Naturally Interesting

At AltEnergyStocks:

As I have consistently argued the people most likely to make money from biofuel are not the processors and distributors (who compete directly with petroleum or other fossil fuel-based products, and so have little pricing power), but the producers of feedstock, which, like oil, is in very limited supply, and so they will have pricing power.

The most productive biofuel source is algae (see this chart). It is up to 10x more productive than other sources and some strains of algae can be up to 40% oil. Read more on ponds v. reactors and a take on Petrosun at AltEnergyStocks.

Here’s the summary: Biofuels are bad. Government mandated biofuel demand drives increased prices for crops and increased cultivation. The result is increased deforestation, or in the U.S. removal from CRP programs, and a net increase in GHG emissions. In addition food prices are soaring because of competition from biofuels.

Time Magazine has a well-written piece, The Clean Energy Scam, some highlights:

• An explosion in demand for biofuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate. “You can’t protect it. There’s too much money to be made tearing it down, out here on the frontier, you really see the market at work.”
• Using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon. Deforestation accounts for 20% of all current carbon emissions.
• [Last November] Hillary Rodham Clinton unveiled an eye-popping plan that would require all stations to offer ethanol by 2017 while mandating 60 billion gal. (227 billion L) by 2030. “This is the fuel for a much brighter future!” she declared. Members of Congress love biofuels too, not only because so many dream about future Iowa caucuses but also because so few want to offend the farm lobby, the most powerful force behind biofuels on Capitol Hill.
• Someone is paying to support these environmentally questionable industries: you. In December, President Bush signed a bipartisan energy bill that will dramatically increase support to the industry while mandating 36 billion gal. (136 billion L) of biofuel by 2022.

But as noted at Grist there is some good news:

The rapid increase in ethanol production has demonstrated how quickly the nation can mobilize to produce new energy resources. With the right policies — such as a stable production tax credit — we might mobilize the economy just as quickly to create and sustain a boom in wind energy, solar energy, geothermal energy, low-impact hydro, and bioenergy from feedstocks that have positive net carbon and energy benefits. Among them are cellulosic materials grown on degraded and untillable land, organic municipal and agricultural wastes, and algae.

Read more at:

• Climate Progress
• Grist

Earth2Tech covers 15 Algae startups. Check out http://www.livefuels.com/ and http://www.solenagroup.com/ for particularly interesting applications.

I have been keeping an eye on algae for a while now. I think the algae potential is enormous. So seeing this is exciting.

The Rio Hondo, Texas algae farm will commence operations on April 1, 2008 as PetroSun’s initial commercial algae-to-biofuels facility. The current algae farm consists of 1,100 acres of saltwater ponds that the company projects will produce a minimum of 4.4 million gallons of algal oil and 110 million pounds of biomass on an annual basis.

Seen at The Energy Blog.

I suppose I knew this, I just never really thought about it

“An ADM subsidiary, the Wilmar Group, is the world’s largest producer of palm-based biodiesel and is clearing tropical rainforests in Indonesia that are among the last remaining habitats of the critically endangered orangutan. U.S. agribusiness giants ADM, Bunge and Cargill account for 60 percent of the funding for Brazil’s booming soy crop. Soy has become a leading cause of deforestation in the Amazon as Brazil has overtaken the United States as the world’s largest exporter of soy, largely due to American farmers planting more corn for ethanol.”

Read more on Palm oil, ADM, and the Rainforest Action Network over at Climate Progress.

Corporate spin and pork barrel legislation aside, here, by the numbers, are the scientific reasons why corn won’t provide our energy needs

read more | digg story

Contrast this on Grist today:

Hurtling down a bridge to nowhere: Another study says cellulosic ethanol ain’t happening

With this at WorldNetDaily:

Anything that grows can convert into oil: Company finds natural solution that turns plants into gasoline