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Pastimes : Triffin's Market Diary -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Triffin who wrote (368)	2/19/2010 11:49:51 AM
From: Triffin	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 868

BC: BIOREFINERY ISSUES .. .. ... . . . . . . . . . ... . . . . . . . . . . . Fascinating comments on a very relevant opinion piece about alternative fuels. One of your best. As a blogger myself for the last 3.5 years (see BIOenergy BlogRing) I have been writing about biomass conversion processes, biomass feedstocks, biofuels, biopower, bioproducts, and biowaste. I would like to comment on your statement about logistics: "I won't say that's impossible, but it is going to be a significant challenge. All I can say is Coskata better have hired some very good logistical experts. They are going to need them." I have been working with a company that provides contracting services to some of the biggest biopower generators of the nation - the often maligned paper and pulp mills that, in addition to supplying their base products, made the switch from fossil fuels to biomass conversion for their boilers during the last energy crisis 30 years ago. As a result, they not only supply a majority of their own power, heat, and steam for their operations but they are the major contributor to renewable energy in the country. Combined with biofuel production, bioenergy produces as much renewable energy as hydro, wind, geothermal, and solar combined. Our company produces about 16 million tons of woodchipped and hogged fuel for our 21 installations - more than a million tons per year at some installations - mostly in the Southeast U.S. We are poised to produce much more as the demand for woody biomass for biorefineries and biopower plants is being mandated by the national EISA renewable fuel standard (RFS) and state by state renewable portfolio standards (RPS) proliferate. We have a contract to provide woody biomass to the Range Fuels project in Soperton, GA. Coskata is relying on us for our expert logistics consultation on their plans for eventual deployment. We are working in BC (see below). We are very focused on the sustainability issue which we see as a balance between environmental and economic concerns on the fulcrum of available biomass. This balance is horribly skewed right now because of the lack of choices at the pump. According to Robert Zubrin's book, Energy Victory, we have gone from spending the equivalent of 4.5% of our defense budget on oil imports during Carter to spending 120% of our defense budget on oil imports during 2008. Not economically sustainable - particularly considering that many of the nations receiving this transfer of wealth are not particularly sympathetic to our global diplomatic posture. As a communicator, I see my job as trying to bridge the gaps between environmentalists, industrialists, academics, and policymakers so we can move forward on the production of clean, carbon-negative, alternative biofuels and biopower. There is a good reason to wonder where this biomass for alternative fuel production is going to come from. We have excess biomass to draw upon as stated in the USDA Billion ton study. Furthermore, energy crops will provide a big part of the mix. But the area I think has the most immediate environmental benefit is using biorefineries to help remedy current and future (thanks to global "weirding") environmental disasters. Here are five examples - 1) nonrecyclable municipal solid waste being diverted from landfills, 2) industrial waste (which is massively more abundant than MSW), 3) climate knockdown (hurricane Katrina reportedly damaged 5,000,000 acres of trees - by comparison Mt. St. Helens was 130,000 acres), 4) unstoppable beetle kill (not just in BC but also throughout Colorado and parts of the west), and 5) forest management trimmings to reduce the growth and impact of wildfires (which have been growing exponentially during the last 20 years). Forest thinnings, dead tree salvage, and restoration of forest growth should be a cornerstone of California's wildfire mitigation strategy (http://biostock.blogspot.com/search?q=bonnicksen ). Comments in this column about the possibility of using British Columbia's beetle kill for biomass conversion is well founded. And we are working on it. We just signed a strategic alliance with Raven Biofuels to situate a thermochemical conversion site in Kamloops, BC to utilize mountain pine beetle kill as the primary feedstock to produce ethanol. (see biostock.blogspot.com ). It should be noted, however, that this feedstock, which should have a negative cost (tax incentives or tipping fee) because of its social liability as a source of ghg from decay, is among the most costly feedstock we have to deal with. It is up to policymakers to correctly incentivize access to these environmental liabilities to remedy ghg emissions. Growing public awareness of these issues is helping to draft appropriate legislation in the U.S. and Canada. We need more biomass conversion deployments, not fewer. We are at a very, very nascent stage of development of most conversion technologies. As you mention logistics is key. Deployments in rural areas will have to be decentralized - we work to an ideal radius of 50 miles from each installation because beyond that hauling times prohibit more than two runs per day per vehicle. Rural North America, through bioenergy installations, can play a major role at providing self-reliant solutions to energy generation - important to America but also exportable technology to help solve rural global problems. The paradigm shift will not succeed if it is not BOTH environmentally and economically sustainable. We need a drop in growth of demand for fossil fuels. In view of the "Hot, Flat, and Crowded" future before us we also need decentralized alternatives customized to each location. Many of these should be based on biomass conversion technologies that utilize the non-fossil stored energy of the sun for feedstock.