The other day I was watching a TV program about domestic wastewater treatment and I kept wondering about what happened to the sludge left behind. Well, it seems like there are companies out there doing the thinking for me. Massachusetts-based Qteros and Israeli commodities recycler Applied CleanTech (ACT) have entered a joint development project that the companies claim is the first to demonstrate the commercial viability of making ethanol from liquid municipal waste.

The liquid-waste treatment process at municipal wastewater plants typically has leftover material that must be disposed of. ACT’s technology extracts certain materials from the waste, including cellulose and oil, and creates solid pellets. ACT says those pellets could potentially be combusted to produce electricity, used as pulp to produce paper, and used as feedstock for ethanol.

However, said Qteros CEO Bill Frey, ACT lacked a process to use those pellets to produce ethanol. “There was not a technology that anyone had available to actually convert that material into ethanol,” Frey said. “What we’ve done is develop our process so that it can use this particular source of cellulosic material.”

Qteros uses microbes to convert cellulosic material into ethanol in a single-step process that takes about four days. Qteros’ process has used fast-growing grasses, corn stover, sugarcane bagasse, wheat straw, and woody biomass such as poplar, Frey said. “We wanted to challenge our technology with as many feedstocks as possible,” he said.

ACT said each ton of its solids-based material, trademarked as Recyllose, can produce 120 to 135 gallons of ethanol. ACT didn’t disclose the amount of wastewater needed to make a ton of Recyllose but said a wastewater treatment plant that handles 150 million gallons a day, equivalent to a population of about 2 million, would produce enough Recyllose to supply a small-scale ethanol plant of about 5 million to 10 million gallons per year.
Qteros said Recyllose is low in lingin, which can improve the efficiency of the conversion to ethanol.

In addition to ethanol production, ACT said the technology reduces the amount of wastewater that must be treated, which lowers costs and increases capacity. The companies plan to market the sludge-to-ethanol systems to municipalities as a cost-saving and money-making opportunity. “Most have a cost associated with getting rid of the remaining material, so this would help them alleviate the costs they currently incur,” Frey said. “A lot of ethanol is made in a part of the United States that’s less populated, and it has to be transported to centers of population, which is where most liquid waste treatment centers are as well.”

Frey said the agreement is not exclusive, and the pair doesn’t plan to build ethanol plants. Instead, Qteros and ACT could agree to license the technologies to municipal wastewater treatment plants, or to third-party developers. “We’ve been able to show the flexibility that the technology has in adapting to multiple types of feedstocks,” Frey said. “The real value of the technology is that it’s the lowest cost, non-food technology available.”

Length and financial terms of the project weren’t disclosed, but the companies received a grant for an undisclosed amount from the Binational Industrial Research and Development (BIRD) Foundation, which funds joint efforts between Israel and the United States.

Source: Qteros, via Renewable Energy World News

Celso Vainer Manzato

ER: What are the areas under the bill that are considered suitable for the cultivation of sugarcane?
CVM: The areas considered suitable are arable land, with no native vegetation cover and currently under agricultural use, with soil and climate potential to ensure economic production, with topography that allows mechanical harvesting (without straw burning), and not located in the biomes Amazon, Pantanal and High Paraguay River Basin. In addition, indigenous lands, nature conservation units, reforestation areas, mining areas, dunes, stony ground, mangroves, wetlands, and hilly lands were excluded.

ER: Will the passage of this law mean a reduction in deforestation levels of the Amazon rainforest and other areas of native vegetation?
CVM: Yes. Actual figures on the expansion of sugarcane show that this is concentrated in about 70% of land currently occupied by pasture and the remainder predominantly in land used for other agricultural uses. Additionally, the forecasted growth for the coming years is about 7 million hectares by 2017 (optimistic scenario) in a universe of more than 240 million hectares of land under agriculture and farming. Of these, about 34 million hectares of land currently occupied by pastures were indicated by the zoning. In addition, the development of second generation biofuels, using sugarcane bagasse pulp and other biomasses, would certainly decrease the demand for areas for sugarcane cultivation. With the passage of the law, the Amazon rainforest and other areas with native vegetation will be legally protected. However, the approval of the zoning by decree has already caused the postponement of studies and investments in non-indicated areas serving as reference for the sector’s growth, for the impact of the act on national and international society. Most of the productive sector supports many of the concepts used in the sugarcane zoning, especially on the current availability of land for expansion without the need for new deforestation.

ER: For comparison purposes, what is the current law governing the zoning of sugarcane in Brazil?
CVM: Currently, the planting of sugarcane for ethanol and sugar production follows the environmental restrictions of existing legislation. That is, the authorization for implementation of an industrial unit depends on environmental licensing by state environmental agencies in regard to environmental impacts (waste disposal, environmental risk of waste, emission of air pollutants, water supply, etc.), and socioeconomic impacts (population migration, public health, etc.). Once the implementation of the industrial plant is approved, the planting should observe the same restrictions on any agricultural crop, such as preservation of water sources, riparian forests, legal reserve, burning schedule, and others.

ER: The promise is to eradicate straw burning by 2017 in areas where mechanized harvesting becomes possible. What is the percentage of cultivation area represented and what is its impact on the carbon footprint of the Brazilian sugarcane ethanol?
CVM: For 2017, estimates of planted area and percentage of the harvested area with burning were based on projections from the literature and on the ban on straw burning before harvesting in mechanized areas. Based on these premises, Embrapa Environment estimates a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions to the tune of 6 million tons of CO2 equivalent in 2017 when compared to 2008.

ER: How inclined are government and Senate to approve the bill?
CVM: There are only preliminary signs. There are favorable movements by the positive environmental impact of the measure, and its repercussions on national and international markets, and concerns about economic development in some areas where planting is prohibited. The bill represents genuine interests of society and reflects the character of an unprecedented government action for the territorial planning of an agro-industrial activity in the country.

ER: If the law is approved, how will its implementation be monitored?
CVM: The law as well as the zoning enforcement is based on the authorization for the industrial unit. That is, if there is no authorization for this setting up, there will be no sugarcane planting because there is no local demand (sugarcane transportation is only viable on a radius of 40 km from the industrial plant). Therefore, the zoning criteria are taken into consideration right from the stage of feasibility studies, approval of funding for the plant or its expansion, and environmental licensing for the productive unit. The other implications, such as deforestation and straw burning permit, are subject to surveillance by the environmental agencies and are implemented through adjustment of conduct.

ER: Are there groups of interest openly opposed to the bill?
CVM: Yes, there are reactions against the bill, which represent legitimate interests of Brazilian society supported by the legislation currently in force in the country. It is worth stressing that this is a normal reaction in face of the territorial planning for an agro-industrial activity, especially when we take into consideration the unprecedented character of the initiative in the country.

Nation leaders yesterday met in New York to discuss strategies to tackle climate change. China made a pledge to reduce greenhouse emissions, but disappointed those who expected more clear-cut figures and detailed plans on how to achieve that. China and the U.S. are responsible for 40% of greenhouse emissions; therefore these two countries are the ones who should be working the hardest to clean up their acts. But, as Obama mentioned, Brazil, one of the world’s largest growing economies, is another important player.

Speaking of Brazil, the ethanol pioneer last week proposed a new bill of law that will restrict the lands permissible for sugarcane farming and processing. If passed, the bill sent to the National Congress by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva will prohibit the construction or expansion of sugarcane farms and production plants in any area of native vegetation, or in the Amazon, Pantanal (Brazilian Wetlands) or Upper Paraguay River Basin regions. Coupled with the areas not suitable for sugarcane farming, the bill would effectively make 92.5% of Brazil’s national territory off-limits for sugarcane farming and processing. In addition to the sugarcane zoning mandates, the new bill includes a measure to end the practice of crop burning by 2017 in all areas suitable for mechanized harvesting.

That sounds like a sensible step towards the reduction of the country’s ethanol carbon footprint. Brazil’s sugarcane harvests are used to produce food products as well as sugarcane-based ethanol, a biofuel alternative to gasoline. In Brazil, ethanol consumption surpassed that of gasoline in light vehicles this year. The country has the largest fleet of flex-fuel cars in the world.

The new bill would restrict the expansion of sugarcane production plants to regions that meet the following criteria: areas that do not require full irrigation, as a measure to save resources such as water and energy; and areas with slopes less than 12%, allowing for mechanized harvesting and preventing producers’ clearance of ground by fire. In addition, credit extension policies will favor expansion into underused or degraded pasture land. There’s only one catch: these rules are not applicable to industrial facilities already in operation. These criteria leave 64 million total hectares eligible for sugarcane planting, equivalent to 7.5% of the national land area. Sugarcane crops currently occupy an area of 8.89 million hectares (2008 crop year).

The project, based on the findinds of the National Agro-Ecological Zoning for Sugarcane (ZAE Cana), will be presented as part of Brazil’s platform to curb global climate change and promote environmentally sustainable development at the United Nations’ 15th Conference of the Parties (COP-15) to be held in Copenhagen, Denmark in December 2009.

A new research to be released on Friday by the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) reveals that “the largest U.S subsidies to fossil fuels are attributed to tax breaks that aid foreign oil production”. The report was produced in partnership with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The study reviewed fossil fuel and energy subsidies for Fiscal Years 2002-2008 and shows that the lion’s share of energy subsidies supported energy sources that emit high levels of greenhouse gases.

During that period, the federal government provided substantially larger subsidies to fossil fuels than to renewables. Fossil fuels benefited from approximately $72 billion over the seven-year period, while subsidies for renewable fuels totaled only $29 billion. More than half the subsidies for renewables – $16.8 billion – are attributable to corn-based ethanol, the climate effects of which are hotly disputed. Of the fossil fuel subsidies, $70.2 billion went to traditional sources – such as coal and oil – and $2.3 billion went to carbon capture and storage, which is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Why is this happening? The U.S. energy market is shaped by a number of national and state policies that encourage the use of traditional energy sources. These policies range from royalty relief to the provision of tax incentives, direct payments, and other forms of support to the non-renewable energy industry. “The combination of subsidies – or ‘perverse incentives’ – to develop fossil fuel energy sources, and a lack of sufficient incentives to develop renewable energy and promote energy efficiency, distorts energy policy in ways that have helped cause, and continue to exacerbate, our climate change problem,” says ELI Senior Attorney John Pendergrass. “With climate change and energy legislation pending on Capitol Hill, our research suggests that more attention needs to be given to the existing perverse incentives for ‘dirty’ fuels in the U.S. Tax Code.”

The subsidies examined fall roughly into two categories: foregone revenues (changes to the tax code to reduce the tax liabilities of particular entities), mostly in the form of tax breaks, and including reported lost government take from offshore leasing of oil and gas fields; and direct spending, in the form of expenditures on research and development and other programs. Subsidies attributed to the Foreign Tax Credit totaled $15.3 billion, with those for the next-largest fossil fuel subsidy, the Credit for Production of Nonconventional Fuels, totaling $14.1 billion. The Foreign Tax Credit applies to the overseas production of oil through an obscure provision of the U.S. Tax Code, which allows energy companies to claim a tax credit for payments that would normally receive less-beneficial treatment under the tax code.

Fossie fuels and renewable energy were defined according to conventional definitions. Fossil fuels include petroleum and its byproducts, natural gas, and coal products, while renewable fuels include wind, solar, biofuels and biomass, hydropower, and geothermal energy production.

After so many disappointments with biofuels, it comes no surprise that a new independent study has concluded that “the best ways to improve energy security, mitigate global warming and reduce the number of deaths caused by air pollution are blowing in the wind and rippling in the water, not growing on prairies or glowing inside nuclear power plants”. The author is Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford. Mr. Jacobson also warns about so-called “clean coal”: it “is not clean at all”, he says.

Jacobson has conducted the first quantitative, scientific evaluation of the proposed, major, energy-related solutions by assessing not only their potential for delivering energy for electricity and vehicles, but also their impacts on global warming, human health, energy security, water supply, space requirements, wildlife, water pollution, reliability and sustainability. His findings indicate that the options that are getting the most attention are between 25 to 1,000 times more polluting than the best available options. The paper with his findings will be published in the next issue of Energy and Environmental Science but is available online now. Jacobson is also director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford.

“The energy alternatives that are good are not the ones that people have been talking about the most. And some options that have been proposed are just downright awful,” Jacobson said. “Ethanol-based biofuels will actually cause more harm to human health, wildlife, water supply and land use than current fossil fuels.” He added that ethanol may also emit more global-warming pollutants than fossil fuels, according to the latest scientific studies.

The raw energy sources that Jacobson found to be the most promising are, in order, wind, concentrated solar (the use of mirrors to heat a fluid), geothermal, tidal, solar photovoltaics (rooftop solar panels), wave and hydroelectric. He recommends against nuclear, coal with carbon capture and sequestration, corn ethanol and cellulosic ethanol, which is made of prairie grass. In fact, he found cellulosic ethanol was worse than corn ethanol because it results in more air pollution, requires more land to produce and causes more damage to wildlife.

To place the various alternatives on an equal footing, Jacobson first made his comparisons among the energy sources by calculating the impacts as if each alternative alone were used to power all the vehicles in the United States, assuming only “new-technology” vehicles were being used. Such vehicles include battery electric vehicles (BEVs), hydrogen fuel cell vehicles (HFCVs), and “flex-fuel” vehicles that could run on a high blend of ethanol called E85.

Wind was by far the most promising, Jacobson said, owing to a better-than 99 percent reduction in carbon and air pollution emissions; the consumption of less than 3 square kilometers of land for the turbine footprints to run the entire U.S. vehicle fleet (given the fleet is composed of battery-electric vehicles);l the savings of about 15,000 lives per year from premature air-pollution-related deaths from vehicle exhaust in the United States; and virtually no water consumption. By contrast, corn and cellulosic ethanol will continue to cause more than 15,000 air pollution-related deaths in the country per year, Jacobson asserted.

Because the wind turbines would require a modest amount of spacing between them to allow room for the blades to spin, wind farms would occupy about 0.5 percent of all U.S. land, but this amount is more than 30 times less than that required for growing corn or grasses for ethanol. Land between turbines on wind farms would be simultaneously available as farmland or pasture or could be left as open space.

Indeed, a battery-powered U.S. vehicle fleet could be charged by 73,000 to 144,000 5-megawatt wind turbines, fewer than the 300,000 airplanes the U.S. produced during World War II and far easier to build. Additional turbines could provide electricity for other energy needs.

“There is a lot of talk among politicians that we need a massive jobs program to pull the economy out of the current recession,” Jacobson said. “Well, putting people to work building wind turbines, solar plants, geothermal plants, electric vehicles and transmission lines would not only create jobs but would also reduce costs due to health care, crop damage and climate damage from current vehicle and electric power pollution, as well as provide the world with a truly unlimited supply of clean power.”

Jacobson said that while some people are under the impression that wind and wave power are too variable to provide steady amounts of electricity, his research group has already shown in previous research that by properly coordinating the energy output from wind farms in different locations, the potential problem with variability can be overcome and a steady supply of baseline power delivered to users.

During the recent presidential campaign, nuclear power and clean coal were often touted as energy solutions that should be pursued, but nuclear power and coal with carbon capture and sequestration were Jacobson’s lowest-ranked choices after biofuels. “Coal with carbon sequestration emits 60- to 110-times more carbon and air pollution than wind energy, and nuclear emits about 25-times more carbon and air pollution than wind energy,” Jacobson said. Although carbon-capture equipment reduces 85-90 percent of the carbon exhaust from a coal-fired power plant, it has no impact on the carbon resulting from the mining or transport of the coal or on the exhaust of other air pollutants. In fact, because carbon capture requires a roughly 25-percent increase in energy from the coal plant, about 25 percent more coal is needed, increasing mountaintop removal and increasing non-carbon air pollution from power plants, he said.

Nuclear power poses other risks. Jacobson said it is likely that if the United States were to move more heavily into nuclear power, then other nations would demand to be able to use that option.

“Once you have a nuclear energy facility, it’s straightforward to start refining uranium in that facility, which is what Iran is doing and Venezuela is planning to do,” Jacobson said. “The potential for terrorists to obtain a nuclear weapon or for states to develop nuclear weapons that could be used in limited regional wars will certainly increase with an increase in the number of nuclear energy facilities worldwide.” Jacobson calculated that if one small nuclear bomb exploded, the carbon emissions from the burning of a large city would be modest, but the death rate for one such event would be twice as large as the current vehicle air pollution death rate summed over 30 years.

Finally, both coal and nuclear energy plants take much longer to plan, permit and construct than do most of the other new energy sources that Jacobson’s study recommends. The result would be even more emissions from existing nuclear and coal power sources as people continue to use comparatively “dirty” electricity while waiting for the new energy sources to come online, Jacobson said.

Two contrasting news pieces regarding Brazilian biofuel production add further confusion as to how sustainable it really is. On one hand, the adjunct secretary general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), Laksmi Puri, said on Thursday in São Paulo that the country’s development strategy is a model. “We analyzed the Brazilian model so as to see in which countries it might be reproduced. The use of biofuels as we imagine it is a win, win, win strategy. The environment wins, the commerce wins, and development wins too,” he said.

However, the BBC has a different story to tell. The media organization has uncovered evidence that workers are being exploited, facing long hours and very low pay. Besides, by looking at those images, we really wonder how ecologically correct sugar cane plantations can be. Besides the exploitation of cane cutters, we have to consider other aggravating factors such as the atmospheric pollution from the burning of sugarcane for harvesting (plus the fire hazard to the rainforest it represents), land and water degradation, to name but few of the problems associated with this type of fuel.

What do you think of ethanol? Can it really be flogged as a clean type of fuel?

We talk often of the benefits of burning ethanol over petroleum-based fuels but what of methanol? The initial benefits may not seem overwhelming but there is a major advantage that is just now being explored. Methanol production requires CO2 which is more commonly known as carbon dioxide- the stuff we exhale. There is extensive research taking place at present in effort to design an engine that converts the necessary CO2 for methanol production not from a tank but from the very air around us!

Sounds good right? But stop to really think about the abundance of CO2 in the air, not only do we carbon-based life forms exhale the stuff every single time we take a breath, but its also comes rolling out of the smokestacks of most all powerplants/ industrial facilities.

About the biggest disadvantage to CO2 conversion is the carbon dioxide is heavy. Just how heavy are we talking? About triple the weight of gasoline per energy output. A tank load of this stuff would be awfully hard to transport. The bottom line is taking the necessary CO2 right out of the air makes an awful lot of sense!

Ethanol, hydrogen, bacteria and cellulosic biofuels all have some serious potential as alternatives to petroleum but this latest venture could push methanol right up there in the hunt.

Regardless of whether or not you want to consider the current domestic economy in a state of recession, there is little debate as to which companies have been getting hit the hardest. Just today General Motors Corp reported some numbers that could make anybody a little queasy (accounting background or otherwise). GM posted a $15.5 billion quarterly loss derived in part by a 20 percent drop in North American sales.

Not only are fewer individuals purchasing new cars due to a slumping economy but high oil prices are causing a massive drop-off in SUV demand. Lower demand means plunging prices for these larger truck-bodied gas-guzzlers (which have up until recently, accounted for a majority of the company’s profit margins).

So what’s an automotive giant to do? Why discount, discount, discount! The Number 1 U.S. automaker burned through an additional $3.6 billion in cash over this same period as it reduced its inventory of slower-selling vehicles in its slumping domestic market. Though not quite as dramatic, GM’s global auto sales suffered as well with a decrease of 5 percent (coupled with a $4 billion loss on international auto operations).

So what does the future hold for the struggling manufacturer? Greener ambitions through hybrids, flex fuel engines, and renewable resource designs. While GM (and other automakers) are at the drawing board attempting to jump on the trend as quickly as possible, many analysts predict that fiscal recovery from such endeavors will not become a reality until 2010 at earliest.

I have been reading a brand new book by Brian Dumaine from Fortune and Time and other august establishments. It’s called The Plot to Save the Planet

My first response to reading this was “Wow!”

There are a lot of different organizations working from many different angles trying to come up with products ands methods to generate or conserve energy .

Most of them are discussed in here. And it seems from Mr. Dumaine’s prose that all of them could be successful. Perhaps he has already winnowed out the ones that don’t have a chance. And he has used his Fortune connections to reach out to the venture capital firms to find out who they are investing in. And I think that is a great method to find out any economic trend. As a whole, venture capital goes to that field where gains can be made. I bet there are few VCs out there investing in whaling ships.

I only have two problems with the book and neither are about the content. First, I wish it were more tightly edited. There are some parts that are repeats what was said earlier such as discussions of building methods to improve efficiencies and arguments for and against plug-in cars. But these are the nitpickings of a technical editor and struggling writer. These are not the criticisms of a alternative energy champion who wants to know what is going on in the industry.

I will be using this book as a source for future blogs as I dive further into each of the start-ups that he highlights.

The topics include solar, wind, transportation, algae, building, ethanol and corporate strategies.

I recommend it for the alternative energy reader, the corporate strategist and the investor. There are a few Google’s, IBM’s, AT&T’s, and Ford’s of the future hidden in these pages. Some may not make it which is always the case, but the future is so bright, many of these companies will be successful.

John McCain is putting his money where is mouth is when it comes to solving the country’s energy crisis. Well maybe not his money per se but the point remains. The Republican proposed a $300 million government prize today to whoever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology. If you need a little reality check, that prize equates to $1 for every man, woman and child in the country.

McCain has some pretty lofty ambitions for potential developers and states such a device should deliver power at 30 percent of current costs and have “the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.”
The Arizona senator also proposed stiffer fines for automakers that duck existing fuel-efficiency standards, as well as incentives to increase use of domestic and foreign alcohol-based fuels such as ethanol.

In addition this “Clean Car Challenge” would encourage U.S. automakers to develop zero-emission vehicles by offering consumers the incentive of a $5,000 tax credit when they purchase one.

For just a moment, we’ll pretend Senator McCain didn’t conclude his inspirational speech by climbing into a full size SUV and reflect upon the undeniable truth that he is in fact on the right track with such ambitions.