Our weekly compilation of renewable energy news and information from around the Web.
50 Hottest in Bioenergy
Our friends at Biofuels Digest have closed the nominations on their 50 hottest companies in bioenergy contest. A select panel of judges will now rank the nominees. Results are expected near the end of the year.
Biodiesel Turns the Corner
A hypothetical biodiesel plant generating biodiesel from soybean oil would have been profitable in Septmeber (after six months of losses) according to Biodiesel Magazine.
More Controversy Over Indirect Land Use Charges
A new paper in the journal Science, critizes the Kyoto Treaty and other international agreements for the way they calculate carbon emissions. According to the paper, authored by a group of recognized renewable energy scientists, a better method of accounting would look at the degree to which one method of fuel generation results in few net tons of CO2 than an alternative method.
Timothy D. Searchinger, the paper’s lead author and a researcher at Princeton, argued that the generation of power from biomass is treated as an entirely non-anthropogenic source of CO2 and that this practice under-estimates the generation of emissions from biomass and bioenergy. He said, “It literally means you can chip up the world’s forests and burn them” for fuel without accounting for any effect on greenhouse gases.
An article in the Wall Street Journal traced the accounting practice back to the implementation of the Kyoto protocol, which developed a system for measuring the production of greenhouse gases. For a number of reasons, the Kyoto protocol imposed no limits on land-use emissions in developing countries. “So if a forest is cleared in Indonesia and ends up as a biofuel in Europe, Asia does not count the land-use emissions and Europe does not report the tailpipe emissions.”
Proponents of biofuels have reacted negatively to the article, as well as to early controversy over accounting for GHG emissions attributable to land-use in developing countries, by arguing that biofuels, overall, producer fewer GHGs than do fossil fuels.
The Renewable Fuels Association, a trade association for the ethanol industry, argued that “the release of CO2 from recently living organisms has no overall effect on atmospheric CO2 levels and is therefore carbon neutral because atmospheric CO2 decreases when a plant photosynthesizes, then increases back to its initial level when that carbon (in the form of a biofuel) is burned and returned to the atmosphere. In this way, biofuels “recycle” organic carbon.”
Isn’t this all a question of timing though? It’s true, as the RFA argues that biofuels “recycle” organic carbon because plans absorb CO2 from the atmosphere in the process of photosynthesis and then emit the same amount of carbon when they are combusted. Fossil fuels, however, do the same thing though over a much longer period of time.
Presumably RFA’s point is that fossil fuels that have fixed carbon in a geological resource. Once fixed, the carbon will not become a part of atmospheric CO2 unless burned. Plant life, however, are always in the midst of either fixing or releasing CO2, as CO2 would be released when dead plants are combusted or when they rot on the forest floor.
Canadian Biogas Producer Inks Feedstock Supply Deal
Ontario, Canada-based StormFisher Biogas has sealed a deal with grocery retailer Loblaw Companies Ltd. for the annual supply of 15,000 metric tons (16,500 tons) of organic waste to fuel its $15 million biogas plant in London, Ontario.
The agreement with Loblaw, a subsidiary of Canadian food distributor giant George Weston Ltd., is StormFisher’s biggest deal since last year’s announcement of plans to construct up to 30 anaerobic digestion plants across North America over the next five years. The plants will be funded by $350 million from private equity company Denham Capital Management, and range from 2.8 to 5 megawatts
The London facility is the company’s flagship project, slated to commence operations in late 2010. The 210,000 MMbtu/2.8 megawatt plant will require approximately 140,000 metric tons (154,300 tons) of organic waste per year and be capable of powering about 2,800 homes; the amount of organic waste Loblaw will supply should be enough to power 225 homes.
The Ontario Power Authority will purchase the electricity from StormFisher through its Standard Offer Program, a feed-in tariff that was put in place in Ontario at the beginning of 2007. According to the program criteria, biogas projects under 10 megawatts are paid 11 cents per kilowatt hour.