biofuels

Umbra on gas engines and biodiesel

Dear Umbra, I take it that a conventional engine cannot be converted to biodiesel? Jann T. Helotes, Texas Dearest Jann, The short answer is no — you cannot use biodiesel in a conventional, unmodified gasoline engine. However, I’ve learned my lesson about giving car advice in this space, so the longer answer is: Anything can […]

Let's get a little something in exchange for our biogas

Here's something someone should run with. Via Green Inc. I learned that Sen. Ben Nelson just introduced a bill that would encourage development of the agricultural biogas industry with hopes of including it in the stimulus package. Biogas is a renewable form of natural gas derived from any methane source, like, say, manure. While burning biogas does create carbon emissions, it's more than offset by its effect in eliminating methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas (Marc from the Ethicurean explains how much of an offset in this comment).

In many ways, it's not a particularly high-tech approach and it's currently in common use in China and India - although unlike with the digesters in use in the developing world, the US biogas industry is attempting to significantly increase biogas content to almost pure methane. Because biogas can be produced and used on site as well as shipped via pipeline to power stations, it's theoretically possible for farms to become energy self-sufficient AND deal with excess manure. This isn't a magic bullet, of course, and in the future, farms are likely to use a lot more manure as fertilizer (remember Peak Phosphorus?). But, even in the post-CAFO world we all dream about, there will continue to be excess manure around. Indeed, this is exactly the sort of thing USDA chief Tom Vilsack means when he talks about developing "new technologies and expanded opportunities in biofuels and renewable energy."

I'm having a cow over beef-tallow biodiesel

I heard about this on the radio this morning, and couldn't believe the uncritical reporting on it:

The City of Calgary's entire fleet of trucks and buses may soon be partly fueled by biodiesel produced from Alberta beef tallow.

Tallow is all that's left over after an animal has been processed. The city has been experimenting with tallow from the meat-packing plant in High River, Alta., as part efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

...

Not only is the tallow in ready supply locally, turning it into biofuel recycles a product that would normally be thrown away, he said.

Tallow-waste biofuel is also more ethical than other alternative fuels, since it does not displace food crops such as corn, which is used in the production of ethanol, he said.

That's a neat trick of sunk-cost accounting. Sure, beef production is ridiculously carbon-intensive, making this biodiesel probably more climate-hostile than even corn ethanol, but hey, we've already got all this surplus cow fat to get rid of. I'm all for waste recycling, but reducing the production of waste is the first step, right?

I'll confess this is a first-blush impression, and welcome the opportunity to be proven wrong. But doesn't this sound like a poor excuse to support beef prices?

Advertising Standards Authority in U.K. banned a Renewable Fuels Association ad

Last year, when oil prices were peaking, OPEC President Chakib Khelil told an Algerian newspaper that "the intrusion of bioethanol on the market" was responsible for 40 percent of the rise in oil prices -- an asinine, unsubstantiated remark that nobody believed.

The Renewable Fuels Association saw this as an opportunity to promote their own environmentally destructive product with equally asinine, unsubstantiated remarks in an open letter to OPEC. However, George Monbiot complained to the Advertising Standards Authority in the U.K., who subsequently banned the ad. He didn't like their use of the word "sustainable."

I'm not aware of an American equivalent of the ASA, but we sure could use one.

Steven Chu’s stances on key energy issues: a primer for his confirmation hearing

Stephen Chu. Steven Chu, Nobel laureate and director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, will go before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee for his confirmation hearing on Tuesday, where he’s certain to be grilled about his positions on key energy and climate issues. Here’s a guide to what Chu thinks — or at […]

Umbra on biodiesel vs. hybrids

Dear Umbra, I live in Massachusetts and am trying to decide whether to buy a hybrid or a biodiesel. Since it is cold here, I would need to use 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent diesel in the winter. How does this compare with a hybrid’s emissions? Which would be better for the environment? Tom […]

On the challenge of cellulosic ethanol

"There is only one problem: the United States is not producing any second-generation non-corn ethanol in significant quantities at the moment. So a whole new industry will have to be brought into existence within less than four years and become one of the largest industries in the United States within the next 10 years."

-- Reuters columnist John Kemp, "Obama's Biofuel Challenge"

Grist predicted the ass-fat trend that could land one Beverly Hills doc in the slammer

Back when I was a Grist underling intern, I wrote a piece about the world’s strangest biofuel sources, including, ahem, ass fat. Now it appears that using that trunk junk to power your car is not only gag-worthy, but also illegal. Beverly Hills doctor Craig Alan Bittner is under investigation for using his patients’ flab […]

Of ice and biomass

As one of thousands still without power after the Northeast’s ice storm last Thursday, I’m feeling more thankful than usual for my woodstove (it’s also great that my place of employment dodged the storm, so I can at least escape the darkness at the Orion office). I’ve got three cords of wood stacked up to […]