The Big Biofuels Blog

The WTO meeting in Bali from 8 December, could (theoretically) lead to a reduction in tariffs on biofuels and also support for farmers. According to the GuardianUnlimited, reporting a story from Reuters.

[President] Bush said on Wednesday the United States' guiding principle in the Bali talks would be to find a way to reduce greenhouse gases "that does not undermine economic growth or prevent nations from delivering greater prosperity for their people."

It will be interesting to see if this notion of "delivering greater prosperity for their people" extends beyond the US (or even Iowa).

The US looks set to tax imports on the basis of the amount of carbon that they contain, according to Paul Hodges in Chemicals and the Economy. Paul is pretty focused on chemicals, but clearly coal would be pretty heavily taxed, but the so should crude oil and possibly ethanol. It will be interesting to see how imports of those two commodities fair under the new proposal.

Looking at the biofuel challenge to the agricultural supply chain.Here are some soundbites from Paul's presentation that caught my attention

As a farmer we harness the environment we produce the only truly renewable raw materials. Biofuels are "one of the brighter areas".

FAO calculated 41.88m km2 land is available 15.06 km are in use 0.11m km being used of biofuels.

We can genuinely hit the UK targets from production because there is set aside and fallow and because we are exporting a large area in wheat. We are faced with CAP reforms that are changing the way we look at production, not linked directly to support, have to be market based.

Set aside to zero initiated by NFU partly because of new biofuels market. 260m tonne cereals 4.5m were going to biofuels, they're not a driving factor. 166m tonne to animal feed is

Only sensible way forward is to find a new market biofuels is one of these, the alternative is having land an rural economies doing absolutely nothing.

Media perception how communicate food vs fuel argument because of rising costs sustainability land conversion and media cost of carbon savings.

Its not about one solution its about a mix, potential of cutting co2 down by 20% if we get it right. Global energy use in its current form is not sustainable.

Brazilians want to make ethanol but domestic consumption is rising fast so it won't be a cheap feedstock it is about sustainability standards.

We'd like to see far more aspirational targets. IEA 7% by 2030 is achievable. 1st generation biofuels as a first step. 1st gen bridge to 2nd possibly.Doing nothing is not adoption when transport fuel growing by 40% over a 10 year period.

How to get gold standard prove that we have sustainability that we talk about? In the UK farm assurance (little red tractor) is a basis to work from. 90% of cereal area covered with a few tweaks this can actually deliver substantiated records that show we do what it says on the tin.

The UK consumed 192 000 tonnes biodesel 2006
with capacity for 445 000 tonnes
07 capacity 6576 000 tonnes

Media perception don't want easy pick up with NGOs selling subjective stories. We are engaged in the long term. Cereal price increases and food security food vs fuel. Productive farming is vital for society.

Subsidies why different? History production cycles up to 1 and 2 ww unsuported agriculture and decline. Culture then need value to it. Subsidies are like insuranc. For example 6-8 months ago scrapping intervention, but have somewhere to offload milling wheat. Commission were keen to see that scrapped. 14m tonnes in 05 last year all left intervention but off loaded it into the market keeping 20m tonne short fall and no intervention stocks you have seen a 100% increase in cereals.

This was an interesting presentation with good cogent arguments for producing an annual surplus of grain. I was less convinced by the argument that we can simply use the excess grain that is exported at the moment unless we can significantly increase the volume of grain grown to match demand for fuel and possible future shocks whihc could drive up the price.

Mark Lewis Technical Director of the North East Process Industries Cluster spoke about the opportunities for bioresources in the North East of England at the 1st ICIS Bioresources Summit.
How to integrate the process to make biofuels and create value out of the other streams.
Biorefineries will be large but limited by the ability to get biomas into it.They are likely to use high temperature and some flexible process. use all of the biomass to produce platform chemicals and some speciality grades.
They're in Teeside, Humberside and North West England, as well as Grangemouth, Scotland. We should do it for energy security, climate change, to make new products and potentially reduce cost of production and to create wealth.
The North East of England is good because supply chains are developing for rape and other crops with North West biofuels, along with wood recycling, also a port for imports and exports as well as companies investing in biofuels. Good science base. Significant private investment from big firms. Biofuels Corporation has Europe's largest biofuels plant 250 000 tonne/year and others also renewable energy.
Existing chains olefins, aromatics synthesis gas on Teeside, which is integrated.
Going to see an industry based on lignocellulosic fermentation and a chemicals industry within 20 years.
Eventually, new fuels, new energy sources, new feedstocks and possibly a new cluster producing chemicals from biomass.
Next? Work with chemicals and fuel companies as well as farming, food Regional Development Agencies and Universities.
They have set up a regional study and are proposing making liquids from biomass bio oil or torrefraction to make a char (I'll find out what that process is) by 2020 1m tonne synthetic fuel and chem from 7m tonne biomasss about £1bn investment targeting aviation fuels.
The challenge is building the demand to do it to build a consortium, but having the vision gives us some hope of getting it.

I like getting away to conferences, its good to have your pre-occupations tested in by friendly questioning in a supportive atmosphere. This (OK so I work for ICIS) was a good conference,and its local focus helped.
I like the North East Process Industry Consortium's plan to try and build a 1m tonne/year biofuels and biochemcials plant by 2020, mentioned in my earlier post. It is a vision; it probably won't happen in quite the way that Stan and Mark outline, and they dont really expect it to come together in the way they propose. But the point is it is something substantial to aim for, and that kind of beacon project could light the way for others in the UK and across Europe.

Splash dash and a lot of biodiesel pain European Biofuel producers are considering legal action through the European Commission to halt they see as US biofuel producers dumping biofuel within the EU. Exports from the US gain

There's an international biochar conference coming up between 8-10 September 2008, its in Newcastle, UK. I might go along. I'm interested in what the effect of removing cellulose could have on soil structure should cellulosic biofuels take off. This conference aims to discuss the effects of adding a carbon char to the soil, which seems to be pretty positive.

High soy prices are taking their toll on US biodiesel producers in Delaware and in Wisconsin, according to Domestic fuel. In both of those states, Biofuel plants have opened or are being built with help from state or local funding and have closed or construction has stopped because no one thought to do the sums if the price of feedstock increased. Which doesn't cover either the companies or the local lenders in glory. Biofuels are a more than a warm cosy glow that win local law makers votes. They are products sold in markets and markets will have their way.
If there is a bright spot in this (and it is pretty dim) , by funding the plant's construction the local authorities will have stimulated the local economy.

D1 Oils is saying that biodiesel from Jatropha is different from biodiesel derived from other plant sources at the WTO meeting in Bali,and that not all biodiesel should be tarred with the same brush by NGOs, according to Biofuel Review.

There's a lot to be said for the D1 Oils business approach which seems to be based around free informed consent with growers, which may be at odds with other more unscrupulous producers. And if the D1 approach, which is to be integrated from the soil to the tank pays off perhaps it will be a model so compelling that other firms will follow it. One dis advantage of the D1 approach is that the firm is tied to Jatopha for a large part of its production. One big big advantage though is that because it is integrated it can capture value at a number of points along the chain from planting and harvesting Jatropha to refining and potentially blending.

Karl Watkin Founder and Non-Executive Director of D1 Oils said:

“Environmental and development NGOs are right to be critical of soya and palm that are produced unsustainably in areas such as Brazil and Indonesia", said Watkin. "There’s no point in an energy crop that worsens the problem by destroying forest or grassland. Because these attacks don’t differentiate the sustainable biofuel crops like jatropha from the less sustainable like soya and palm, the NGO campaigns are undermining the industry as a whole. We are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater."

Edinburgh's Napier University is opening a biofuel research centre, which the University says is the first of its kind in the UK. It is being headed by Dr Martin Tangney

Shell has teamed up with HR Biopetroleum of Hawaii to try and produce biodiesel from algae, according to Pacific Business News

Products like biofuel from algae would fit with Shell's stated biofuel aims.

The city of San Francisco is collecting waste veg oil from restaurants in the city and turning it into biofuel. The programme started on 20 November, the same day the city banned plastic bags. It builds on some of the ideas, in principle at least that were being discussed when I was in San Francisco earlier this year. What do the freelance biofuelers think?

Dynamotive is building a wood chip to biofuel plant in Willow Springs, Missouri. The plan will cost around $24m and will use fast pyrolysis to convert wood waste into bioOil. It will be capable of converting 200 tons per day of wood by-products and residues from nearby sawmills into 34,000 gallons per day of BioOil, according to GizMag

China is going to support growers of non-food derived biofuels. The Ministry of Finance will pay farmers a 3,000 yuan (about $405) subsidy for each hectare of forest products for biofuels, such as ethanol and bio-diesel, and 2,700 yuan for each hectare of crops for biofuels, according to Xinhuanet.

China has set a target of an annual production capacity of 2 million tons of ethanol by 2010 and 10 million tons by 2020.

The power wasted in left-over food is outlined in this story on Far East Gizmos, a number of Tokyo's schools will be using waste food to generate power... Perhaps we could do the same with waste from supermarkets over the Chirstmas period?

What is it about fast cars? Anyway I've stumbled on something called A1-Grand Prix, which pits teams of national drivers against each other in identical cars, and they're going to be fuelling them with a 30% blend of ethanol in 2008, according to Greenbang. The mixture is almost certainly called "Hiperflo" E30, sourced from sugar beet in Europe and produced specifically for the series by racing fuels specialist blender Petrochem Carless.
There was some hoopla in the US a while ago when the Indy Car people said they were adding 10% ethanol, which sounds impressive until you find that before that they were using mixtures of ethanol and methanol, chemically its cousin, for years. Slapping 30% ethanol into gas will be more of a challenge for engine builders to cope with, I guess.

As the harvest is almost entirely in around the world. Its perhaps worth looking at how the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation sees this year's harvest The good news for North American ethanol producers is that there was a bumper corn crop this year, the bad news is that demand is high and so are prices.

Export prices of maize that have remained volatile since February, when they reached a ten-year high of US$177 per tonne, have risen in the past two months. The United States yellow maize No 2 (Gulf, f.o.b) averaged US$171 per tonne in November, US$5 per tonne more than in the same period a year ago. Prices of maize reacted to recent downward revisions of the 2007 world coarse grains output, following completion of the maize harvest in the United States, which however is still a record crop. Despite this high level of production, the market remains tight mainly reflecting the continuing expansion of demand from the bio-fuel industry in the United States.

The FAO adds:

Strong maize prices, combined with shortages of feed wheat, have pushed up the values of most other feed grains.

Which is what you'd expect as people try to substitute cheaper grains for more expensive ones.

US ethanol production at 5 billion gals last year almost exactly matches the volume of gasoline used by US drivers waiting in traffic jams in 2003, according to No Impact Man.

So that's 20% of the US corn crop spent keeping people's engines ticking over.

Honda is looking to flex fuel options as it plans approaches to its product range that will help it meet new Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, according to the Wall St Journal today.

As you might have guessed I'm in favour of more fuel efficient cars, especially in the US, and I'm pretty keen to get hold of the standards when they are available. Hattip to Automotive Digest which has more detail.

A bill passed by the US House of Representatives yesterday calls for a significant US Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency improvements which could mean carmakers in the US must produce a range of cars with an average fuel efficiency of 35 miles/gal by 2020, which is a 40% improvement over current levels. The proposed legislation also calls for 36 billion gallons ethanol for fuel blending by the same time. This information from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner which adds

The bill sets separate standards for cars and light trucks and SUVs, which Stevens argued was important for Western states like Alaska where pickups are still widely used despite high gas prices. The compromise would establish a system that assigns mileage targets based on the size of the vehicle.

There is more detail on ICIS news' article US Congress gives final OK to huge ethanol boost

If you don't know about the EU's Biofuel Cities group, you probably should. The fifth and latest email newsletter is out now.

One of the less tasteful ways of producing biodiesel is to use the fat removed during liposuction as the starting point. I've wondered about how many miles you could get out of a couple of kilos of fat.The answer has come from Australia. It appears that 10 litres of human fat will produce produced seven litres of biofuel, according to a post about the fastest eco boat in the world, which is aiming to circumnavigate the world in March next year, according to the Daily Mail On-line. To put things in perspective, the boat can carry 3000 litres...
Any volutneers?

I've just been given details of a site that looks like it tries to round up all the world's new biofuels plants by country its WorldBioplants.com.

There's a lot of talk about Jatropha as being a suitable plant to produce biofuels in the future, mostly because it can grow on bad soil in pretty dry conditions and the nut is not edible. But there's a note of warning from a recent Dutch Study Claims and Facts on Jatropha curcas. In one of its conclusions they say

However, as soon as J curcas is related to high oil yield production [report's emphasis], a claim which in itself is not backed up by any scientific findings so far, (especially not on a large scale), a risk warning should be given about the validity of these claims. Especially the claims of low nutrient requirements (soil fertility), low water use, low labour inputs, the non-existance of competition with food production, and tolerance to pests and diseases are definitely not true in combination with high yield oil production.

North Carolina State Unviersity is developing a self digesting sweet potato, according to
Biopact. I guess timing the harvest right is going to be critical if that technology ever takes off.

One of the unintended consequences of the rush to ethanol in the US is that now hops are in short supply. Hop growers have moved into more profitable corn in the Pacific North West, according to Dethroner (where every man is king) this is putting craft beer in a parlous position... Shame, shame, shame.

I was sent the link to this in the Biofuelwatch newsgroup.

© Chappatte - www.globecartoon.com

Let me know what you think about the cartoon.

Happy Christmas one and all. I'll be out of the office until 2 January enjoying a family Christmas. There should be something to watch on the blog most days, between doses of Turkey, Christmas Pudding and repeats of Peter Sellers films.

Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

Santa Claus tells it like it is...

He's making a list, he's checking it twice

Let's reduce pressure on world food stuffs as soon as we can.

According to the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation in mid December...

Currently 37 countries worldwide are facing food crises due to conflict and disasters. In addition, food security is being adversely affected by unprecedented price hikes for basic food, driven by historically low food stocks, droughts and floods linked to climate change, high oil prices and growing demand for bio-fuels(my emphasis). High international cereal prices have already sparked food riots in several countries.

The FAO also said earlier in December that

For those of you who like big trains of ethanol criss-crossing the US we have
Near Chicago

and a whole host of them here

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videos&search_query=ethanol%20train&search_sort=video_date_uploaded&search_category=0&search=Search&v=&uploaded=&filter=1

Home news from abroad... if home is the US and abroad is Brazil.

I've found a movie of Andrew Boswell, I wonder if its the same Andrew Boswell who comments on the blog?