Energista - Biofuels - Comments

They are also quieter

darrell — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 14:48:09 -0600

I'm on the Project Steering Committee for the City of Minneapolis' 10-Year Transportation Action Plan (Access Minneapolis) that has been looking at the multi-modal transportation future of Minneapolis.

A major focus of the project has been redoing the transportation system of Downtown. There are many parts to this, and they are still being worked out, but one is to have MetroTransit increase the use of hybrid buses on Nicollet Mall. The marriage of transit and pedestrians has been rocky along that corridor with many complaints about the noise and fumes of the buses and the slow ride through the area. Hybrid buses not only produce fewer pollutants but they are also quieter. Therefore, Metro Transit has in the past, and promises to continue in the future, to concentrate deployment of the new hybrid buses on routes servicing Nicollet Mall until all buses along that corridor are hybrid.

There are also plans in the works to modify the routes downtown in addition to the equipment changes. In order to increase the speed of service, the current plans call for Nicollet Mall to become a one-way route allowing buses to operation in a skip-jump fashion rather than stacking up behind each other like they do now (using two lanes in the same direction instead of one). This will not only improve service to riders but it will also decrease noise and fumes due to less idled time and acceleration.

More information on the project can be found at http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/public-works/trans-plan/

soil runoff

Perrence — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 12:39:36 -0600

What I've not seen mentioned is the effect on the land of corn production. Anyone heard of the massive erosion problems that corn produces? Anyone heard of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico? I fail to see how more corn and more corn subsidies will do anything good for the environment. It's all about cellulosic, harvested off of non plowed land. Who's with me?

How Tepid of him!

christopher — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 08:08:51 -0600

Reducing energy intensity is a nice way of saying, don't stop business as usual technological development. Energy intensity and water intensity has been going down naturally along those lines naturally for decades.

Non-petroleum based transportation reductions? Awesome! We need to switch our oil importation with natural gas importation.

Given the gravity of the looming energy situation, I think the past 6 years will be known as the do-minimum President and do-nothing Congress. I hope this new Congress changes that.

Ethanol use

nobody — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 13:06:56 -0600

This article hits on a key element to increasing the use of ethanol as a transportation fuel. I hadn't heard projections on when the additive market is saturated before but it's not too surprising. It should be kept in mind, though, that this can change significantly if additional areas mandate ethanol use. The vast majority of the current ethanol market is due to government mandates. The remainder is due to use of ethanol as an octane enhancer and for higher level blends like E85.

Minnesota requires ethanol blends statewide rather than just in the metro area. Most other places only mandate use in areas with air quality problems. Minnesota had a 10% blend requirement but now is moving toward a 20% blend statewide (it's not really a mandate, yet, but will become one if we don't hit that level with caviats for feasibility).

The biggest factor in use of E85 right now is access to the fuel. You can see this in that Minnesota is the national leader in both number of pumps and volume of E85 used. Yet, it ranks 32nd, I think, in number of alternative fuel vehicles per capita. This indicates to me that the delivery infrastructure is the number one immediate hurdle to tackle.

One thing I found interesting about the IATP article is that it didn't mention Minnesota (where IATP is located) and its success in making providing E85 pumps. The same problems all the other states are experiencing exist here but MN consistently accounts for 2/3 to 3/4 of the E85 pumps available nationally. Why has it been able to do that? Does it make a difference that it is a collaborative effort among numerous groups rather than solely a governmental mandate? How have they overcome the reluctance of distributors to allow alternative fuels at filling stations? How have they overcome the UL certification problems?

Ethanol's Next Hurdle

nobody — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 03:34:20 -0600

Most FFV's aren't optimized to run on e85 and have a bias towards gasoline..hence the poorer gas milage. Ethanol has a higher detonation threshhold and can be run on higher compression engines wich definetly improve efficiency and power. There's still alot that can be done with ethanol engines. Some one needs to run with it. The Brazilians started it...

Info

christopher — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 13:25:25 -0600

I plan to focus on this and comment on it as soon as I finish my work for the semester (with luck, will be done on Friday). Until then, you can listen to Pawlenty's podcast on this energy initiative (12 MB mp3) which I found via his podcast list.

Looks like Cane takes the cake

shadoweyes — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:29:20 -0600

From a recent post on the Energy blog.

Being a tropical grass species, sugar cane yields far more energy per hectare than ethanol crops grown in the more temperate climates of the North (US/EU). Corn, for example, yields around 3000 liters, whereas sugar beet may deliver 1000 liters more; one hectare of wheat can be turned into a meagre 1,200 liters of biofuel. These low yields make that the crops in question have a very low positive energy balance, somewhere between 1 and 1.5 for corn and between 1.5 and 2.5 for beet. In other words, for each unit of energy you put into planting, harvesting and processing these feedstocks into ethanol, you only get 1.5 to 2.5 units back in the form of a useable biofuel. The energy balance of sugarcane-based ethanol in Brazil is many times stronger, around 8 to 1.

Sugar farming

Tue, 28 Nov 2006 14:44:25 -0600

All I know about sugar cane comes from Australia, so that isn't particularly relevant. Minnesota has a large sugar beet industry, though. Are the numbers similar for ethanol from sugar beets and sugar cane, or are they different?

Thanks

shadoweyes — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 21:24:30 -0600

Darrell, thanks for putting this up, I was really curious how the conference went!

Some DG can work

Timothy DHT — Sun, 29 Oct 2006 17:03:48 -0600

Just a few comments:

Despite the costs of small local power, their are some real cost advantages to be realized in some situations; I've heard more Kenyans are hooking up to solar panels than to the electric grid - very different lifestyle, but it works for the poor.

I agree that in many cases for urban use local biomass co-gen is very limited (again supply at urban density is limited). However, other heating systems, solar thermal heat and particularly ground-source heating are very cost-effective - I heard the Green Institute in Minneapolis got 3 year paybacks on their ground-source heat system. Lots of houses are doing it too. Ground source is pretty much applicable anywhere.

David Morris from the Institute for Local Self-Reliance made an interesting point at the Humphrey Institute Conference: northeastern Illinois is getting better economics on its industrial scale turbines than MN, despite having worse wind - local Chicago demand.

Also in response to the comparison of a 500 kw to 100 MW: I'm sure a portion of that cost differential is due to the efficiency of the turbines themselves, rather than the scale of the project as a whole. Small turbines get really bad efficiency compared with large ones, but I'm not sure a single (or 5-10) large wind turbines (1.65-2 MW range) are significantly less efficient than 50-100 large wind turbines. I'm a Mac student, and we have a small (10kw) turbine which has probably a 25-year payback, but we're working on a Community-Based Energy Development Turbine (2MW) in western MN that would get maybe a 7-8 year payback (the entire project, our participation would actually be much faster) - electricity would be sold on the grid (C-BED gets a special pricing deal, but regular price is 3.3 cents). Does anyone have an idea if the scale in terms of the number of large turbines makes a difference? Farmers can definately locally own large-scale turbines selling to the grid (not net-metering, but still economical due to massive scale).

I think there is more

Joe — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 11:09:46 -0500

I think there is more opposition in Norway, if only because there is less agricultural land and more wild/scenic/cultural areas. However, there are still people here, albeit a very small percentage of the public, who are opposed to wind energy because it kills a few birds or interupts their view (I'm thinking of Cape Wind in particular...)

Public Resistance?

shadoweyes — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 17:02:53 -0500

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by public resistance to wind. It seems to me that more than 75% of the population fully supports wind and a few industry groups and astro-turf front groups are pretending the general public doesn't support it.

How ya been?

nobody — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 08:13:59 -0500

I just blogged a bit on new diesel specs...and linked to you at the end of my post, here:
New Diesel Specs

see ya,
garagejazz..

Hidden efficiency benefits

nobody — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 20:16:52 -0500

Though this applies only to a very small fraction of the population, it still deserves mentioning. When people commit to going completely "off-grid" and producing all of their energy on-site, I'm guessing the cost of purchasing enough capacity is balanced by committing also to cutting their gross consumption. Though the electricity from producing it from solar and wind sources is still not cheap, the cost is recouped much more quickly when less capacity is purchased in needed from the beginning. This can make it much more feasible, especially when paired with renewable energy grants as Minnesota once had (still?) for people wanting to install their own solar panels.

Again this applies to a very small committed group of people, but they're pretty inspiring when pressed on their energy consumption and production.

There is also the issue of the cost of extending transmission lines to new homes in rural areas. Sometimes it makes more sense to install solar panels and/or small-scale wind turbines instead of extending the grid which can be prohibitively expensive in itself. So therefore, in particular instances (maybe too particular) it would be much better for a family to produce their own power than to try and rely on the grid in any way.

On-site generation

Joe — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 16:17:02 -0500

One other thing I'd like to point out is that there is additional opportunity for distributed generation by industrial companies. Or more accurately, on-site generation. Rahr Malting has been trying for a long while (years) to obtain the necessary permitting to be able to burn its byproducts to generate electricity for its plant. No doubt there are other examples one could find around the state- maybe a lumber mill burning its waste wood (before District Energy can get its hands on it) or a poultry operation capturing the methane from turkey poop.

Streamlining the regulatory process (both with utilities and the state) could help encourage these sorts of projects. So could involving customers in the utility integrated resource planning process. Three Northwest utilities do a good job of this - Puget Sound Energy, PacificCorp and Idaho Power, as I recall. This process can also help identify high impact Conservation Improvement Program (CIP) projects which have the biggest bang for the buck.