Renewable Energy Memo

Our weekly compilation of renewable energy news and information from around the web.

Synth Pop?

Our friends are BiofuelsDigest wonder if synthetic fuels will overtake biofuels in the future?  Several of the 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy this year are involved in generating fuels from synthetic means (or synethetic organisms) as an alternative to liquid fuels derived from organic matter (like ethanol).

ClimateGate or the CRUtape Letters?

Allegations of falsified science and bias have hounded climate researches over the past week as a hacked trove of emails from the University of East Anglia have demonstrated how some climate scienties falsified (or at least embellished) their findings on climate data in order to make global warming from anthropogenic carbon dioxide appear more sinister.  After a week even the New York Times managed to cover the story, but one casualty of the brouhaha may be the biofuels industry.

For some time, biofuels advocates have emphasized the positive impact of biofuels on GHG emissions.  If the crisis of confidence in global climate change sparked by the East Anglia emails has blowback, some of it could hit the biofuels industry.

This would be a pity, as biofuels have so many justifications (sustainability, energy independence, and pure efficiency) that the potential link to climate chantge and GHGs just isn’t necessary to make out a case in favor of biofuels.

MSW to Ethanol Plant Planned

Ethanol Producer magazine is reporting that the former Xethanol LLC ethanol production facility in Blairstown, Iowa, has been purchased by Fiberight LLC and will soon be producing cellulosic ethanol at a demonstration scale. The company recently acquired the shuttered plant for a mere $1.65 million and plans to convert it to handle municipal solid waste (MSW), marking another milestone in U.S. cellulosic ethanol achievements.

Fiberight has been operating a pilot-scale cellulosic facility in Virginia for the past three years and has developed a proprietary conversion process to produce cellulosic ethanol and biochemicals from MSW. “We’ve been operating in stealth mode because we don’t want to make claims until we can prove them,” CEO Craig Stuart-Paul said. He told EPM that the technology is now at the point where it can be scaled up to a commercial scale and Fiberight plans to prove that in Blairstown.

There are a few steps in Fiberight’s process that make it unique compared to other MSW-to-ethanol production methods, according to Stuart-Paul. The first is its ability to fractionate the waste stream into its many forms and then create a homogenous feedstock, which he said has been the biggest hold-up thus far in any biochemical project from waste. Secondly, the company created a proprietary process that allows the recycling and re-use of enzymes, thus lowering enzyme costs to a commercially viable level. Fiberight’s process does not involve acid hydrolysis or gasification of any kind, which reduces capital and operating costs and increases the plant’s environmental friendliness. “Even in a reduced oxygen burn environment there are so many potential volatiles in the waste stream…we’re doing everything we can to avoid any kind of heat input to create volatile gases,” he said. “Our goal is to have the least amount of air and water emissions of any of the waste-to-biofuel options. We view the challenges in the future to getting more plants built will be permitting as much as anything else, so we’re trying to keep that in mind moving forward.”

Fiberight says that it plans to spend $30 million on the conversion of the mill. 

DuPont Predicts $1 Billion in Renewable Revenues in 2012

Speaking to a Hong Kong newspaper about an Asian biotechnology deal, representatives from DuPont predicted that their company will generate more than $1 billion from renewable energy in 2012. 

Biodiesel Demand to Double in Five Years

A representative of Hart Energy Consulting predicted that the global demand for biodiesel would double in the next five years.  Speaking at the Canadian Biofuels Summit in Vancouver, B.C., Tammy Klein said that  thirty countries are implementing biofuels targets in 2010 alone, with many of these countries in the developing world encouraging biofuels as a means of building energy security and improving their rural economies.

Not everything is bright in the industry, she said, however.  “Currently there is massive overcapacity on a global basis in the biodiesel industry and utilization rates are generally below 50 percent,” she added. Current global biodiesel capacity is already large enough to supply the demand projected for 2015 of 10 billion gallons per year.

Currently, 30 countries worldwide are blending biodiesel, with the typical B5 beginning to inch upward. Several countries in Europe are moving towards B7, with Brazil moving towards higher blends and Indonesia considering B10. In 2009, developing countries represented 17 percent of biodiesel demand and almost 50 percent of global supply. That is expected to grow to 42.6 percent of biodiesel demand and 59.2 percent of global supply by 2015. Much of that demand among developing countries will be for domestic use, she added. African nations are looking towards biofuels for job creation, economic development and domestic energy supply and are not likely to become international players. In the Asia-Pacific region, the big four—Indonesia, Malaysia, China and the Philippines—represent 74 percent of biodiesel demand in the region. Brazil is likely to produce biodiesel to satisfy its internal markets and continue to raise blending limits to absorb capacity.

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