SmartMoney:Designer Genes, Obama Transition Team - URGENT APPEAL on Global ENERGY and MORE

The exports of Venezuelan biodiesel decreased by fully one third in the month of October, 2008 according to an article on the web site New Energy Finance as a direct result of the closing of the "splash'n'dash" tax loophole in the USA. Some people got hit fairly hard by the "economic downturn" (aka the worldwide credit crisis), but few of us have suffered a full third loss of business.

John Melo, of Amyris on the other hand is a happy man these days. His company, backed by some of the smartest of smart money (including Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield and Byers; and Khosla Ventures) is about to get EPA certification on a small pilot plant which produces a diesel biofuel from sugar cane using "synthetic biology" microbes with designer genes specifically customized to do the job. Projections in the article on the Cleantech.com website indicate that they expect to be able to produce the fuel for about US$2 per gallon. This small pilot facility will only be capable of producing about 2.4 million gallons a year. It is planned to only be used to produce amounts for testing and certifications. However Amyris also have deals with Brazilian companies to co-produce fuels from sugar cane in their country too. By 2011, according to Melo, the company should be producing about 200 million gallons and at that point they expect to be making a profit. Although they seem to have (at least temporarily) abandoned previously announced plans for a bio-gasoline, they do plan to produce some form of bio-jet fuel, as well as the specialty chemicals already making them US$1 per gallon. A second, larger, pilot plant (though still less than 100 square meters) is being constructed in Brazil at a cost "less than" US$10 million.

For those of you who may follow the link to the video in the section below, I will apologize in advance for poor production values. The tool I used was not entirely up to the task I set it, but the user was not yet a master of the tool either, so I take full blame. I hope, however you may find the information interesting.

Here follows a note I "sent" to President-elect Obama's transition team (through his new website at http://www.change.gov/ (as well as a couple of alternative routes. I think it important that the new administration, even at this early stage of planning NEEDS to get the concept of Integrated Green Energy Strategy, because if they do, it seems to me that economic recovery , jobs and infrastructure as well as climate change will all be able to be addressed in a "best-bang-for-the-buck" manner.

We need ... an INTEGRATED GREEN ENERGY STRATEGY for the infrastructure, jobs, economic recovery, renewable energy/climate change/energy independence to get maximum value for every dollar invested!

To the Obama Transition Team,

Whatever your plans for immediate help for our national infrastructure, jobs creation, and energy needs (both green and independence of foreign sources)

STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING, PLEASE! THINK AHEAD!

House Majority Whip, Congressman James Clyburn of South Carolina has recently and suddenly been prominent in the news and political commentary media, and while he is not a member of the official transition team, his support in moving legislation through Congress will be important, so I hope he is being informed as to thinking in the transition team's planning. If that is true then certainly Congressman Clyburn, and apparently the advisors to the transition team appear to have been wearing short-sighted glasses that may not only constrict, but potentially doom to failure the promise of re-tooling our economy around the expansion of green energy capabilities.

We must not lose sight of the fact that climate change is a global issue and will require vision of global scope to bring to successful resolutions. That means we have to change our thinking about how energy is produced and used. Smart Grid transmission, diversified generation, diversified energy technologies are nearly accepted as a given in consideration of planning, but the scale of these necessary changes is seen as daunting because they are so vast and ultimately capital intensive. Those points, however, should not be confused with "costly" nor with a need for completed solutions before a pebble is moved in their construction and implementation begins. We need to learn the lesson of the computer industry that some portions of technology are going to be already obsolete before they can be put into service, which is NOT a reason to delay, but to the contrary adds urgency to the argument that they must be begun TODAY, and without delay.

Moreover we don't need to plan for simply "more" power plants, or wind farms or concentrated solar arrays. We need to reconsider the roles of such fragments in an overall energy strategy. We don't just need "electric cars", but we need electric hybrids like the Chevy Volt to be FLEX-FUEL CAPABLE, and preferably available as, or at least adaptable to, clean fuels like compressed natural gas burning engines for the internal combustion engine that recharges the battery while on the road.

But we also need to begin thinking about energy as a CLOSED LOOP ENERGY CYCLE. We need to turn waste streams into energy feedstock. We need multiple methods and technologies to take on tasks like reducing (to the point of near extinction) municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills. Methane recovery is not enough. We need gasification, thermal depolymerization, catalytic depolymerization and more to tackle this huge problem. But we also need to see these solutions as a part of an INTEGRATED GREEN ENERGY strategy.

YES, we do want immediate action on jobs creation and infrastructure remediation, but we don't just want MORE lanes on our freeways, we NEED more communications capacity to allow more administrative work to be telecommuting-based to get cars off of the freeways. We need better solutions for trucking like mandated biodiesel mix targets that reduce both carbon dioxide and particulate pollutions, but we also need to improve container handling at railroad terminals, as well as system wide rail bed and track upgrades. Long haul via rail makes even the concept of a trucking CAFÉ standard laughable the fuel economies are so much better, but it is only practical if we can envision computer guided (even robotic ?) loading and dispatch systems that can make the transition from road to track to road a practical and economic reality.

Moreover we need to be conscious that worldwide solutions to climate change are not burdensome chores, but marvelous opportunities to share new technologies that MUST become part of our globally necessary interdependency. By sharing, exporting and promoting new green energy independent technologies for both large and small scale communities, we create opportunities for local economic development. There is no market for computer chips or iPods in towns and villages without electricity. But the same town with green energy from local feedstocks can power a pump to get more reliable water, which allows for sanitary sewers, which provides better health for the children, whose education is enhanced by computers, televisions and distance learning. Indeed those children might come to reasonably expect that they themselves may soon be telecommuting workers for government jobs in the capital of their state or province.

YES, we need improvements to sewage treatment plants all over America, but we should recognize that we could be piping carbon dioxide from coal burning electrical generation facilities to those sewage processing plants, so that by implementing algae cultivation as the tertiary stage of water treatment, the algae we are growing can be processed into biodiesel, and alcohol, and cattle feed or it can be treated as biomass and gasified as fuel for the electric generating stations that currently burn fossil fuels. This is just one example of how changing perspective considering a project to be a sewage processing standards or capacity upgrade can become an opportunity to create a CLOSED LOOP ENERGY CYCLE that creates more jobs and serves the environment and creates multiple kinds of locally produced green energy.

Here's a video showing this example of how to create an INTEGRATED GREEN ENERGY project that is a CLOSED LOOP ENERGY CYCLE.

http://energy.psyrk.us/press/INTEGRATEDGREENENERGY.wmv

This can, this SHOULD be a key element in the green energy, and economic recovery strategy of the Obama Administration. We are working from a core of a dozen companies trying to expand this vision to the entire world, but no country can benefit as much as the United States of America as the technology innovator that will make it all possible.

Thank you for your attention. I sincerely hope that you will keep an open mind to all of the wonderful possibilities that INTEGRATION can bring to the growth of a greener planet and of a revitalized economy for the entire world.

Sincerely,

Stafford "Doc" Williamson

Now, of course, you have to see this in the context that I place it to get the full impact. Climate change is a global crisis, and for that we need global solutions, so here is my challenge: Read the following couple of paragraphs then go to a large map of the continent of Africa (and I won't even make any rude jokes about Ms. Wasilla), and try to put 10 boxes worth of 100 pushpins into the towns you find on that map. See if you have ANY space left, and think about this:

It's ONLY a $1 BILLION !! Who's Going to Miss It?! After a $700 Billion economic "rescue package" a US$1 Billion doesn't seem like such a huge amount.

US$1 Billion could build 1,000 Biodiesel manufacturing facilities OR 1,000 basic sewage treatment facilities growing algae OR 1,000 rudimentary drainage systems/sewers (at least 10 or 20 miles worth, each) OR 1,000 electric generating facilities of about 1 Megawatt each in EACH of 1,000 African or Asian cities and town. In other words, for just $4 Billion, we could create 1000 new markets for American goods while saving lives and building a world of middle class consumers where only poverty exists now.

It is IMPORTANT as the worst offenders in overconsumption of the world's energy resources that we need solutions like substantial conversions from downtown offices to telecommuting workers, in terms of energy conservation. We need to develop renewable energy resources and get those systems implemented at home and across this country. But the answers to global problems have to happen on a global scale. That means we have to be ready to share our innovations wherever they are needed, and by so doing we can create not just a economic "recovery" but a complete global renaissance, driven as the original renaissance was, by the prosperity of middle classes becoming the norm in society, rather than the exceptions.

President-elect Obama said, recently, "I ask you to believe - not just in my ability to bring about change, but in yours."

If you feel that you support either or both of these concepts, please by all means, go to http://www.change.gov/page/s/yourvision/ and add your voice. Grab them by the collar and tell them this story, and don't let go until they have heard the news.

Oh, my gosh, I sound like an Evangelical preacher, don't I ? .... Okay, I'm embarrassed, but I am "a believer" when it comes to my faith in the new green technologies' ability to change the world, the whole world, in astounding and profound ways that will make it better for everyone on the planet, as well as for the future generations.

Love and warm wishes,

Stafford "Doc" Williamson

http://energy.psyrk.us/