Obama Comments on Ethanol During Rural Tour Kickoff

DomesticFuel.com
Posted by Cindy Zimmerman – July 1st, 2009

The Obama administration embarked on a National Rural Tour this week that will include discussions about green jobs, a new energy economy, climate change and renewable energies.

During an interview for the National Association of Farm Broadcasting with Michelle Rook of WNAX, Yankton, SD, Obama was asked about the role renewable fuels will play in the future for rural America. “Obviously, I come from a farm state - Illinois - and ethanol has been a big boon for a lot of rural communities,” the president said. “But we also are recognizing the key for us is to move into the next generation of biofuels, how can we use wood chips and refuse and switchgrass and how can we improve the efficiency of first generation biofuels. Farmers are going to be critical to that entire process.”

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Competing Technologies Push to Commercialize Renewable Petroleum

The New York Times
By JESSICA LEBER of ClimateWire
Published: July 2, 2009

Here's the Earth's recipe for petroleum: Take plants. Add pressure and heat. Bake for hundreds of millions of years.

Today, companies are racing to cook the same products, but they want to do it in hours or days.

Converting crops, plant residue and even trash to fuels avoids unleashing the fossil carbon buried millennia ago. More importantly, experts say, "biogasoline," renewable diesel and clean jet fuel would not face the major infrastructure barriers that have limited the expansion of ethanol use, or, for that matter, electric cars.

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Uncle Sam to pond scum: I want you!

Billings Gazette
Jul 3, 12:12 PM EDT
By MIKE STARK
Associated Press Writer

LOGAN, Utah (AP) -- Somewhere among the beakers and the bubbling green-tinged tanks in this Utah State University lab, Jeff Muhs is searching for champion pond scum for Uncle Sam.

If he and others like him around the country are successful, algae-based biofuel could one day power one of the world's biggest gas guzzlers: the U.S. military.

Heady stuff for a simple sun-sucking organism. But algae's ability to grow fast and churn out fatty oils makes it an alluring prospect for a military looking to lessen its dependence on foreign oil.

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Oat hulls yield cheaper, cleaner power at U of I

Des Moines Register
By PHILIP BRASHER • pbrasher@dmreg.com • July 3, 2009

Washington, D.C. - Ethanol and wind turbines aren't the only ways Iowans are reducing the use of fossil fuels. Oat hulls are another.

Several times every day, oat hulls from a Quaker Oats cereal plant in Cedar Rapids are dumped at the University of Iowa's power plant, where they are burned to generate electricity and produce steam for heat.

Using the cereal byproduct means the power plant can burn 25 percent less coal. That lowers the plant's greenhouse gas emissions and earns credits that could someday be a source of revenue for the university. The oat hulls have another benefit: They cost half as much as coal.

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Ethanol tax changed in South Dakota

KXMB.com
Jul 5 2009 5:15AM
Associated Press

PIERRE, S.D. (AP) With the new fiscal year in South Dakota comes a new tax rate for ethanol.

Ethanol now is being taxed at 8 cents a gallon at the wholesale level. Previous state law included more than one tax rate for ethanol, depending on how much of the grain-based fuel was blended with regular gasoline.

Ethanol industry officials say the new law should encourage more blender pumps, which let motorists select among various blends of ethanol and gasoline.

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71 projects fill DOE Joint Genome Institute 2010 pipeline

EurekaAlert
June 29, 2009


WALNUT CREEK, CA - The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Joint Genome Institute (JGI) has selected 71 new genomic sequencing projects for its 2010 Community Sequencing Program (CSP)—a targeted sampling of the planet's biodiversity—to be characterized for bioenergy, climate, and environmental applications.

JGI's Community Sequencing Program is the largest genomic sequencing effort in the world focused on nonmedical organisms, enabling scientists from universities and national laboratories to probe the hidden world of microbes and plants to tap nature's ingenuity for innovative solutions to the nation's major challenges in energy, climate, and environment. The program is supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research in the DOE Office of Science.

"The information we generate from these projects promises to improve the clean, renewable energy pathways being developed now as well as lend researchers more insight into the global carbon cycle, options for bioremediation, and biogeochemical processes," said DOE JGI Director Eddy Rubin. "In translating DNA sequence data into biology, we generate valuable science that improves our understanding of the complex processes that support life on the planet, or imperil it."

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Legacy Act may fund wastewater piping to ethanol plant

MankatoFreePress.com
By Mark Fischenich
The Free Press

WINNEBAGO — A groundbreaking, and groundwater-saving, plan to use municipal wastewater at the Corn Plus ethanol plant in Winnebago is in line for $1 million in state funds.

The funding, provided through revenue generated by the Legacy Act constitutional amendment for the outdoors and the arts, would help cover the cost of piping treated wastewater from Winnebago’s homes and businesses to the ethanol plant east of town. The project would address one of the major criticisms of ethanol production — that it consumes large amounts of groundwater to generate alternative fuels.

“It was just a no-brainer as far as how we should use water at ethanol plants,” said Sen. Julie Rosen, R-Fairmont, who represents Winnebago and ushered the funding through the legislative process.

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USDA to support cellulosic ethanol

Biofuels International
29 June 2009

The US Department of Agriculture could offer US farmers greater financial incentives for developing cellulosic ethanol projects.

The USDA announced it would guarantee $80 million (€57 million) in loans for the production of cellulosic ethanol.

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Congress eyes market impact of speculators: Vilsack

Reuters
Mon Jun 29, 2009 2:54pm EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Congress is eyeing ways to make sure speculative trading helps commodity markets rather than distorting pricing signals, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a Reuters Television interview Monday.

"There are concerns," Vilsack said, noting he has spoken about the issue with Tom Harkin, chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee.

"I suspect that there will probably be an effort to make sure when there is trading that takes place on the market, that it's trading that actually assists the market, doesn't hurt the market, creates a robust trading scheme so that we get a good pricing signal," Vilsack said.

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Turning Carbon Dioxide Into Fuel

The New York Times
June 29, 2009, 11:55 am
By Matthew L. Wald

Scientists have been trying for years to find a nonfood source for ethanol. A company in Bonita Springs, Fla., Algenol Biofuels, thinks it has found one, with the added benefit of getting twice as much work out of each molecule of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere.

The company and Dow Chemical are expected to announce on Monday that they are building a pilot plant on the site of a Dow plant in Freeport, Tex., that produces carbon dioxide as a by-product of several different processes.

The algae would be exposed to sunlight, in water mixed with carbon dioxide, and would give off ethanol and oxygen. Dow wants the ethanol as a feedstock for plastic, replacing natural gas. In that sense, the ethanol-producing algae would become another processing unit in a chemical factory.

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