Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Company Earns Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) Certification

http://www.einnews.com/pr_news/175535517/beijing-shougang-lanzatech-new-energy-science-technology-company-earns-roundtable-on-sustainable-biomaterials-rsb-certification

LanzaTech's Joint Venture With Shougang Jingtang Iron and Steel United Company and the Tang Ming Group, Earns First-Ever RSB Certification for Waste-Gas to Biofuel Process

WASHINGTON, DC and BEIJING, CHINA -- (Marketwired) -- 11/05/13 -- Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd. and the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials Services Foundation, the implementing entity of the RSB, announced today that Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd. has earned RSB's sustainability certification for the joint venture's facility that converts waste steel mill gases to sustainable biofuels.

The RSB is a global sustainability standard and certification system for biofuels and biomaterials production. The facility, which utilizes LanzaTech technology, is the first RSB-certified biofuel plant in China, and the first of its kind anywhere to receive this key certification for industrial carbon capture and utilization.

"The joint venture uses a process that creates a sustainable biofuel and does so by efficiently reusing greenhouse gases that would have otherwise been released into the atmosphere," said Peter Ryus, RSB Services' CEO. "This solution, which does not impact the food chain or land use, meets the RSB principles and practices and serves as an example of how continued innovation in the industry will lead to sustainable biofuels in the future. We are honored to be working with LanzaTech and their joint venture partners on greenhouse gas reduction and global sustainability improvements."

RSB certification shows the joint venture's commitment to environmental improvements through a novel biological approach that converts waste carbon emissions from steelmaking into biofuels and chemicals. Using the RSB methodology and assumptions based on commercial production, it is estimated that ethanol from the process may reduce life cycle greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent compared to petroleum fuels.

In addition, the joint venture partners anticipate that the process will improve local air quality by materially reducing nitrogen oxide (NOx) and particulate emissions. The technology has the potential of making a significant global impact by reusing up to 150 million tonnes of CO2 from the global steel industry alone.

The use of novel gas fermentation technology to convert industrial waste gases into biofuels is aligned perfectly with the RSB Principles and Criteria, which go beyond greenhouse gas emissions reductions to focus on economic and social sustainability. By using a widely available waste resource located in areas typically unsuitable for agriculture, LanzaTech's process reduces overall emissions without negatively impacting the food chain or causing land use changes. By enabling the production of fuels from available steelmaking waste, Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd. will help China balance economic growth with sustainability, as well as increase its supply of domestic biofuels.

RSB certification provides assurance that biofuels and biomaterials deliver on their promise of sustainability. Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd. chose to work with RSB because of its rigorous sustainability standard, auditing approach, and its broad acceptance. The RSB standard provides a comprehensive approach that incorporates the standard with other operational, management and physical standards such as ISO risk management and environmental management to ensure every base is covered.

"The RSB certification is an incredibly important step for the development of our commercial production facilities which we expect to bring online in 2014," said Dr. Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech. "In addition, we trust this certification will help accelerate the acceptance of biofuels made through carbon capture technologies and serve to showcase the possibilities opened up by thinking of carbon emissions as an opportunity, not just a problem."

RSB is a preferred standard of major airlines globally, including LanzaTech's partner Virgin Atlantic and the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Users Group, an aviation industry-led coalition that is supporting the development, certification, and commercial use of lower carbon renewable fuels, derived from sustainable sources.

Virgin Atlantic President Sir Richard Branson previously described the LanzaTech process as "one of the most exciting developments of our lifetime and a major breakthrough in the war on carbon." Reflecting on this latest development, he says "RSB's certification of the Beijing facility is a crucial step to ensure this revolutionary new fuel will meet the highest possible environmental standards and will result in a radical reduction in our carbon footprint."

Virgin Atlantic Chief Executive Craig Kreeger notes: "Our partnership with LanzaTech is a key part of our Change is in the Air sustainability program. Beyond our significant fleet upgrades and our comprehensive fuel efficiency programme, this breakthrough opportunity to pioneer away from fossil fuels offers us the best possible chance of substantially reducing the carbon emissions associated with our flying programme. Key to that has always been ensuring that any new fuel meets the highest possible sustainability standards, and we view RSB as the gold standard scheme to help us to achieve this. We're excited and committed to help hasten the day when we are using LanzaTech's RSB-certified fuel to power our aircraft."

The audit summary report is available on the RSB website, www.rsbservices.org. The audit was conducted by SCS Global Services (SCS), www.scsglobalservices.com, a leading global provider of third-party environmental and sustainability certification, auditing, testing, and standards development for nearly 30 years.

About LanzaTech

LanzaTech is a leader in gas fermentation technology. It provides novel and economic routes to fuels and high value chemicals from waste gas streams. LanzaTech's unique process provides a sustainable pathway to produce platform chemicals that serve as building blocks to products that have become indispensable in our lives such as rubber, plastics, synthetic fibers and fuels.

LanzaTech's technology solutions mitigate carbon emissions from industry without adversely impacting food or land security. With commercial facilities in China slotted for construction in 2014, LanzaTech, a company founded in New Zealand, is now a global organization. More information is available at www.lanzatech.com.

About Shougang Group

Shougang Group is a large enterprise group founded in 1919. While Shougang's main business is iron and steel, the Group is also engaged in mining, machinery, electronics, construction, real estate, services and international trading. Shougang has made great progress, especially since economic reforms began in China 30 years ago.

Entering the new century, the steel industry is facing unprecedented pressure and challenges, as well as unprecedented development opportunities. Shougang has created a first class iron and steel enterprise by actively promoting optimization of the industry's structure, promoting continuous innovation and pioneering new product development and production processes. Shougang has also changed its traditional product line to produce high-grade sheet metal, an historical change. In the past thirty years, Shougang steel's production capacity has increased from 1.79 million tons to 12.19 million tons and sales income has increased from 1.443 billion yuan to 132 billion yuan. The Group has paid more than 57.66 billion yuan in tax revenue and has made a significant contribution to the development of the modern Chinese iron and steel industry. More information is available at http://www.shougang.com.cn/shougang_cn_web/
 
About Tang Ming Group 

Tang Ming Group Ltd was established in November 1999. It was successfully formed into a corporation with China Shougang Group in 2003 to establish Shougang Tangming (Auckland) Corporation Ltd. In 2011, Beijing Shougang LanzaTech New Energy Science & Technology Co., Ltd was established in Beijing.

About RSB Services
The Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB) certification system helps farmers, feedstock processors and biomaterial producers prove their sustainability to the world. Certified entities demonstrate that their operations comply with ambitious yet practical safeguards, including the protection of natural or rare ecosystems, food security, and respect for human rights to land, water and decent work conditions, and the management of water resources. With unmatched NGO support, global market compatibility across all feedstocks, practical guidance and tools for an ongoing sustainability system, RSB Services Foundation, the implementing entity of the RSB, helps companies manage their risk and increase shareholder and consumer confidence through the certification of their businesses. More information about RSB certification can be found at www.rsbservices.org. 

Media Contacts:
John Williams
Scoville PR for LanzaTech
jwilliams@scovillepr.com
+1-206-625-0075

Helena Kennedy
Director of Communications at RSB Services Foundation
hkennedy@rsbservices.org
+1-703-725-4626

Trash talk: Worthan angry county not in the loop on biofuels company

http://www.douglascountysentinel.com/news/local/article_64c7c62e-0793-11e3-b23a-0019bb30f31a.html

Posted: Saturday, August 17, 2013 7:18 pm

Ron Daniel / Staff Writer | 

While the city and county have made strides toward working together over the past year and a half, sparks still fly from time to time, as Friday’s meeting of the Development Authority of Douglas County proved.

Douglas County Commission Chairman Tom Worthan didn’t mince words when the subject of a biofuels company interested in locating at the landfill and turning trash into fuel came up.

Douglasville Development Services Director Jeff Noles told the city’s development authority Tuesday morning that landing the company “would be a big win for the county and give them an opportunity to make money where they’re not currently making money.”

But the landfill is outside the city limits and is run by the county. Worthan made clear again Friday the county wants no part of the project and that he wasn’t happy about being left out of the talks.

Noles, Chris Pumphrey, executive director of the DADC, and DADC Board Chairman Ron Wilson were all involved in a conference call with the company about three weeks ago, according to Wilson.

“I have pushed for cooperation, communication,” Worthan said. “It’s embarrassing for me that our development authority had been in contact with these people. Evidently the city development authority has.”

Wilson told Worthan the conference call wasn’t positive. The company would make fuels like synthetic diesel from the decomposition of trash. But Wilson said there were concerns about groundwater pollution and air quality if the company moved here.

Additionally, the company was looking at using the Douglas County landfill to handle the trash for all of the west metro Atlanta area, which would mean an increase from 100 garbage trucks a day on rural roads like Cedar Mountain Road and Mann Road to 1,000.

“From a development authority standpoint, we didn’t have any interest at all,” said Wilson.

Worthan wasn’t satisfied.

“Mr. Chairman, even if you didn’t have any interest in it, I should have been told that you were talking about it,” Worthan said.

Wilson said he agreed and apologized to Worthan.

Douglasville Mayor Harvey Persons said he and Worthan made a pact when he took office in 2012 the city and county would work “in the spirit of cooperation.”

“I think it’s incumbent on both of these bodies to make sure the chief elected officials of the city and county are aware of what’s going on as it relates to economic development,” said Persons.

Wilson said he believed the city and county development authorities were doing just that. But Wilson said the development authority hasn’t traditionally gone to the county and city governments with projects “we take no action on.”

Worthan said he found out about the project second-hand from a Douglasville city council member earlier this week, that even the Douglasville-Douglas County Water Sewer Authority knew about the project, but that the county “was left out of the loop completely.”

“As I’ve said all along, I push for cooperation and consolidation and whatever I could,” Worthan said. “But there’s no excuse for what happened. It just happened to happen, and I don’t expect it to again.”

Then Worthan got in the final words of the meeting, making clear one last time where the county stands on the biofuels company locating at the landfill.

“Not interested,” he said.

Also at Friday’s meeting, Atlanta Kitchen Equipment, located on Industrial Access Road in Douglasville, announced plans to add 20,000 square feet of space and an additional 20 employees.

The expansion will cost $2.5 million and the DADC agreed to help the company get tax-exempt bonds.

Also, Pumphrey also said a land owner in the northwestern corridor of the county had approached the DADC about buying 109 acres just north of the railroad tracks, which could be used to spur industrial growth in that area.

Pumphrey said the DADC is looking “to see what options are there.”

Chevron Defies California On Carbon Emissions

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-18/chevron-defies-california-on-carbon-emissions.html

By Ben Elgin & Peter Waldman - Apr 18, 2013 12:01 AM ET


Chevron Corp. (CVX) helped write the first-in-the-nation rule ordering reduced carbon emissions from cars and trucks. Its biofuels chief spoke at the ceremony where California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the executive order in 2007, the same year the oil company pledged to develop a gasoline replacement from wood.

Now Chevron is leading a lobbying and public relations campaign to undercut the California mandate aimed at curbing global warming, two years after the state started phasing it in. Research on commercially viable climate-friendly products has come to naught, stymied by the poor economics of coaxing hydrocarbons from plants’ stubborn cell walls, according to Chevron officials.

 

An employee works on a Chevron Corp. sign at a gasoline station in San Francisco, California. Like other major investor-owned oil companies, Chevron and ExxonMobil accept climate-change science and acknowledge carbon emissions contribute to global warming. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg 

April 18 (Bloomberg) -- Chevron Corp. helped write California's first-in-the-nation law ordering reduced carbon emissions from cars and trucks. Now Chevron is active in lobbying and public relations efforts to undercut the mandate. Bloomberg's Kevin Thrash reports. (Source: Bloomberg)

 

“We’ve looked at 100 feedstocks, 50 conversion technologies, worked to shape this law the best we can, and we have not come up with a solution to be able to comply,” said Rhonda Zygocki, Chevron’s executive vice president of policy and planning, in a Feb. 4 talk at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Rick Zalesky, the Chevron official who celebrated the order’s signing with Schwarzenegger, was blunt last June when he declared the low-carbon standard “not achievable.”

While still promoting its commitment to renewable energy, the second largest U.S. oil company quietly shelved most of its biofuels work in 2010, according to internal documents and former Chevron officials. It decided products with potential returns of at least 5 percent weren’t enough for a multinational used to margins triple that, said Paul Bryan, a former vice president of biofuels technology.

Cutting Funding 

“The best outcome for the oil companies is if nothing changes,” said Bryan, who left Chevron in 2010 after 15 years. “You can make money today making advanced biofuels -- you just won’t make as much money as the oil companies would like.”

Chevron’s switch is part of the fossil fuel industry’s hardening line against efforts to supplant petroleum in the $500 billion U.S. transportation fuels market.

ExxonMobil Corp., the largest U.S. oil company, has also retreated from a biofuels effort. It slashed funding for research into making the fuel from algae, according to former employees involved in the project, and with Chevron is pressing California to postpone the low-carbon standard. In Europe, meanwhile, carbon credits for December plunged to an all-time low yesterday, making it cheaper for companies to buy the right to emit more carbon dioxide gas under the European Union’s system for controlling global warming.

‘Shockingly Small’

Like other major investor-owned oil companies, Chevron and ExxonMobil accept climate-change science and acknowledge carbon emissions contribute to global warming. They say they’re pushing back against the California rule because it demands technology that may not be available for years, and will cost jobs and send pump prices soaring if not rewritten.

The oil industry is lobbying to stop other states from following California. All the while, oil companies are dedicating few resources to the advances in biofuels they talk about needing to make, said Mary Nichols, head of the California Air Resources Board, which enforces the carbon rule.

“It’s shockingly small given their profitability,” Nichols said. “We’re dealing with companies with revenues in excess of the state of California.”

San Ramon, California-based Chevron had its second most profitable year in 2012, posting net income of $26.2 billion on $222.6 billion in sales, the vast majority from petroleum. California’s revenue in fiscal year 2012 was $87.8 billion.

Doomed Project

The company touts its biofuels program on its Facebook page and website. “It’s time oil companies get behind the development of renewable energy,” a headline on the website says. The text says a joint venture with Weyerhaeuser (WY) Co., Catchlight Energy LLC, is “working to commercialize advanced biofuels made from forest-based biomass.”

While Catchlight still exists, Chevron and the forest products company three years ago scratched a plan to spend more than $400 million and build commercial plants by 2014, according to an internal Catchlight business plan.

The plants were expected to generate a profit of 5 percent to 10 percent, according to Bryan and other former Chevron officials -- short of the average 17 percent the company earns on capital investments, including oil and gas exploration and production, for which it has budgeted $33 billion this year.

The Catchlight plan was doomed when management decreed biofuels had to compete with fossil fuel projects for funds, said Bryan, a lecturer in chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of California at Berkeley. He said he left Chevron, taking a severance package during a staff downsizing, because he didn’t believe the company was committed to biofuels.

Too Ambitious

Chevron was optimistic when it worked on the low-carbon fuel standard with Schwarzenegger’s team in 2007, said Desmond King, president of Chevron Technology Ventures, which oversees emerging technologies. Former biofuels chief Zalesky, now the company’s general manager of crude and manufacturing strategy, was among several Chevron officials who helped craft the rule.

As the company put theory into practice, trying to make a propellant out of wood’s sugar-rich fibers, it realized the rule was too ambitious, King said. The research didn’t lead to anything that would be commercially viable, he said.

Even a 10 percent potential profit wasn’t attractive because the average payback from other projects is so much higher, he said. “It’s hard for Chevron to make major investments in anything that would be dilutive to its return,” he said. “It all comes down to getting good enough returns for our shareholders.”

Algae Fuel

Spending on biofuels has shrunk, he said, declining to give details. A leading producer of geothermal energy, Chevron expects to spend about $2 billion between 2012 and 2014 on renewable energy and energy efficiency, according to Morgan Crinklaw, a company spokesman.

To try to make algae fuel, Irving, Texas-based ExxonMobil said it would spend up to $600 million and hired Synthetic Genomics Inc. in 2009 to identify and modify algal strains that yield high amounts of oils. The oil company promoted the work in ads with a scientist saying, “We’re making a big commitment to finding out just how much algae can help to meet the fuel demands of the world.”

Research hit a snag in 2011 when a strain that made enough oil in a California greenhouse to meet a required milestone in the contract failed to perform in a pond at an ExxonMobil facility in Texas, according to J. Craig Venter, Synthetic Genomics’ chief executive officer and co-founder and one of the first scientists to sequence the human genome.

Long Term

ExxonMobil recast the contract, leading to layoffs of more than half the Synthetic Genomics employees working on biofuels for the oil company, according to former managers and scientists involved in the project. The effort now focuses on long-term research and development rather than commercial production, said Heather Kowalski, a spokeswoman for La Jolla, California-based Synthetic Genomics.

Charles Engelmann, a spokesman for ExxonMobil, declined to discuss details of the partnership or comment on the company’s opposition to the low-carbon rule’s timeline.

That’s being targeted by Fueling California, an advocacy group whose major funder is Chevron and that spent more than $327,000 in 2011 and 2012 lobbying on fuel and transportation policies, according to state disclosure forms.

The Air Resources Board’s Nichols said regulators haven’t been swayed by the arguments, among them that the economy will suffer if implementation of the rule isn’t delayed. “At this point we’re not seeing any need to change course,” she said.

Corporate Representatives

Both Chevron and ExxonMobil help finance the Houston-based Consumer Energy Alliance, which runs ad and Web campaigns warning low-carbon mandates could cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. After the alliance lobbied in New Hampshire last year, lawmakers passed a law prohibiting the state from participating in any low-carbon fuel program without legislative approval.

In January, the Washington-based American Legislative Exchange Council, which writes bills it recommends to legislators, endorsed a measure based on the New Hampshire law that it’s urging other states to adopt.

The council is made up of lawmakers and corporate representatives. Company memberships cost from $7,000 to $25,000 annually, and those that belong include ExxonMobil, the coal concern Peabody Energy Corp. and Koch Industries Inc., a chemical, textile, trading and refining conglomerate whose co- owners, Charles and David Koch, have supported the Tea Party.

Front Line

The council opposes government dictating Americans’ fuel choices, said Todd Wynn, director of the energy, environment and agriculture task force at the group. It also encourages legislators to repeal mandates -- which exist in 29 states -- requiring renewable energy from solar, wind and other sources to be part of the electric power mix.

This year, 30 bills to kill or weaken renewable rules have been considered in 16 states, according to the North Carolina Solar Center in Raleigh, which tracks such measures. None have passed so far.

California, the most populous state, is the front line: Emission controls enacted there since 1966 have been models for federal car-pollution and miles-per-gallon rules.

The state began to phase in the low-carbon standard in 2011. When it’s fully in effect in 2020, greenhouse gas emissions associated with transportation fuels are supposed to be 10 percent less than they were in 2010.

Transportation Mix

The state’s 32 million vehicles consume 15 billion gallons of gasoline each year, according to state data, and emit 160 million metric tons of greenhouse gases annually, 36 percent of all such emissions in California.

Right now, the state is on track to achieve the goal, according to Stanley Young, a spokesman for the Air Resources Board. Neither the agency nor Chevron and ExxonMobil will disclose how the companies are complying with the rule.

The U.S. government first spurred interest in biofuels, after President George W. Bush signed laws in 2005 and 2007 ordering more non-petroleum ingredients in the fuel supply.

The laws required refiners, importers and blenders to put 16.6 billion gallons of renewables into the mix by 2013. At least 1 billion gallons would have to come from cellulosic biofuels, which, unlike the widely used ethanol supplement derived from corn, are harvested from non-food crops, including switch grass and woody debris.

Fading Appetite

To meet its obligations, Chevron in 2008 teamed up with Weyerhaeuser to start Catchlight. Its goal was 17 plants by 2029, making 2 billion gallons annually, with spending of $370 million by 2013, according to a Catchlight business plan.

“There was a lot of enthusiasm that we would move forward on a path to develop something significant,” said Denny Hunter, Catchlight’s chief technology officer in 2008 and 2009 and a former vice president of technology for pulp, paper and packaging at Federal Way, Washington-based Weyerhaeuser.

Chevron’s appetite for biofuels began to fade after about a year, according to Hunter, Bryan and other former officials affiliated with Catchlight. A key reason, they said, was the shrinking federal cellulosic biofuels directive.

The laws Bush signed instruct the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to adjust requirements based on supplies, which have never reached the goal. The EPA’s cellulosic biofuels mandate for 2013 is 99 percent below the original target.

‘No Urgency’

Chevron’s biofuels plan wound up in the cross-hairs of cost analysts in 2009 when they determined it would be a better bet to buy renewable fuel credits rather than keep trying to make the product, according to Bryan and two other former employees who asked not to be identified because they were discussing confidential company information. Credits, purchased from the government or producers who exceed low-carbon obligations, allow non-reducers to abide by clean fuel regulations.

After the cost analysts’ report, the Catchlight budget was stripped of money for plants, said Hunter, the former chief technologist who said he retired in 2009 because he was unhappy with the joint-venture’s direction. Chevron “no longer wanted to be a leader in biofuels,” he said.

In April 2010, Chevron and Weyerhaeuser told Catchlight to ratchet back, according to an internal business plan that set the 2013 budget at $8.9 million -- 98 percent lower than previously envisioned.

The Catchlight board said in the plan there was “no urgency” to commercialize and that, “in the absence of mandates,” the first plant “should be driven by financial returns.” The return on the investment would have to “meet or exceed” 20 percent, according to the plan.

‘Technical Winner’

That shocked scientists who were confident they’d come up with a process that would work, called solvent liquefaction, according to Jim Stevens, a chemist who researched technologies for 29 years at Chevron before being laid off in December 2010.

They’d constructed a contraption the size of a Winnebago that used a chemical solvent to turn woody biomass into fuel. It began producing in February 2010. “This was a real technical winner,” Stevens said.

Catchlight roughed out the numbers for a $504 million solvent liquefaction plant producing 92 million gallons a year at a cost of $2.18 a gallon, according to a 2010 internal report that laid out the technical and economic prospects for producing biofuels on a commercial scale. Making gasoline costs between $2 a gallon and $2.75 a gallon when oil prices are $70 a barrel to $100 a barrel, according to another Catchlight document.

‘Still Learning’

The joint venture never performed final tests on the biofuels process, Stevens said. “They just quit trying.”

Chevron hasn’t stopped working on developing biofuels products, according to Crinklaw, the company spokesman.

Taxpayers will help pay for future solvent liquefaction research. It will be conducted at Iowa State University with a $3.5 million federal grant covering 80 percent of the costs, and Catchlight the rest.

Catchlight is also supplying wood chips to Pasadena, Texas- based KiOR Inc., a biofuels producer that announced its first shipment of cellulosic diesel in March. Chevron has a contract to purchase some of KiOR’s renewable fuels. Weyerhaeuser is happy with the joint venture’s status, said David Godwin, vice president of minerals and energy products.

In October 2010, six months after Chevron and Weyerhaeuser put the brakes on at Catchlight, Chevron ran television and print ads about its work on non-petroleum fuels. “Something’s got to be done. So we’re doing it,” the ads said. “We’re not just behind renewables. We’re tackling the challenges of making them affordable and reliable on a large scale.”

Chevron officials didn’t respond to questions about the advertising campaign.

“We remain interested in the solvent liquefaction technology but, like other biofuels production technologies, it is early in its development, and we’re still learning about it,” Crinklaw said in an e-mailed statement. “Unfortunately, the technology hasn’t advanced as quickly as we hoped.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Ben Elgin in San Francisco at belgin@bloomberg.net; Peter Waldman in San Francisco at pwaldman@bloomberg.net
 
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Gary Putka at gputka@bloomberg.net

German company to open wood pellet factory in Urania

http://www.thetowntalk.com/article/20130418/BUSINESS/304180018/German-company-open-wood-pellet-factory-Urania?nclick_check=1

Apr 18, 2013
Written by Jeff Matthews

The world’s largest wood pellet plant is coming to one of the smallest towns in Central Louisiana.

German Pellets will begin work immediately on a $300 million plant in Urania that is expected to create 500 jobs, officials with the company and Central Louisiana Economic Development Alliance announced Wednesday. The plant is expected to be operational in the spring of 2014.


“We are ecstatic about the decision by German Pellets to locate in Urania,” said Rick Ranson, vice president-major employers for CLEDA. “German Pellets is a premier company and this is an historic announcement, not only for Urania and LaSalle Parish, but also the entire Central Louisiana region.”


“Pellet consumption worldwide is on the rise, especially in Europe,” said German Pellets Chief Executive Officer Peter Leibold. “This means that the construction of large production capacities is necessary.”


Demand for wood pellets from the European power plant market for the generation of electricity has risen sharply, according to a company release. There is also increasing demand for the product to generate heat for private consumers and larger scale users such as schools and hospitals.


Wood pellets are made from wood shavings and sawdust pressed into a cylindrical shape. The plant in Urania is expected to produce one million tons of pellets per year.


It’s the second major project recently announced in Central Louisiana involving the wood industry and renewable energy. Sundrop Fuels is building a plant near Alexandria that will convert wood waste and natural gas into gasoline.


CLEDA officials are hoping to see more in the future.

“There’s a lot of activity in that sector, so this is an important play for us,” said CLEDA President Jim Clinton. “Plus, it’s foreign direct investment. That’s what you always like to see, bringing in capital from outside the region.”


“I tell people wood is our oil,” Ranson said.

Founded in 2005, German Pellets is the leading manufacturer of wood pellets in Europe. Its first U.S. plant — in Woodville, Texas — has roughly half the capacity of the planned plant in Urania.

 

GlobalData: BioEthanol Car Fuel of Future

http://domesticfuel.com/2013/04/18/globaldata-bioethanol-car-fuel-of-future/

Posted by Joanna Schroeder – April 18th, 2013

According to a new report by @GlobalDataEnergy, bioethanol is the car fuel of the future. The report, “Cellulosic Ethanol – Global Production, Major Trends, Regulations, and Key Country Analysis to 2020,” finds that ethanol is the most widely acclaimed alternative or additive for gasoline used for running vehicles. In addition, the U.S. ranked number one in biofuel production using natural waste feedstocks. According to the latest report, the U.S. is the global leader in cellulosic ethanol production, manufacturing 5.42 million gallons in 2012.


Bioethanol is produced through the fermentation of cellulosic feedstock such as forest and agricultural waste. The reports finds that the U.S. has an abundance of biomass feedstock, and dedicated energy crops such as switchgrass and miscanthus that are grown exclusively for conversion into cellulosic ethanol to help the nation’s ambition to meet fuel needs while reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The U.S. is the only country currently working to promote the cellulosic ethanol market, says the report, with the U.S. Department of Energy (US DOE) providing grants to help companies establish a commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant. As a result, several companies have set up pilot and demonstration plants and a few commercial plants are expected to be commissioned in late 2013. The report also finds that the U.S. have also mandated the addition of 10% ethanol in gasoline fuel, setting steady domestic demand for the industry, while certain recently released cars are able to run on a 85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gasoline mix.

The report finds corn stover and wheat straw are among the most freely available types of feedstock used in countries producing cellulosic ethanol, and growing ethanol demand may see these nations utilizing the residue of their corn crop for ethanol production, creating a sizable market for agricultural waste. GlobalData expects that the growing feedstock demand will create a structured market, in which biomass feedstock prices will be set based on their ethanol yield and the prevailing trading price of ethanol.

Some EU countries such as France and Italy have cellulosic ethanol production infrastructure, but a limited supply of biomass feedstock. Growth of commercial production in these countries may fuel the need to import feedstock from nearby countries or expand production to other countries with ample feedstock availability. A few producers with upcoming commercial scale plants in the U.S. have already started signing agreements to procure agricultural residue and other kinds of cellulosic feedstock.

Global cellulosic ethanol is expected to increase from 14.25m gallons in 2012 to 412.25m gallons in 2020, with commercial production anticipated to take off on a large scale in late 2013 and 2014, thanks to major players adding substantial production capacity and new companies joining the market. The report finds that the U.S. is expected to retain its market dominance until 2020.

Country forestry banquet set for Tuesday

http://dailysoutherner.com/community/x1221097993/Country-forestry-banquet-set-for-Tuesday

March 25, 2013
 

BY JOHN H. WALKER  

THE DAILY SOUTHERNER

 

TARBORO — Persons with an interest in the timber industry will gather Tuesday at the East Carolina Agriculture and Education Center for the annual Edgecombe County Forestry Banquet.

The meal portion of the event will get under way at 6:30 p.m. and the program will begin at 7:15

Clay Altizer, Utilization Forester for the North Carolina Forest Service, and Edward Sontag, director of fiber sourcing for Envira LP, will deliver the main presentations.

As recently as the third quarter of 2011, the forest products sector in North Carolina included 2,299 manufacturing facilities and provided 67,613 jobs and an annual payroll of $2.7 billion.

The overall economic benefit to the state was estimated at $23.8 billion with a total related work force of 178,498.

Sontag will talk about the future of palletized woody biomass.

Enviva is one of the largest manufacturers of processed biomass fuel in the form of 100 percent wood pellets in the United States and Europe.

Enviva operates a pellet facility in Ashokie capable of producing 350,000 metric tons of wood pellet annually and is scheduled to bring a 500,000 metric ton plant online in Northampton at mid-year.

Woody biomass is made up of the trees and woody plants, including limbs, tops, needles, leaves, and other woody parts, grown in a forest, woodland, or rangeland environment, that are the by-products of forest management.

The National Energy Policy Act, signed into law on August 8, 2005, recognized the importance of a diverse portfolio of domestic energy. The policy outlined 13 recommendations designed to increase America’s use of renewable and alternative energy. One of these recommendations directed the Secretaries of the Interior and Energy to re-evaluate access limitations to federal lands in order to increase renewable energy production, such as biomass, wind, geothermal, and solar.

On June 18, 2003, The Departments of Energy, Interior, and Agriculture announced an initiative to encourage the use of woody biomass from forest and rangeland restoration and hazardous fuels treatment projects. The three Departments signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on Policy Principles for Woody Biomass Utilization for Restoration and Fuel Treatment on Forests, Woodlands, and Rangelands, supporting woody biomass utilization as a recommended option to use to reduce hazardous fuels rather than burning or employing other on-site disposal methods.

In North Carolina, North Carolina General Statutes 105-277.2 through 105-277.7 provide an incentive for farmers and foresters to keep agricultural and forested land in those uses through property tax deferments as part of the use value program.

In order to qualify for forestry use, there must be at least 20 acres of forested land, and you must present to the tax assessor a Forestry Management Plan, showing the forested land is under a sound management program.

For more information, contact Bob Filbrun at 641-7815.

BlueFire assures that Mississippi plant is still in the works

http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2013/03/11/bluefire-assures-that-mississippi-plant-is-still-in-the-works/

Isabel Lane | March 11, 2013 

 

In Mississippi, BlueFire director of business development and marketing Richard Klann responded in Ethanol Producer Magazine to concern that construction at the Fulton plant has recently stopped. Klann clarified that the company is still actively working to complete the 19 MMgy wood waste-to-cellulosic ethanol plant. Klann added that the company has been attempting to source the debt for the project after their application for a DOE loan guarantee fell through. Klann expressed hope that financing will be in place in the third or fourth quarter this year with construction restarting a few months after that. 

LanzaTech Announces Datuk Ir. (Dr) Abdul Rahim Hj Hashim, President of Malaysian Gas Association, to Board of Directors

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/lanzatech-announces-datuk-ir-dr-abdul-rahim-hj-hashim-president-of-malaysian-gas-association-to-board-of-directors-2013-03-11

36 Year Veteran of Oil & Gas Industry Will Help Company Accelerate Commercialization of Novel Technology to Convert Unused Gas Streams Into Marketable Commodities 

 

ROSELLE, IL, Mar 11, 2013 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) -- LanzaTech, a producer of low-carbon fuels and chemicals from carbon-containing gases, announced the appointment of Datuk Ir. (Dr) Abdul Rahim Hj Hashim, the current President of the Malaysian Gas Association, former Chief Executive of PETRONAS Oil Refinery and a 36 year oil and gas industry veteran to its board of directors. 

"As we take our technology further into the fuel production value chain, Datuk Rahim's extensive leadership experience in the oil and gas industry will be incredibly valuable," said Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech. "In addition to the significant potential to create marketable commodities from industrial waste streams containing carbon monoxide, we are seeing increasing opportunity to leverage our technology with underutilized, or otherwise unusable gas streams." 

Datuk Rahim, the President of the Malaysian Gas Association, began his career in PETRONAS soon after graduating from the University of Birmingham, UK in electrical and electronics engineering. Throughout his 36 years of involvement in the oil and gas industry, he has held a number of high profile positions of increasing responsibility. As Vice President at PETRONAS for 10 years, he covered three different portfolios: Vice President of Human Resource Management for the PETRONAS Group for four years; vice president of the Gas Business for three years and Vice President for Research and Technology for three years. In addition, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of PETRONAS Oil Refinery (Melaka) Sdn Bhd as well as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Malaysian Refining Company Sdn Bhd (MRC). 

While serving in PETRONAS, he also held several key positions in a variety of gas industry organizations, both in Malaysia and at an international level including serving as President of the Asia Pacific Natural Gas Vehicle Association (ANGVA) and President of the International Gas Union (IGU). A professional engineer, Datuk Rahim serves on the Board of Engineers (BOE), Malaysia and also the Chairman of the Engineering Accreditation Council (EAC) Malaysia. He is also an Associate Member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. In 1997, he completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard Business School. 

"I've been very impressed with the progress LanzaTech has made to date developing and scaling its core technology to convert waste gases into renewable fuels and chemicals," said Datuk Rahim. "I look forward to helping the company extend that platform into new feedstocks, including CO2, methane and other carbon sources as well as new end products." 

In 2012, LanzaTech partnered with PETRONAS to develop new approaches to effectively capture carbon, with an initial focus on using CO2 from a variety of sources including refinery off gases and natural gas wells to produce acetic acid, a high value chemical with applications in the polymers and plastics markets. 

About LanzaTech 

LanzaTech is a leader in gas fermentation technology. It provides novel and economic routes to fuels and high value chemicals from waste gas streams. LanzaTech's unique process provides a sustainable pathway to produce platform chemicals that serve as building blocks to products that have become indispensable in our lives such as rubber, plastics, synthetic fibers and fuels. 

LanzaTech's technology solutions mitigate carbon emissions from industry without impacting adversely food or land security.

Currently commissioning a second pre-commercial facility in China using steel mill off gases for ethanol production, LanzaTech, a company founded in New Zealand, is now a global organization with full commercial operation targeted for 2014. More information is available at www.lanzatech.com

Hot sauce! 5 Lessons Louisiana can teach us about advanced bayoufuels

http://www.biofuelsdigest.com/bdigest/2013/03/07/hot-sauce-5-lessons-louisiana-can-teach-us-about-advanced-bayoufuels/

Jim Lane | March 7, 2013 

Louisiana — it’s as hot as cayenne pepper in biofuels capacity development, but there are cautionary tales hidden in the sauce.

 

When it comes to the first generation of ethanol and biodiesel-based biofuels, Louisiana didn’t figure much into the calculations — to date, there’s just the 5 million gallon (per year) Oswalt Bioenergy biodiesel plant in Lake Providence and the 15 Mgy Vanguard Synfuels in Pollock.

But since drop-in renewable fuels arrived, Louisiana hasn’t just been in the race, or near the front of the pack — it has become the Secretariat of project development — out in front by a mile. In all, more than 500 million gallons in advanced biofuels and chemicals project capacity announced — a 100-fold jump in the past five years.

Now — before booking your ticket down to Baton Rouge for the “renewable fuels forever” victory parade , let’s emphasize the phrase “project announcement”.

76 million gallons of that proposed capacity is currently completed (another 142 million expected to come online this year, and 50 million more in 2014, the rest we don’t have firm dates on as we await financing news). From that capacity, today, there’s not currently any commercial production — as Dynamic Fuels awaits better RIN price conditions (and the 1.5 mgy BP Biofuels plant in Jennings is a pilot plant used in research and development).

So, we can learn a lot down in the bayous about what works, and what’s problematic, in advanced biofuels development.

1. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em

 

Louisiana has many blessings above and beyond Bourbon Street and cajun spices. Among them are an abundance of gases for sale — from hydrogen to natural gas; fats and greases from animal rendering, and a forestry sector that has fallen on tough times with the decline of newsprint. Buck Vandersteen, executive director of the Louisiana Forestry Association, spoke for a lot of these resources in observing, “We have to recognize our traditional industries and seek out new industries.”

The combination of rendering greases and hydrogen is, for now, the primary catalyst for growth — as Louisiana firms have perfected the art of purifying greases into renewable oils which are then hydrotreated to remove excess oxygen — voila, producing renewable diesel. Variations on this formula are the source of the Tyson-Syntroleum 75 million gallon plant in Geismar (Dynamic Fuels), the Valero-Darling 137 million gallon project in Norco (Diamond Green Diesel), the proposed Emerald Biofuels 85 million gallon project in Plaquemine, and the proposed D2 Renewable 150 million gallon project in Convent.

[Over in Pollock, Vanguard's been up to good things, too — introducing their own 2nd gen technology thermo-chemical solution (more about it here). Word is from Vanguard that they have the only catalyst that produces four non-sulfur alcohols simultaneously: 40% Ethanol, 40% Methanol, 15% Propanol and 5% Butanol. ]

In all, that’s just on 90 percent of the activity in the state. Most of the remainder comes from the Sundrop Fuels project near Alexandria. Using forest waste and hydrogen from natural gas, the plant will produce up to 50 MGy of renewable gasoline.  The biofuels plant will salvage wood waste in Central Louisiana and adjacent regions and also will extract hydrogen from abundant supplies of Louisiana natural gas, combining the hydrogen in a proprietary reactor with carbon extracted from wood waste. Construction is expected to be complete in 2014.


The projects pale with the scope of Sasol’s proposed $21 billion gas-to-liquids and ethane cracking plant proposed for Louisiana — but it goes to show you that there is nothing that stimulates activity more than an abundance of low-cost feedstocks.

2. In grease, color matters

 

White grease bad, yellow grease better, brown grease best.

Generally speaking, traditional biodiesel plants utilize choice white grease if they can utilize grease at all. Only a few companies have pioneered cost-effective technologies for making FAME biodiesel out of yellow greases — that been one of Renewable Energy Group’s great advantages, for example.

These days, white grease is expensive — and you don’t see much traditional biodiesel capacity being built in the bayous as a result.

Yellow greases — the economics used to be wonderful — now, not so much. Projects like Dynamic Fuels were based on those feedstocks — but these days, the price of the feedstock has made renewable diesel a tough economic proposition unless the RIN prices for renewable fuel credits, and other incentives like blenders credits, are available.

The next yellow grease project to come online will be Diamond Green Diesel, capable of producing over 9,300 barrels per day or 137 million gallons per year of renewable diesel on a site adjacent to Valero’s St. Charles refinery near Norco, Louisiana.  The facility will convert grease, primarily animal fats and used cooking oil supplied by Darling. Completion of the facility is expected to be imminent.


But the future may well be in brown grease – the really tough to use material – sludgy and klugy. That’s said to be the strategy for D2 Renewable, developing a 70 acre energy park, located in Convent, Louisiana.  The energy park will ultimately consist of five 30 million gallon refineries producing ASTM D 975 Renewable Ultra-Low Sulfur Diesel fuel.

3. RFS2 matters, RINs matter

 

As mentioned above, yellow grease is a tough business without good RIN prices and a strong RFS2 mandate to drive RIN values.

In December, Dynamic Fuels filed this with the SEC:

“The economics of the U.S. biomass based diesel industry are currently challenged by significantly lower RIN (renewable identification number) prices. D4 RIN prices averaged $1.39 for the first six months of 2012. As of December 10, 2012, the D4 RIN price was $0.56.   RIN prices at these levels have not been seen since the implementation of the RFS2 program by EPA in July of 2010.

“The regulatory framework underpinning biomass based diesel production remains intact.  The biomass based diesel mandate for 2013 is 1.28 billion gallons, or 28% above the 2012 mandate.  We expect markets to adjust positively in 2013 due to the higher mandate.”

Since then, Syntroleum has not indicated that they have re-started production.

4. Creative financing matters

Two of the most creative financing efforts in recent years are behind two of the next projects to come online in Louisiana.

Myriant’s Lake Providence, LA commercial plant will produce 30 million pounds of bio-succinic acid annually and construction is on-schedule for the planned commercial start-up in the first quarter of 2013.  Myriant is the first bio-based chemicals company to receive funding from USDA’s B&I Rural Development Loan Guarantee program — and a bond issue sold in by Stern Brothers.

As we wrote last June “We’re heard about the “3 Impossibles” for some time. Impossible to get a project without the term of the offtake being at least equivalent to the term of the debt. Impossible to get a project funded without the feedstock contracts covering the entire portion of the loan.

Impossible to get a project funded without the offtake 100% covered by contracts.

That may remain true for the bank side – but over here in bond world – the three Impossibles have been converted into the three “you’ll pay more, but it’s do-ables”. Here, there was first-timer risk.

Technology risk. Market risk. All absorbed in the rate.

Bonds are also expected to provide financing magic for Sundrop’s 50 million gallons renewable gasoline plant. Using forest waste and hydrogen from natural gas, their plant will produce up to 50 MGy of renewable gasoline.  The plant will cost $450 to $500 million to build and will be financed in part through the sale of tax-exempt Private Activity Bonds.

5. Long-term — diversify feedstocks

You’d think that with all that natgas, rendering grease and hydrogen that the state would rest on its laurels. Not so. In fact, the state has seen enough in the potential of renewables to double down on support for developing dedicated energy crops.

In January, the LSU AgCenter officially opened its pilot plant. The plant focuses on sweet sorghum, energy cane and other grasses to produce convertible sugars, fiber and bioproducts and can be scaled up to any capacity. The project is part of a larger USDA-funded five-year, $17.2 million grant.

Switchgrass is particularly in focus, as the grass is native to the Cajun prairie, and test plots are being co-planted with eastern cottonwood trees that could also be interesting feedstocks for the region.

The bottom line

The trend is clear. Assess immediate opportunities in abundant, low-cost feedstocks — but develop others with an eye on the future.

Be careful with technology development so that you can continue to access the lowest-cost feedstocks and use RINs as an equity sweetener for shareholders rather than as a necessary component of production – else you will see fits and starts in production, and costs will soar.

Above all, tap in to the bond market where possible and be as a creative in financing as you are in technology and feedstock. Put them all together — you might see a hundred-fold increase in capacity, as is expected for Louisiana — and ensure that that capacity once taken online, stays online.

New company to bring $25 million wood pellet plant to George County

http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-news/2013/03/new_company_to_bring_25_millio.html

By April M. Havens | gulflive.com
on March 04, 2013 at 10:04 AM, updated March 04, 2013 at 11:51 AM

LUCEDALE, Mississippi -- Gulf Coast Renewable Energy LLC plans to bring a $25 million wood pellet manufacturing facility to George County's industrial park, company officials announced Monday at the Board of Supervisors meeting.

The project will create 28 new jobs and 144 indirect jobs, company Vice President for Engineering Gary Ogle said.

It will produce about 160,000 metric tons of pellets per year, Ogle said, and the company also plans to double production within the next 3 years.

GCRE, a new company, will produce biomass for sale to European utilities, which will mix the pellets with coal to reduce their carbon emissions.

Offtake agreements are in place, mostly with utility companies in the United Kingdom, said Economic Development and Communication Director Ken Flanagan.

The plant should be producing pellets by the fourth quarter of 2014, Ogle said, and will take up to 14 months for construction.

"The timeline's getting tight," he told supervisors.

The company is buying from Mississippi Export Railroad about 40 acres that sit just south of Vulcan Materials on Industrial Road.

The company will tie into the existing railroad spur, and about 3 railroad cars of pellets will be sent to the port in Theodore, Ala., every 2 to 3 days, Flanagan said.

Ogle asked supervisors for help building an access road to the site and said he will work with Mississippi Power and the county for assistance with utilities and connections.

"We're glad y'all chose us," board President Kelly Wright said, noting the company represents "the type of growth we're looking to get."

Ogle told him, "George County always felt right from the beginning."

Ogle has experience building at least 3 wood pellet facilities over the last 10 years -- 1 each in Georgia, Louisiana and Arkansas -- but this is the first under the new company, Flanagan said.

The pellets are made from a mix of soft and hard woods, including long and scrap timber. There is minimal waste in the process, as even the removed bark is used to fire the wood driers.

Flanagan said the facility will be a good fit for George County.

"It's an emerging energy business, not a smoke stack driven business," he said. "And it's a good step in showing what our industrial park has to offer, including highway access, a rail spur and a workforce that understands hard work."

Irvine Renewable Fuels Firm Halts Work on Mississippi Plant

http://www.ocbj.com/news/2013/mar/01/irvine-renewable-fuels-firm-halts-work-mississippi/

Jane Yu Friday, March 1, 2013 

Irvine-based renewable fuels maker BlueFire Renewables Inc. has halted construction work on a plant planned for Fulton, Miss. plant.

BlueFire converts non-food resources, such as trash, wood waste and other agricultural residues, into ethanol. It also has a subsidiary called SucreSource LLC in Anaheim, which makes cellulosic sugars for the commercial applications.

It began working on the Fulton plant in 2009. The facility was designed to employ about 80 workers and produce 19 million gallons of ethanol per year. The project, which was estimated to cost $300 million, had seen some progress on permits and site preparation.

Work recently was put on hold while BlueFire focuses on building a facility in South Korea, according to Greg Deakle, the executive director of Itawamba County Development Council in Mississippi.

BlueFire signed a deal last year with GS Caltex, a South Korea-based petroleum company, to build a cellulose sugar plant there.

The company counts another Asian partner in Beijing-based Chinese Huadian Engineering Co.

EPA approves new cellulosic, advanced biofuel pathways

http://www.biomassmagazine.com/articles/8669/epa-approves-new-cellulosic-advanced-biofuel-pathways

By Erin Voegele | February 26, 2013

 

The U.S. EPA has published a new final rule, qualifying additional fuel pathways under the renewable fuel standard (RFS) for advanced biofuel, cellulosic biofuel and biomass-based diesel. The rulemaking covers two new feedstocks, camelina and energy cane. It also qualifies renewable gasoline and renewable gasoline blendstocks made from certain feedstocks as cellulosic biofuel.

Under the new rule, ethanol, renewable diesel (including jet fuel and heating oil) and renewable gasoline blendstock produced using energy cane feedstock can now qualify to generate cellulosic biofuel renewable identification numbers (RINs).

According to the EPA, for the purposes of this rulemaking, energy cane has been defined as a complex hybrid in the Saccharum genus that that has been bred to maximize cellulosic rather than sugar content.

Within the final rule, the EPA addresses several comments made by members of the public during the rulemaking process, including those related to invasiveness and land use change potential. The EPA states that energy cane does not raise significant concerns about the threat of invasiveness. Regarding land use change, the EPA specifies that energy cane is most likely to be grown on land once used for pasture, rice, commercial sod, cotton or alfalfa, which would have a less international direct impact than switchgrass because those commodities are not as widely traded as soybeans or wheat. “Given that energy cane will likely displace the least productive land first, EPA concludes that the land use GHG impact for energy cane per gallon should be no greater and likely less than estimated for switchgrass,” said the agency in the rulemaking.

According to the rule, EPA believes that cellulsoic biofuels produced from the cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin portions of energy cane will have similar or better lifecycle GHG impacts than biofuel produced from switchgrass.

Biodiesel and renewable diesel (including jet fuel and heating oil) made from camelina feedstock are now eligible for biomass-based diesel or advanced RINs. In addition, camelina-based naphtha and liquefied petroleum gas can qualify for advanced biofuel RINs.

While the EPA notes in the rulemaking that some parties submitting comments on the proposed camelina pathways expressed concern over the potential threat of invasiveness, the EPA states that it believes the production of camelina is unlikely to spread beyond the intended borders in which it is grown.

The EPA also specified that the crop is currently being grown on approximately 50,000 acres of land throughout Montana, Washington, North Dakota and South Dakota. Overall, the EPA estimates that approximately 9 million acres of land in a wheat/fallow rotation is available for camelina production nationwide.

“Current information suggestion that camelina will be produced on land that would otherwise remain fallow,” said EPA in the rulemaking. “Therefore, increased production of camelina-based renewable fuel is not expected to result in significant land use change emissions; however, the agency will continue to monitor volumes through EMTS to verify this assumption.”

Regarding renewable gasoline and renewable gasoline blendstocks, the rulemaking qualifies fuels produced from crop residue, slash, pre-commercial thinnings, tree residue, annual cover crops, and cellulosic components of separated yard waste, separated food waste and separated municipal solid waste (MWS). The rule also specifies that, when utilizing natural gas, biogas and/or biomass as the only process energy source, thermochemical pyrolysis, thermochemical gasification, biochemical direct fermentation, biochemical fermentation with catalytic upgrading can all be used with the listed feedstocks to generated fuel qualifying as cellulosic biofuel. In addition, any other process that uses biogas and/or biomass as the only process energy sources to convert the approved gasoline and renewable gasoline blendstock feedstocks into biofuel also qualifies for cellulosic RINs.

A full copy of the rulemaking is available on the EPA website.

Greener planet is goal for 3 startups

http://www.equities.com/news/headline-story?dt=2012-12-16&val=832224&cat=material

By Julie Wernau, Chicago Tribune McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

Dec. 16--If the glut of companies billing themselves as "solutions" providers is any indication, the world has no shortage of problems.

Green tech companies take on some of the most complicated, difficult problems to solve. They tend to be problems created by our mere existence, chief among them our massive demand for energy. The more we rely on energy to power our electronics, our vehicles and our lives, the more pollution we churn into our land, water and air.

The Tribune checked in with three local green tech startups at various stages of development. They haven't changed the world yet, but they're working on it.

COMPANY: LanzaTech

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: Global warming, a huge challenge as energy demand is expected to double within 40 years.

FUNDS RAISED: $100 million

It may sound like sci-fi, but LanzaTech produces gas-eating "bugs" that don't require oxygen to survive.

In April, the company's microscopic bacteria began ingesting carbon monoxide from a steel mill in China. Carbon monoxide goes in one end of the bacteria and ethanol comes out the other.

With a few genetic tweaks, the bug can produce a wide range of fuels and chemicals from gases that companies spend money to get rid of. The idea, says Jennifer Holmgren, the company's chief executive, is to trap nasty gases that float from steel mills, power plants and chemical factories, turning them into products that are useful and profitable.

The company recently inked a deal with Petronas, the national oil company of Malaysia, to develop a modified version of the bug that takes in carbon dioxide and produces acetic acid, a chemical companies need to produce polymers used in plastics.

"Rather than trying to sequester carbon deep into the earth, we will 'bury' it in a chemical," Holmgren said. "In this way, companies can not only comply with emissions reduction requirements, but also generate revenue along the way."

When Holmgren talks about the technology's potential, she pulls up a map of the world, showing partnerships and agreements the company has with companies from Boeing Co. in Chicago and Kansas-based Invista, the world's largest nylon producer, to Indian Oil Co. in New Delhi and Mitsui & Co. Ltd. in Japan.

Out of the company's various projects, the carbon monoxide-eating bacteria are the furthest along in the path toward commercialization. This month, LanzaTech finished a demonstration project for China's largest steel manufacturer, Baosteel, at a plant near Shanghai.

LanzaTech successfully produced the equivalent of more than 100,000 gallons of ethanol per year from just a fraction of the carbon monoxide the company creates in the steel-making process.

"You're literally driving for miles watching this steel mill," Holmgren said, explaining its vast size -- and its potential to produce hundreds of millions of gallons of ethanol per year.

The technology creates a financial incentive to trap the gas rather than flare it, a common practice that produces carbon dioxide, which contributes to global warming. Through a series of pipes, the gas enters a vessel filled with the organism, which is floating in water. Fuel comes out the back end and is pumped through a distiller to create pure ethanol.

Because of the success of that demonstration, the steel company has ordered the first of what will eventually be three or four units, each about $80 million, that are each expected to produce 30 million to 50 million gallons of ethanol per year. Each unit pays itself back in under five years, Holmgren said.

"We don't want it to be green for green's sake. If it is, no one is going to use it," she said.

With 140 employees worldwide, LanzaTech doesn't have any revenues to report yet. Holmgren said LanzaTech expects to grow to profitability between 2013 and 2015.

LanzaTech to Convert Baosteel Mill Fumes Into Ethanol, CEO Says

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-03/lanzatech-to-convert-baosteel-mill-fumes-into-ethanol-ceo-says.html

By Andrew Herndon - Dec 3, 2012 8:00 AM ET

LanzaTech NZ Ltd., a closely held developer of transportation fuels and chemicals from waste industrial gases, plans to begin building next year an ethanol plant at a Baosteel Group Corp. steel mill in China.

The facility will use LanzaTech’s genetically-modified microorganisms to convert carbon monoxide-containing gas into as much as 10 million gallons of fuel-grade ethanol a year starting in 2014, Chief Executive Jennifer Holmgren said by telephone Nov. 30. Financing is being arranged by Baosteel, she said, and wouldn’t disclose the expected cost.

The project is a joint venture with Baosteel, China’s second largest steel manufacturer, and scales up a 100,000 gallon a year demonstration plant the companies installed at one of Baosteel’s mills near Shanghai. Results from that project “have shown that the scaling of the technology has been successful,” LanzaTech, based in Auckland, New Zealand, said in an e-mailed statement.

LanzaTech also has a venture with Shougang Group, China’s fourth-largest steelmaker, and industrial companies in India, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan are evaluating projects with the company. Holmgren told Bloomberg in January she may begin considering an IPO after successful operations of the Baosteel demonstration.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Herndon in San Francisco at aherndon2@bloomberg.net
 
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net

Creating a more sustainable biofuel policy

http://www.euractiv.com/energy/voluntary-rules-allies-industry-analysis-516314

Published 28 November 2012, updated 29 November 2012

The European Commission’s proposal to amend the Renewable Energy Directive should be welcomed as a first step towards the elimination of the adverse impact of biofuels. But more incisive action is badly needed in the future, writes Enrico Partiti.

Enrico Partiti is a doctoral fellow at the University of Amsterdam specialising in social and environmental standardisation.

As anticipated by a draft leaked in September, the Commission proposal for the amendment of the Renewable Energy Directive aims to address the adverse effects on food prices and in particular land-use change resulting from the EU support to the biofuel industry, by encouraging the transition from first-generation, or ‘conventional’, biofuels - produced from food-crops such as wheat, sugar and rapeseed - to second-generation biofuels.

The latter, also known as ‘advanced biofuels’, are obtained from non-food sources such as biomass, algae and municipal solid waste, and deliver higher greenhouse gas savings when the full production circle is considered.

The proposal tackles in particular one of the several controversial issues related to first-generation biofuels, the so-called indirect land use change (ILUC). The employment of food-crops for biofuel production rather than human consumption results in a restrain on the supply side that requires that new and previously uncultivated land is put to use.

This can cause substantial carbon emissions and loss of biodiversity.

When the Commission published its proposal for minimising the environmental impact of biofuel production by including also emissions resulting from ILUC in the calculation of greenhouse gas savings of biofuels, heated reactions ensued from producers and environmentalists alike.

Producers vocally complained against the introduction of a 5% cap of first-generation biofuels towards the attainment of the EU’s 10% target for renewable energy in transportation and the withdrawal of subsidisation for conventional biofuels: two measures that could potentially halt the development of the conventional biofuel industry.

Environmentalists deplored the missed opportunities to scrap the EU biofuel mandate altogether. Only this action, in their view, would limit the surge in food prices and the global rush for cultivable land, also known as land-grabbing, fueled by the European support of the biofuel industry.
ILUC, as also explained in the impact assessment document accompanying the Commission’s proposal, is a phenomenon that cannot be observed nor measured precisely.

In addition, the application of the precautionary principle was unavoidable considering the conflicting scientific evidence concerning the amount of greenhouse gas emissions resulting from ILUC, and the solutions put forward by the Commission seem to implement it effectively.

It is however regrettable that the Commission has failed to extend the application of the same precautionary approach to wider environmental and social concerns relating to the negative social and environmental consequences of extensive biofuel plantations, particularly in Africa, where they could even result in massive expropriations and human rights violations, including the human right to food, according to the United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Olivier De Schutter.

A wealth of report and studies from NGOs and international organisations such as IIED-FAO, the World Bank and Oxfam, has shown that foreign investors are taking control of vast portions of land for biofuel production and export in their home countries, stripping local peoples of their land, which is oftentimes the only source of livelihood. Social tensions are aggravated, biodiversity is lost, and food prices are pushed up. None of these factors, unfortunately, is considered in the Commission proposal when assessing biofuels sustainability.

Since also public perception of first-generation biofuels is shifting and consumers are increasingly aware of their negative consequences, producers of conventional biofuels are now under pressure both from the regulatory and the market side.

Influencing the legislative process and attempting to maintain subsidisation of first generation biofuels, while responding at the same time to consumers demands for sustainability, has become a pressing need for the industry. As the Commission is of the view that after 2020 only biofuels which lead to substantial greenhouse gas savings will be eligible for subsidisation, producers do not have many options other than to walk the extra mile and strive to eliminate, or at least reduce drastically, all adverse environmental, and possibly also social, externalities arising from biofuel production.
They could do so by deciding to voluntarily comply with more stringent requirements addressing effectively social and broader environmental issues. As a starting point could be to set stricter common sectoral rules that level the playing field.

Subsequently producers could even employ market-based instruments such as labelling schemes and certifications already recognised by the Commission. In this way, biofuels addressing broader environmental and societal concerns could be readily identified by consumers and business operators, and could benefit from a competitive advantage on the marketplace.

For instance, out-grower systems could be established in the vicinity of the fuel-crops plantation in order to provide the affected population with sufficient food-crops for their consumption and thus mitigating the impact on food prices. Intensive monoculture could be discouraged to prevent loss of biodiversity, or reforestation zones could be established to counterbalance greenhouse gas emissions.

The biofuel market, to a large extent created and managed by EU regulators, represents a textbook example supporting the case for sectorial voluntary regulation, where it is in producers’ interest to act voluntarily and set new and more stringent rules to avoid even stricter ones, a de facto ban on conventional biofuels in this case.

Producers have therefore the option to address the issues left aside by the Commission and eliminate the adverse consequences of their products. Otherwise, the transition to second generation biofuels would really be ineluctable, also because it appears feasible from an economic perspective.

In either case, the possible elimination of food-based biofuels would most certainly be welcomed  by the almost one billion people that suffer from hunger every day. To them, it makes a little difference whether the solution comes from the Commission or from biofuel producers.

BP pulls out of US advanced biofuels plant

http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/news/2220161/bp-pulls-out-of-us-advanced-biofuels-plant

Plans for 36 million gallon Florida facility abandoned as oil giant focuses on R&D and licensing technology

 

By BusinessGreen staff

26 Oct 2012 

BP has pulled out of plans to build a $300m plant in Florida that would have been capable of producing biofuel from hard to break down crops, dealing a major blow to US efforts to deliver so-called "second generation" biofuels.

The company announced in a statement yesterday that it would not be proceeding with the cellulosic ethanol plant in Highlands County, which was expected to be capable of producing 36 million gallons (136 million litres) of the fuel each year.

Instead, BP said it would refocus its US biofuels strategy on research and development as well as licensing its technology.

"Given the large and growing portfolio of investment opportunities available to BP globally, we believe it is in the best interest of our shareholders to redeploy the considerable capital required to build this facility into other more attractive projects," said Geoff Morrell, BP vice president of communications.

The move follows Shell's decision to back out of a similar commercial-scale plant in Canada intended to make ethanol from straw and plant waste. It also further shrinks BP's alternative energy business to just two main operations focused on US wind power and ethanol made from Brazilian sugar cane.

However, BP is also still working on plans to develop a plant in Hull, North-East England, capable of processing local feed wheat into 420 million litres of bioethanol, and a biobutanol plant on the same site in partnership with DuPont.

The decision to nix the Highlands plant is another blow to the Obama administration, which sees advanced biofuels as a way of weaning the country off expensive oil imports.

This year it has been forced to slash its mandate for second generation biofuels from 500 million gallons (1.9 billion litres) to just 8.65 million gallons (33 million litres) as manufacturers struggle to produce sufficient volumes. Republicans are campaigning to have the mandate abolished entirely.

Second generation biofuels are seen as a more sustainable way of cutting emissions from transport fuels, as unlike conventional biofuels they use feedstocks that do not compete for land with food crops, such as sorghum, agricultural residues, and other waste products.

Meanwhile, doubts have this week been cast over another feted potential second generation biofuel feedstock, algae, which the US National Research Council said on Wednesday needs unsustainable amounts of energy, water and fertiliser to produce fuel on a large scale.

Jennie Hunter-Cevera, a microbial physiologist who headed the research committee, told news agency Reuters the finding was not a definitive rejection of algae-derived fuels, but a reminder the technology is not yet ready to support commercial levels of production.

"Faced with today's technology, to scale up any more is going to put really big demands on ... not only energy input, but water, land and the nutrients you need, like carbon dioxide, nitrate and phosphate," she said. "Algal biofuels is still a teenager that needs to be developed and nurtured."