the lights on in British homes and businesses we needed to move quickly to secure new capacity and give investors confidence — fast.”
Five offshore wind farms, two coal-to-biomass plants and a biomass heat and power plant won the contracts. It’s “unclear” why so much was allocated to offshore wind, the most expensive technology, according to the report.
When the new contracts are brought in at the end of the year, technologies the government deems “mature” will have to compete against each other to bid for the price they want to receive for their power. Less mature technologies such as offshore wind, won’t have to bid competitively straight away.
The eight projects may produce as much as 5 percent of the U.K. total power demand in 2020. The government estimates it needs to get about 30 percent of power from renewables to meet a European Union target of deriving 15 percent of all energy from clean sources by then.
“It is not clear that these early contracts were all necessary to meet the 2020 targets,” Hodge said.
The National Audit Office, which scrutinizes state spending on behalf of parliament, said in June the contracts may have been too generous to developers and not worth the risk to taxpayers.
Copyright 2014 Bloomberg
Lead image: Contract via Shutterstock
DuPont’s $500 Million Biofuel Bet Expected to Pay Off
The third-largest U.S. chemical company is investing in building a biorefinery in Nevada, Iowa, that will be completed in the coming months, and on research and development for enzymes to break down corn waste into ethanol. DuPont will supply cellulosic ethanol to Procter Gamble’s Tide Coldwater liquid laundry detergent, the first commercial scaleup of its kind.
Peltz singled out the cellulosic ethanol plant as an example of the Wilmington, Delaware-based company’s “speculative and expensive corporate science projects” that have “destroyed shareholder value.” DuPont has as much as $4 billion in excess corporate costs that can be cut, the activist investor said.
Peltz first disclosed his Trian Fund Management LP’s interest in the company last year. Since then, Dupont Chief Executive Officer Ellen Kullman has announced cuts in administration, a share buyback worth $5 billion and a spinoff the company’s performance chemicals unit, a commodity business that has more volatile earnings than other segments.
Renewables Uncertainty
How quickly the plan makes a return on investment depends on whether U.S. policy makers cut the amount of renewable fuels that are blended into the the nation’s gasoline supply, said James Collins, who heads three DuPont units: Industrial Biosciences, Performance Polymers and Packaging Industrial Polymers.
“There’s been some debate about it recently,” he said.
Uncertainty means potential licencees, who will provide income by buying DuPont’s cellulosic ethanol technology to use in their own cellulosic plants, are “sitting on the sidelines,” he said.
The company is still a number of years away from being able to license as many as five new future plants, though the PG contract shows the product will have additional industrial uses outside of gasoline replacement, for which it was originally developed. The Tide Coldwater detergent has sales of $100 million in North America.
Copyright 2014 Bloomberg
Lead image: Biofuel via Shutterstock
Food For Watts: Turning Post-consumer Food Waste into Renewable Energy
Check out a photo slideshow of this project here.
The most recent of these biogas plants, the $16 million JC-Biomethane LLC project, had been in the company’s sights for more than five years. The new plant in Junction City, Oregon, which opened in mid-2013 is anaerobically digesting organic material to generate methane-rich biogas, which then fuels a generator for the production of electricity. This project carried particular importance for its founders, since they happen to live in the area. But beyond the personal connection to the region, there were other local factors that made the site an excellent location to demonstrate the potential for similar facilities across the country.
A translucent polyethylene fabric roof allows ample natural light into the building, reducing the need for artificial lighting on the operations floor. Credit: Legacy Building Solutions.
“The community here is very focused on sustainability, landfill diversion, renewable energy,” said Dean Foor, project engineer for EC Oregon and chief executive officer of JC-Biomethane. “Between federal grants, state tax credits and a $2 million contribution from the Energy Trust of Oregon, we had a good groundwork here for developing this type of project.”
While still in the development phase, the project did encounter one early wrinkle that dictated a modification to the original facility plans. The expiration of a tax incentive tied to pre-consumer food waste forced the plant to turn to post-consumer food waste as its feedstock source. This twist of fate ultimately gave JC-Biomethane the distinction of being the largest U.S. biogas plant focused exclusively on post-consumer food waste.
“The field of waste management as a whole seemed reluctant to embrace the technology of processing food waste into biogas,” said Foor. “The technology needed a push to make it happen and show its potential.”
The biggest adjustment from the change in feedstock was to the design of the receiving building. Instead of handling clean organics, JC-Biomethane would need a separator to remove contaminants from the food waste. The company also wanted to account for odor control and greater storage capacity requirements. In short, the receiving building on site would need to be much larger.
At the recommendation of Evergreen Engineering, JC-Biomethane turned to Legacy Building Solutions to provide a tension fabric building to receive waste for the plant. In contrast to traditional tension fabric structures, Legacy buildings feature a rigid frame design that utilizes structural steel I-beams, which allows the manufacturer to customize to the exact length, width and height needed.
“Essentially we modeled up the dimensions we would need to accommodate trucks making deliveries and loaders operating inside of the building,” said Foor. “We also needed space to house different equipment arrangements and hold the amount of inbound material we anticipated. The height needed for truck tipping was another consideration.”
The end result supplied was a 120 x 160 foot structure with a polyethylene roof that peaks at a height of 47 feet. The building is outfitted with Rytec high-speed fabric doors for truck entry, and also includes a two-story office complex within the envelope of the larger structure.
“We have about 3,600 square feet of office space inside the building,” said Foor. “We did some retrofitting in that area of the structure late in the process as well. Our architect worked with Legacy on a modification to provide an exposure from our offices to the western view. The whole engineering phase with Legacy was excellent. They were very responsive to our ideas and turned things around very quickly. Even the installation was fast – the whole building was erected in about seven days.”
Odor Control Technology: A First for North America
Legacy’s structural steel frame design allowed JC-Biomethane to mount equipment from the I-beams as well. The receiving building includes a special odor control system, a feature that isn’t legally required by federal or state regulations, but that Foor and others determined would be advantageous both for plant workers and neighboring businesses and residents.
The odor control system is comprised of two large hoods established over receiving areas where the food waste resides for extended periods of time. A vacuum over the area pulls in the atmospheric gases emitting from the waste and moves the contaminated air through ducting to an ozone system just outside the building. A series of 132 UV lamps create ozone, which reacts with any volatile odors and neutralizes them.
“We’re basically pooling multiple exchanges of air per hour through our building and using an ozone reaction to control odor,” said Foor. “It’s a unique application. This technology is used at biogas plants in Europe, but we don’t know of any other biogas plant in North America that has used ozone for odor treatment. We think that’s a first.”
Other Unintended Benefits
Though the fabric building was chosen primarily for its customizability and overall efficiency for the application at hand, JC-Biomethane immediately started noticing additional environmental and cost benefits from the structure.
“The fabric roof allows a lot of natural light into the building, which is a big advantage on the operations floor, since it reduces our need for artificial lighting inside,” said Foor. “It provides significant sheltering from rain, wind and cold. Even though we didn’t have it insulated, it’s still noticeably more comfortable inside during the winter. We thought it might be hot to work in during the summer, but the structure actually provides more of a shading and cooling effect.”
Earth to Cellulosic Ethanol: Glad You’re Here, Buddy, What Took so Long? Part I
The Supporters
On the one hand are the supporters — including project developers, growers, the US Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture, several foreign governments (particularly in the EU) and supporters of renewable fuels.
They point to the growing number of commercial-scale biorefineries, and the reaching of cost-competitiveness with $100 oil, as signature achievements of the renewable fuels movement.
Many of the supporters will be gathered in Hugoton, Kansas next week for the official opening of Abengoa Bioenergy’s commercial-scale cellulosic biorefinery, which at 25 millions gallons of capacity will (for a period of a few months) be the world’s largest of its type.
Typical of supporter enthusiasm is this report from the Department of Energy:
In September 2012, conversion technologies were demonstrated at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory…where scientists led pilot-scale projects for two cellulosic ethanol production processes: biochemical conversion and thermochemical conversion. Both…demonstrated process yield and operating cost…At the biochemical pilot plant, cellulosic ethanol was produced at a modeled commercial-scale cost of $2.15 per gallon — a process that was approximately $9 per gallon just a decade ago. For the thermochemical pilot plant, cellulosic ethanol was produced at a modeled commercial-scale cost of $2.05 per gallon.
The Detractors
On the other hand are ranged a number of detractors — oil companies, some environmentalists, skeptics of government RD for renewables, and mandate-hating conservatives.
Typical of their critique is a report from Jonathan Fahey of the Associated Press that ran last November:
“As refineries churn out this so-called cellulosic fuel, it has become clear, even to the industry’s allies, that the benefits remain, as ever, years away…The failure so far of cellulosic fuel is central to the debate over corn-based ethanol…Ethanol from corn has proven far more damaging to the environment than the government predicted, and cellulosic fuel hasn’t emerged as a replacement…Cellulosic makers are expected to turn out at most 6 million gallons of fuel this year, the government says. That’s enough fuel to meet U.S. demand for 11 minutes…Corn ethanol…has limited environmental benefits and some drastic side effects…Despite the mandate and government subsidies, cellulosic fuels haven’t performed. This year will be the fourth in a row the biofuels industry failed by large margins to meet required targets for cellulosic biofuels….
“The Obama administration’s annual estimates of cellulosic fuel production have proven wildly inaccurate…supporters acknowledge there is almost no chance to meet the law’s original yearly targets that top out at 16 billion gallons by 2022…expectations were simply set too high. To attract support from Washington and money from investors, the industry underestimated and understated the difficulty of turning cellulose into fuel…
Fahey continues, “The industry was also dealt a setback by the global financial crisis, which all but stopped commercial lending soon after the biofuel mandates were established in 2007…Hundreds of companies failed that had attracted hundreds of millions of dollars from venture capitalists and government financing.”
You’ve Come a Long Ways, Baby
Part of the excitement around competitive-cost cellulosic biofuels is the magnitude of the effort and the achievement. Just a few years ago, the projected cost per gallon was $9.00. Just a few years ago, a kilogram was a tough quantity to find produced in the United States.
A Problem of Targets and Language
One of the biggest confusions over the Renewable Fuel Standard is the language of the “cellulosic mandate”. It’s not much of a mandate, at the end of the day. Congress set a maximum target of 21 billion gallons of advanced (that is, no-corn ethanol) fuel by 2022, which included biodiesel, all other forms of advanced fuels that EPA qualified, and cellulosic fuels.
DuPont’s Nevada cellulosic biofuels plant, as of earlier this year. The core technology and fermenter units can be seen at center; at left center, biomass intake; at left, storage and distillation
The maximum target for cellulosic was 16 billion gallons by 2022 — but it was specifically tied back to actual capacity levels, given that the fuel was, in 2007, only available in labs. EPA was required to reset the mandate each year to actual production volumes.
In other words, no production, no mandate. It’s not exactly right to say that the Congress “mandated” the blending of 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels in 2022. It is true to say that Congress intended to mandate that, if the industry produced the volumes, Congress would require obligated parties (such as oil refiners and marketers) to blend the (competing) fuels into their petroleum fuels, or pay for waiver credits. Which is to say, if the detractors could come up with some way of frightening the heck out of investors and otherwise frustrate efforts to build capacity, the mandate would disappear.