Oregon's House Bill 2210

On Wednesday, I had the honor of an invitation to watch Governor Ted Kulongoski sign into law Oregon's House Bill 2210.

In case you haven't heard: Oregon recently passed an impressive set of energy bills [pdf] designed to improve the environment and economy of the Northwest.

From the summary:

House Bill 2210 provides a package of measures to encourage greater development, distribution and use of agricultural and forest material for biofuels, for electricity and for other forms of biomass energy use. The bill expands property tax incentives for biofuel and certain fuel additive production facilities, establishes a new tax credit for producers and collectors of biofuel raw materials, based on Btu content of feedstock, and creates an income tax credit for consumer use of biofuel.

House Bill 2210 also establishes a Renewable Fuel Standard for biodiesel and ethanol based on in-state production, prohibits the sale of gasoline that contains MTBE and certain other additives, provides a mandate on State agencies regarding biodiesel for backup power generation, modifies the site certificate exemption criteria for ethanol and biodiesel production facilities to preclude coal-fueled facilities, and allows certain farm biofuel production facilities on land zone for
exclusive farm use (EFU).

The signing was held at Sequential Biofuels' beautiful, super-green flagship biofuel-only fueling station in Eugene, OR. (I'll post more about Sequential later this week...).

A few updates

I spoke with three classes of high school seniors at the Acalanes High School today - it was their last full day of classes before finals. It was a lot of fun - I'll hopefully have some photos from today posted within a week or so (I'm using analog film now, so that means I have to wait for archaic things like processing - yuck). Also, we had a photographer present from the Contra Costa Times, so hopefully, we'll get into the paper!

I had a lot of fun, but I forgot how tired I get after doing a lot of public speaking, I'm out of practice!

Speaking of public speaking, this evening I attended Berkeley Professor Jay Keasling's talk about renewable energy from synthetic biology - he has an interesting approach to biofuels - one project that caught my attention was converting waste biomass into oil for fuel using synthetic biology. I don't know if this is more efficient than just burning waste biomass in a syngas process to make synthetic fuel - unfortunately I arrived late so I don't know if he addressed it. If you go here in the next few days, you'll be able to view his slides and listen to an MP3 of the presentation. I'm waiting for the MP3 myself so I can find out the answer to my question!

Speaking at Acalanes H.S. on Monday

I will be speaking with three classes of Ms. Thomas' Environmental Science Students at Acalnes High School on Monday, June 4 - tell all your friends!

Here's the Press Release

The Environment is Everywhere - Unreported Fish Kill in Goldsboro, NC

The main message I try to explain to the people we talk to is this: the environment is everywhere; everything you do, no matter how small, has an effect. By examining the effects of our actions, we can reduce our impact on the environment.

This weekend, we're staying with my brother in a condo in Goldsboro, NC. Behind his place, there is a small creek that is usually teeming with fish.

Apparently, just before our arrival, due either to dumping directly into the stream, or chemical or fertilizer use near the stream (and recent heavy rains), all the fish suddenly died. When we arrived, we saw workers cleaning dead fish from the stream. We're talking everything from tiny minnows to 3-foot long monsters.

Of course that's not where it ends: there is an egret that lives nearby and hunts for fish in the stream; there are geese that travel through here and stop to eat. The effects of this fish kill goes on and on. Who drinks or uses this water now tainted with rotting fish?

I searched around online and found that this is Goldsboro's unreported environmental disaster.

Here are photos of some fish left behind by the cleanup workers. The second one was huge - easily 2 feet long.

New Feature!

Since I don't like the idea of writing what is essentially a me too post copying news I've read that I think you might find interesting, we've added the "Stuff we've read" section on the right. It has headlines for articles dealing with VegOil and biofuel I find interesting. If you click the "Read more" link, you'll find a page with more detail, more articles, and an RSS feed.

I generate the list of articles as I read the news, so it stays up to date pretty regularly. I hope that the end result is a less cluttered blog, with more news. Tell us how you like it...

The test result are in...

The National VegOil Board has had emissions testing completed on a car running vegetable oil at an EPA-certified lab. [pdf of complete press release]

The results are that emissions are the same or lower, for all components as compared to petroleum diesel.

Here are the graphical results of the test (blue = VegOil, red = petroleum diesel, green = EPA limit):


















So, what's the big deal with these test results?
This is the first step in getting vegetable oil as a fuel certified by the EPA for use in vehicles. A big deal, indeed.

AutoBlogGreen News Stories

A few stories I've noticed recently over at my favorite environment meets the road blog, autobloggreen.com:

• Biodiesel blends now mandatory in the Philippines.
• Tyson farms are looking into converting chicken fat into biodiesel. To the tune of a half billion gallons by 2012.
• E85 powered Viper, anyone? The fastest ethanol-fueled car.
• India closes biofuel plants, but Brazil never seems to have enough.

CLEAN act passes Congress

The Creating Long-term Alternatives for the Nation (CLEAN) act has passed through congress, headed for the Senate.

The act repeals some $14 Billion of tax breaks for oil companies, and makes that money available for use in alternative energies.

Link to the actual text of the act.

Via

More on algae biodiesel sources

It looks like New Mexico State University (NMSU), located in Southern New Mexico is getting onto the agae-as-fuelsource bandwagon as well. They have a 1/4-acre denonstration pond due for completion in March of this year, and a 100-acre pond will begin construction in 2008. It looks like they have everything they need: "we have sunlight and space, and we have a brackish and saline water supply." Yummy, brackish water - sounds like heaven for an algae farmer.

Since we'll be going through Las Cruces on our drive in late April, I think we should swing by the demonstration pond, talk to the researchers, etc.

Link to Las Cruces Sun News article.
Previously: Vegetable oil and biodiesel from algae.

Biodiesel's troubles in Texas

Wired News' Autopia blog is reporting on trouble brewing in Texas over biodiesel. It turns out that Texas has high standards over nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions. Trouble is, some studies say that biodiesel increases NOx emissions by 2% in B20 (EPA, 2002), while other studies say that NOx emissions are the same or increased by 0.5% (National Renewable Energy Lab, 2003).

Biodiesel's fate will be decided by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which has decided to spend the next year to study the effects of Biodiesel on vehicle exhaust. Lucky for me, I will be passing through while Biodiesel is still legal in the state of Texas.

In The News: Vegetable Oil and Biodiesel from Algae

I've seen speculation along these lines several times in the past, but it looks like researchers at MIT are looking more seriously at algae-produced vegetable oil for use as a fuel (either straight or refined into biodiesel).

Here's the deal: the best crop for producing vegetable oil is palm (palm and palm kernel oil) which produces about 600 gallons per acre per year, not too shabby, right?

Well, algae is a weed, and grows anywhere there is water, CO2, sunlight, and it grows extremely quickly. It grows so quickly that researchers estimate that they could produce as much as 10,000 to 20,000 gallons of oil per acre per year.

If true, this would pretty much blow any arguments that vegetable oil is not a viable source of fuel out the window.

link