A 'Green Revolution' Buds Slowly in Algae Sign in to Recommend

The New York Times
By ANNIE JIA of ClimateWire
Published: October 7, 2009

Amid the charts on James Levin's bulletin board with titles like "Photosynthetic Carbon Fixation" there is a diagram that looks just like the others -- until Levin starts to explain it.

Levin is a biologist who researches algae for Kent Bioenergy. After seven years in the pharmaceutical industry, he came to Kent to study viruses that kill bacteria. His office in San Diego has gray-blue carpet, and the lab around the corner contains petri dishes and test tubes.

But when he talks about this chart, he speaks of a different world.

"When you look at the so-called 'green revolution' that they talk about, when the production of corn increased by [an order of] magnitude, essentially it required two things," he said in an interview later.


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Big Oil's Big Entrance

Ethanol Producer Magazine
November 2009
By Craig A. Johnson

Oil companies were noticeably absent during the ethanol industry boom from 2004 to 2007. Now, as some of those first-generation ethanol plants struggle to survive, Big Oil has begun to take an interest.

With the implementation of the renewable fuel standard (RFS) in 2003, a mandate to blend ethanol into gasoline was created, and the ethanol industry boomed. For the next several years, construction of ethanol plants accounted for most of the industry investment. Builders were in short supply, or booked for months in advance. Newspapers were filled with stories of ethanol plants going up across the Midwest. Many of them turned out to be just stories, but the build had begun and ethanol became a household word almost overnight.

Existing fuel producers and refiners, companies such as Royal Dutch Shell plc, BP plc and Exxon Mobil Corp., were initially caught flat-footed by the explosion of growth in the ethanol industry. "I don't know much about farming, I'm not an expert on biofuels, and there's not a lot of technology I can add to moonshine," Exxon Mobil Chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson said at a Houston energy conference in May 2007. "There is really nothing we can bring to that whole issue. We don't see a direct role for ourselves with today's technology."

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U.S. ethanol profits from bumper corn crop

Reuters
Wed Oct 7, 2009 5:36pm EDT
By Sam Nelson

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The U.S. ethanol industry is chalking up the best profits in months after suffering through 2008, with a bumper corn crop this year, relatively high energy prices and the possibility of exports bolstering the sector.

Corn is the foundation of the U.S. ethanol industry, and producers got a huge boost to their bottom line this year as corn prices were cut in half from the record high of $7.65 per bushel posted in the summer of 2008.

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Establishing Standard Definitions For Genome Sequences

ScienceDaily.com

ScienceDaily (Oct. 8, 2009) — In 1996, researchers from major genome sequencing centers around the world convened on the island of Bermuda and defined a finished genome as a gapless sequence with a nucleotide error rate of one or less in 10,000 bases. This effectively set the quality target for the human genome effort and was quickly applied to other genome projects. If a genome sequence didn't meet this stringent criterion, it was simply considered a "draft."

More than a decade later, researchers are finding that with the advent of the latest sequencing technologies the terms "draft" and "finished" are no longer sufficient to describe the varying levels of genome sequence quality being produced. The quality issue is of particular concern for any researcher who wants to use the sequence, in order to know its integrity and reliability. This is of even greater concern for reference genome sequences, such as those genome projects conducted in support of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) missions of bioenergy and environmental clean-up, because they provide the foundational knowledge of the gene content and how these organisms interact with the environment.

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Dale, Searchinger debate biofuels, indirect land use change

BiofuelsDigest
October 07, 2009 Jim Lane

In Michigan, the German Marshall Fund recently hosted a debate on biofuels and indirect land use change between Tim Searchinger, transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund and Bruce Dale, professor at Michigan State University. The debate was moderated by Juliet Eilperin of the Washington Post and is available on video here.

According to one industry observer, “Dale pretty much wiped the floor with Searchinger.”

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Gov Schwarzenegger Demands Revolution To Combat Climate Change

myMotherLode.com
October 06, 2009 06:00 am
Mark Truppner, MML Reporter

Governer Schwarzenegger was Tuesday's KVML "Newsmaker of the Day". Here is his speech as delivered at last week's Governor's Global Climate Summit:

"...This is exactly the kind of collaboration that is needed to launch a national and international green revolution. And that is what we need, nothing less than a revolution, to combat climate change and to win our energy independence and to develop new low-carbon technologies. To grow our green economies is also very important and to achieve global balance. There is no single issue that threatens the health and the prosperity of our nations and humanity more than climate change.

And that is why last year we all joined together for the first time for the First Governors' Global Climate Summit. There was so much action -- action, action, action. We committed to reducing greenhouse gases from deforestation. We established and strengthened international relationships.

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LBCC lands $115K grant

DemocratHerald.com (Oregon)
Democrat-Herald Posted: Friday, October 2, 2009 11:30 pm

Linn-Benton Community College has been awarded a $115,412 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Cooperative State Research, Education, and Extension Service.

The grant, titled "Fueling Pathways to Rural Prosperity," will be used to develop programs at LBCC to train students to work in green energy and sustainable energy industries.

LBCC plans to design an agricultural technician degree with a focus on sustainable fuel and fiber production and processing. The program will provide training for entrance into the cellulosic biofuel, pulp and paper, and sustainable agriculture industries.

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Study Finds Ethanol Enhances Vehicle Efficiency

DomesticFuel.com
Posted by Cindy Zimmerman – October 5th, 2009

A new University of Nebraska study finds that higher ethanol blends increase engine efficiency.

The study, which was funded by the Nebraska Corn Board, found that high ethanol blends provide better energy conversion within an engine than other fuels, meaning less energy to travel further. The report says that e85 improved energy conversion by 13, 9 and 14 percent, respectively when compared to e10, for the light, medium and heavy loaded vehicles tested.

Vehicles went through chassis dynamometer testing as part of the study. The dynamometer simulated different road and vehicle operating conditions, allowing researchers to fully measure a number of important data points to measure the performance of different ethanol blends.

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Microbe converts sludge into ethanol

CNet News
October 7, 2009 6:04 AM PDT
by Martin LaMonica

Two companies said Wednesday that they have developed a method for turning sewage sludge into ethanol.

Israel-based Applied CleanTech and Marlborough, Mass.-based Qteros created a joint development project that combines sewage treatment technology and a microbial process for converting biomass into ethanol.

The method can turn municipal solid waste into a fuel and reduce the amount of sludge processed by traditional treatment facilities, the companies said. Many researchers have been studying ways to extract usable energy from sewage sludge but there are not any commercial operations that make liquid fuel.

Applied CleanTech's core technology, which is already used in treatment plants, extracts the biosolids from raw sewage, which is a way to reduce the overall amount of wastewater that needs to be treated.

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Youth science day makes millions of young scientists

University of Wisconsin-Madison
Oct. 6, 2009

On Wednesday, Oct. 7, millions of young people across the United States will become scientists for the day as they explore the world of biofuels. On the second annual 4-H National Youth Science Day, youth will participate in "Biofuel Blast," an investigation of how organic plant materials can be converted to biofuels to supply alternative forms of energy.

Biofuel Blast, known as the National Science Experiment, was created by Cathy Vrentas of the University of Wisconsin-Extension and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Biotechnology Center. The experimenters will produce the biofuel ethanol from corn sugars and encourage young researchers to explore how other plants and feedstocks — such as switchgrass, sorghum and algae — could be used to produce biofuels. Youth are encouraged to share their results via the Web.

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