No Climate Laws til 2010, Kenya National Biofuel Policy, DOE/USDA Grants, Recycle EVERYTHING(almost)
Stafford Williamson
November 18, 2009
No Climate Law Until 2010
Linda Fisher has a job that nobody on earth had just a few years ago. Itīs not astronaut, or nanotechnology guru, but it is one of those high paying "C" jobs, you know, the ones with "C" in the initials of the job title, and weekly salaries about the same as most of us make in a year or more. To be precise she is the Chief Sustainability Officer for DuPont. She was interviewed for a video series by Fortune which was included on the Money portion of the CNN website.
Linda Fisher probably deserves to be there, she claims she was thinking about "the environment" back when most young people of her generation were protesting the US involvement in Vietnam, so her father said, "That sounds like a nice safe field." And her brother was polite but just a little too smug claiming that Linda had found a nice "niche" for a boutique kind of little law firm, never dreaming then that it would so dominate thinking in the next 50 years and for another 50 years, in all probability too. Even compared to big brotherīs comfortable position as a corporate law lawyer, Lindaīs CSO salary is probably nothing to sneeze at. Linda also earned her stripes on the way to the executive suite spending 13 years working for the EPA, before she joined DuPont in the 1980īs.
Even though much of "sustainability" responsibilities at DuPont involve regulatory compliance, Ms. Fisher is also very involved in the marketing and is an enthusiastic supporter of DuPontīs alcohol products as transportation fuels. You would not need to be hit over the head to realize the corn version of ethanol is not a winner, but she says that their cellulosic ethanol pilot plant should be on line by 2010 with the same time frame for their biobutanol pilot plant. They are aiming, she says, for commercial production of cellulosic ethanol by 2012.
Ms. Fisher claims that she doesnīt see legislation as the primary driver toward greener industry and transportation fuels in particular, and that agriculture is demanding more and more from her company. As such she seems to indicate that it might not be a bad thing that the US has not produced any significant climate legislation prior to Copenhagen. She suggests that this may result in a softer outcome but that it will likely lead to a subsequent conference in which more substantial agreements are made that will be more significant.
National Energy Policy [Kenya]
ENERGY Permanent Secretary Mr. Nyoike says the governmentīs strategy is to fast-track development of biodiesel for that country. "About five per cent reduction in imported diesel can be achieved by 2012 through substitution with biodiesel. To achieve this, blending fossil diesel with biodiesel can begin with five per cent as a starting point," he said recently. Emphasis has been placed on Jatropha curcas as a non-food oil source, especially because it can grow with minimum input of water or nutrients in poor soil unsuitable for other agriculture. RJO, or raw jatropha oil, can be used to run most stationary diesel engines without any modifications to the engines (at least in most cases, which is consistent with Rudolf Dieselīs original design that was intended to run on raw peanut oil from America). Stationary diesel engines are widely used throughout Africa both for industrial power and for generating electricity to power homes as well as commerce and industry. A policy which results in making locally grown materials available as fuel for these literal "engines of industry" could have a transformative effect on Africaīs productivity. Mr. Nyoike says they have established the Kenya Bio-Diesel Association to act as purchasing points throughout the country, to act as collection points for shipping the raw material to oil pressing facilities, although some of them may also offer "oil extraction" capabilities locally as well.
I think that the overall strategy needs refining. Local crushing and oil extraction will likely be the most effective means of handling this situation. Oil seed presses are not that expensive and keeping a "transportation carbon footprint" out of the equation as much as possible would be desirable. The current government view seems solely focused on the energy security and economic development issues. Climate change has to be a priority too, and keeping production and consumption local would be desirable from that point of view, too. As to blending RJO with fossil fuel diesel they acknowledge that blends of B20 would be acceptable, but in the older engines in much of Africa, even higher blends are probably practical as well. Unfortunately, quality control in blending RJO with fossil diesel is likely to be problematic so those operations would benefit from some degree of centralization and consolidation. But at least equally unfortunately, dishonesty and corruption are rampant in many underdeveloped areas of the world (not just Africa) and the more hands and stages the RJO passes through the higher the possibility of tampering and contamination too. There are distinct advantages to putting such things in the hands of locals who are directly responsible to their neighbors, and forming cooperatives among growers, crushers and refiners so that they realize that they are responsible for their own communityīs welfare and that of the future generations as well.
DOE/USDA Grants
I am not going to try to catalogue them all, but quite a few companies will be benefiting in some small way from the US$24 million in grants from DOE and USDA recently announced. I was a bit surprised to hear that among them was Velocycs, because despite raising massive amounts of capital from investors (reportedly US$100 million or more) the USDA has seen fit to grant them yet another US$2.65 million to "improve" their micro channel reactor system that was intended to be an advanced version of the Fischer-Tropsch process.
Exelus is another company working on a "drop-in" biofuel replacement for gasoline using customized catalysts at relatively low temperatures to convert cellulosic materials to a form of alcohol. They received US$1.2 million from DOE to keep working on their process. They show a diagram of the rather simple progression of steps to create their fuel product that indicates a "deoxygenation" stage (using hydrogen), as well as a logarithmic scaled grid chart that indicates gasification takes place at or near 1000 degrees centigrade but takes only a few seconds. They contrast that to enzymatic processes on cellulose that take time frames in the 100,000īs of thousands of second but at very modest temperatures (essentially room temperature) and compare those to their process which they plunk in the mid range of both time and temperature being somewhere near 200 degrees centrigrade and perhaps 800 to 1700 seconds of processing time.
Also on the beneficiary list was GEVO (backed by Khosla Ventures among others) who will receive US$1.78 million from the USDA to further develop a yeast strain licensed from Cargill for its refining process that turns sugars from cellulose and hemicellulos into bio-isobutanol (essentially biobutanol). GEVOīs has announced a strategy to purchase closed ethanol facilities to convert them to their process.
Universities in Tennessee, Minnesota, and Oklahoma State each got substantial grants to study possible feedstocks ranging from switch grasses to the forests of the Great Lakes region as sources for cellulosic materials for future fuels.
Happy Thoughts
Recycling, especially municipally sponsored home collection recycling is WONDERFUL ! Of course there are aspects that could be improved, like using CNG-electric hybrid vehicles for materials collection, but thatīs a little like complaining that on your date with the Prom Queen she wore an Yves St. Laurent gown that clashed with the upholstery in the limousine. But honestly, Iīve been a little disappointed up until now because our city recycling collection was limited to only those plastics of category 1 or 2. Cardboard packaging could only be the kind that was not treated to be water resistant, and no shredded business paper, whole pages only. All that changed this week, and nobody told us.
The really happy part is that all plastics marked with the triangular recycling symbol with numbers from 1 through 7 are welcome. Coated cardboard is also kosher, and shredded paper is allowed provided it is packaged in a clear plastic bag. Somehow adding "packaging" to make recycling materials acceptable seems counter-productive, but hey, the broader the program the better as far as we are concerned, and we are grateful that we had heard a "rumor" that eventually the old restrictive categories would be expanded so we peeked at the cityīs web site, and discovered that the new policies were already in effect. Itīs not often that any government exceeds our expectations for getting good things done, so, CONGRATULATIONS to the whole of the administration of the City of Peoria, Arizona. Well done.
Love and warm wishes,
Sincerely,
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
http://daochienergy.com
Linda Fisher has a job that nobody on earth had just a few years ago. Itīs not astronaut, or nanotechnology guru, but it is one of those high paying "C" jobs, you know, the ones with "C" in the initials of the job title, and weekly salaries about the same as most of us make in a year or more. To be precise she is the Chief Sustainability Officer for DuPont. She was interviewed for a video series by Fortune which was included on the Money portion of the CNN website.
Linda Fisher probably deserves to be there, she claims she was thinking about "the environment" back when most young people of her generation were protesting the US involvement in Vietnam, so her father said, "That sounds like a nice safe field." And her brother was polite but just a little too smug claiming that Linda had found a nice "niche" for a boutique kind of little law firm, never dreaming then that it would so dominate thinking in the next 50 years and for another 50 years, in all probability too. Even compared to big brotherīs comfortable position as a corporate law lawyer, Lindaīs CSO salary is probably nothing to sneeze at. Linda also earned her stripes on the way to the executive suite spending 13 years working for the EPA, before she joined DuPont in the 1980īs.
Even though much of "sustainability" responsibilities at DuPont involve regulatory compliance, Ms. Fisher is also very involved in the marketing and is an enthusiastic supporter of DuPontīs alcohol products as transportation fuels. You would not need to be hit over the head to realize the corn version of ethanol is not a winner, but she says that their cellulosic ethanol pilot plant should be on line by 2010 with the same time frame for their biobutanol pilot plant. They are aiming, she says, for commercial production of cellulosic ethanol by 2012.
Ms. Fisher claims that she doesnīt see legislation as the primary driver toward greener industry and transportation fuels in particular, and that agriculture is demanding more and more from her company. As such she seems to indicate that it might not be a bad thing that the US has not produced any significant climate legislation prior to Copenhagen. She suggests that this may result in a softer outcome but that it will likely lead to a subsequent conference in which more substantial agreements are made that will be more significant.
National Energy Policy [Kenya]
ENERGY Permanent Secretary Mr. Nyoike says the governmentīs strategy is to fast-track development of biodiesel for that country. "About five per cent reduction in imported diesel can be achieved by 2012 through substitution with biodiesel. To achieve this, blending fossil diesel with biodiesel can begin with five per cent as a starting point," he said recently. Emphasis has been placed on Jatropha curcas as a non-food oil source, especially because it can grow with minimum input of water or nutrients in poor soil unsuitable for other agriculture. RJO, or raw jatropha oil, can be used to run most stationary diesel engines without any modifications to the engines (at least in most cases, which is consistent with Rudolf Dieselīs original design that was intended to run on raw peanut oil from America). Stationary diesel engines are widely used throughout Africa both for industrial power and for generating electricity to power homes as well as commerce and industry. A policy which results in making locally grown materials available as fuel for these literal "engines of industry" could have a transformative effect on Africaīs productivity. Mr. Nyoike says they have established the Kenya Bio-Diesel Association to act as purchasing points throughout the country, to act as collection points for shipping the raw material to oil pressing facilities, although some of them may also offer "oil extraction" capabilities locally as well.
I think that the overall strategy needs refining. Local crushing and oil extraction will likely be the most effective means of handling this situation. Oil seed presses are not that expensive and keeping a "transportation carbon footprint" out of the equation as much as possible would be desirable. The current government view seems solely focused on the energy security and economic development issues. Climate change has to be a priority too, and keeping production and consumption local would be desirable from that point of view, too. As to blending RJO with fossil fuel diesel they acknowledge that blends of B20 would be acceptable, but in the older engines in much of Africa, even higher blends are probably practical as well. Unfortunately, quality control in blending RJO with fossil diesel is likely to be problematic so those operations would benefit from some degree of centralization and consolidation. But at least equally unfortunately, dishonesty and corruption are rampant in many underdeveloped areas of the world (not just Africa) and the more hands and stages the RJO passes through the higher the possibility of tampering and contamination too. There are distinct advantages to putting such things in the hands of locals who are directly responsible to their neighbors, and forming cooperatives among growers, crushers and refiners so that they realize that they are responsible for their own communityīs welfare and that of the future generations as well.
DOE/USDA Grants
I am not going to try to catalogue them all, but quite a few companies will be benefiting in some small way from the US$24 million in grants from DOE and USDA recently announced. I was a bit surprised to hear that among them was Velocycs, because despite raising massive amounts of capital from investors (reportedly US$100 million or more) the USDA has seen fit to grant them yet another US$2.65 million to "improve" their micro channel reactor system that was intended to be an advanced version of the Fischer-Tropsch process.
Exelus is another company working on a "drop-in" biofuel replacement for gasoline using customized catalysts at relatively low temperatures to convert cellulosic materials to a form of alcohol. They received US$1.2 million from DOE to keep working on their process. They show a diagram of the rather simple progression of steps to create their fuel product that indicates a "deoxygenation" stage (using hydrogen), as well as a logarithmic scaled grid chart that indicates gasification takes place at or near 1000 degrees centigrade but takes only a few seconds. They contrast that to enzymatic processes on cellulose that take time frames in the 100,000īs of thousands of second but at very modest temperatures (essentially room temperature) and compare those to their process which they plunk in the mid range of both time and temperature being somewhere near 200 degrees centrigrade and perhaps 800 to 1700 seconds of processing time.
Also on the beneficiary list was GEVO (backed by Khosla Ventures among others) who will receive US$1.78 million from the USDA to further develop a yeast strain licensed from Cargill for its refining process that turns sugars from cellulose and hemicellulos into bio-isobutanol (essentially biobutanol). GEVOīs has announced a strategy to purchase closed ethanol facilities to convert them to their process.
Universities in Tennessee, Minnesota, and Oklahoma State each got substantial grants to study possible feedstocks ranging from switch grasses to the forests of the Great Lakes region as sources for cellulosic materials for future fuels.
Happy Thoughts
Recycling, especially municipally sponsored home collection recycling is WONDERFUL ! Of course there are aspects that could be improved, like using CNG-electric hybrid vehicles for materials collection, but thatīs a little like complaining that on your date with the Prom Queen she wore an Yves St. Laurent gown that clashed with the upholstery in the limousine. But honestly, Iīve been a little disappointed up until now because our city recycling collection was limited to only those plastics of category 1 or 2. Cardboard packaging could only be the kind that was not treated to be water resistant, and no shredded business paper, whole pages only. All that changed this week, and nobody told us.
The really happy part is that all plastics marked with the triangular recycling symbol with numbers from 1 through 7 are welcome. Coated cardboard is also kosher, and shredded paper is allowed provided it is packaged in a clear plastic bag. Somehow adding "packaging" to make recycling materials acceptable seems counter-productive, but hey, the broader the program the better as far as we are concerned, and we are grateful that we had heard a "rumor" that eventually the old restrictive categories would be expanded so we peeked at the cityīs web site, and discovered that the new policies were already in effect. Itīs not often that any government exceeds our expectations for getting good things done, so, CONGRATULATIONS to the whole of the administration of the City of Peoria, Arizona. Well done.
Love and warm wishes,
Sincerely,
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
http://daochienergy.com
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