January 2008

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This page includes information on news and events in January 2008. (News and events are archived here at the end of the month.)

Events

• 8-10 January 2008, Washington, D.C., United States: 3rd Annual Military Energy Alternatives

• 9-10 January 2008, Rotterdam, The Netherlands: 6th European Motor - BioFuels Forum. (Themes: Europe, transportation, vehicles)

• 9-10 January 2008, Mumbai, India: 4th Energy Technologies Forum 2008, The Leela

• 10 January 2008, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, United States: 5th Annual U of I Bioenergy Feedstock Symposium

• 13-17 January 2008, Washington, D.C., United States: Transportation Research Board. Sessions include:
  • Session #141: Cutting Carbs in the Transportation Sector: International Efforts to Address Global Climate Change (Themes: climate change, transportation)
  • Session #512: Global Trends and Environmental Effects of Biofuels, Part 1: International Perspectives (Themes: international cooperation, markets)
  • Session #576: Global Trends and Environmental Effects of Biofuels, Part 2: Supplies and Impacts. From the abstract: "As an alternative fuel option, biofuels offer clear energy security and emissions benefits, but with potentially severe economic and social impacts. This session will focus on life-cycle impacts of biofuels with respect to food supplies, land use, criteria pollutants, and greenhouse gas emissions." Conference Program (PDF file)
  • Session #673: Low Carbon and Renewable Fuels: Policies to Reduce Greenhouse Gases and Enhance Sustainability. (Themes: Low Carbon Fuel Standards, regulation)
  • Session #748: Modified Asphalt Binders. Includes a presentation on "Utilization of Biofuel Coproducts as Performance Enhancers in Asphalt Binder

• 14 January 2008, Arlington, Virginia (near Washington, D.C.), USA: Biofuels, At What Cost? with Conservation International's Senior Vice President Glenn Prickett.
  • From the announcement: "Biofuel subsidies continue to change at a very fast rate and do little to constrain the enormous environmental issues that arise when so much land and water are used to produce fuel."

• 14-16 January 2008, New York, New York, United States: Biodiesel Finance and Investment Summit

• 15-17 January 2008, Nuremburg, Germany: International Conference and Exhibition: Biogas - efficient and reliable . Organized by the German Biogas Association (Fachverband Biogas) (Theme: biogas)

• 16-17 January 2008, Nuremburg, Germany: ECN International Workshop with Exhibiton and Study Tour: The Future for Anaerobic Digestion of Organic Waste in Europe Organized by the European Compost Network ECN/ORBIT e.V. (Theme: anaerobic digestion)

• 16-19 January 2008, Graz, Austria: Central European Biomass Conference 2008 (Themes: biomass, Europe)

• 21-23 January 2008, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates: World Future Energy Summit 2008

• 22-23 January 2008, Manama, Bahrain: 3rd Methanol Markets and Tech (Themes: methanol)

• 23-24 January 2008, Pamplona, Spain: Biofuel2G: International Congress on Second Generation Biofuels (Themes: second generation biofuels)

• 23-25 January 2008, Rome, Georgia (U.S. state), United States: Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Technologies Conference

• 23-25 January 2008, Miami, Florida, United States: Biomass Finance & Investment Summit (Themes: biomass, finance)

• 24 January 2008, Miami: Energy Business Forum - Biofuels in the Americas: Technology, Investment, and the Path Forward (Themes: biofuels, international cooperation, investment, Latin America and the Caribbean, trade)

• 27-29 January 2008, Portland, Oregon, USA: Harvesting Clean Energy

• 28-29 January 2008, Tokyo, Japan: Bio Asia 2008 (Themes: biotechnology)

• 28-30 January 2008, La Jolla, California, USA: The Biology and Business of Biofuels - See the Conference Agenda (PDF file) (Themes: business, policy, science)

• 28 January-1 February 2008, Brussels, Belgium: European Sustainable Energy Week

• 29 January 2008, Washington, D.C.: Outlook for an Emerging Global Biofuels Market. Organized by the US Chamber of Commerce (Themes: biofuels, international cooperation, trade)

• 30 January 2008, Morgantown, West Virginia: West Virginia BioEnergy Forum

News

• Nobel laureate Steven Chu see a biofuels revolution, 30 January 2008, Biopact. Chu is working with a team of scientists in what he calls a Manhattan Project approach to our energy and climate change problems. He believes that biofuels can play an important and entirely sustainable part in this program.
• Synthetic bacterial genome points to biofuel future, 30 January 2008, Biofuel Review. The creation of an entirely synthetic organism points to a future where cells can be genetically engineered for purposes such as creating the perfect feedstock for biofuels.
• France to review biofuel use on environment worries, 29 January 2008, by Reuters: "France is envisaging changing its policy on the use of biofuels after doubts were expressed on the environmental impact of so-called 'green fuels,' the Secretary of State for Environment said on Tuesday." In light of concerns regarding impacts on climate change and food prices, ADEME, France's environment and energy agency, is to review the nation's biofuel policies, with a view toward promoting second generation technologies.

• U.S. Department of Energy Selects First Round of Small-Scale Biorefinery Projects for Up to $114 Million in Federal Funding, 29 January 2008, Press Release from the Department of Energy: "DOE will invest up to $114 million, over four years, (Fiscal Years 2007-2010) for four small-scale biorefinery projects" in Colorado, Missouri, Oregon and Wisconsin.
  • "Building on President Bush’s goal of making cellulosic ethanol cost-competitive by 2012, these ten-percent of commercial-scale biorefineries will use a wide variety of feedstocks and test novel conversion technologies to provide data necessary to bring online full-size, commercial-scale biorefineries....Today’s announcement is part of over $1 billion DOE has announced within the last year for multi-year biofuels research and development projects."

• Continuous microalgae bio-oil process developed, 29 January 2008, Biofuel Review, the new process allows the separation of the bio-oil feedstock from the algae biomass.

• Cellulosic ethanol plant open in Wyoming, 30 January 2008, Renewable Energy Access. The small facility in Wyoming takes waste wood and turns it into ethanol.

• Bush's budget may change ethanol import tariff (Reuters), 30 January 2008. "U.S. Energy Secretary Sam Bodman hinted on Tuesday that the Bush administration's new government budget for the 2009 spending year may propose changing the U.S. [54-cent-a-gallon] tariff on ethanol imports." (This comment was made at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce event, "Outlook for an Emerging Global Biofuels Market"; webcast available here)

• Woodchip prices now and in the future, 23 January 2008, Biostock Blog, a drop in home construction has lowered the supply of and thus raised the price for woodchips. The article discusses possible future price hikes when demand spikes and drives even higher price increases.

• Carbon Negative Energy Revolution a Step Closer, 29 January 2008, Biopact, the new technology captures carbon dioxide from power plants and turns it into limestone through carbonation. This can be applied to coal plants or to biomass powered plants, which would become carbon negative.

• EU energy: Revolution for the UK, 24 January 2008, BBC News, discusses the challenges for the United Kingdom to meet the European Union energy goals in the next twelve years.

• Japan Plans to Support Replacing Petrol With Wood, 29 January 2008 by PlanetArk: "Japan is set to embark on a five-year plan this year to harness a new form of energy using unused wood biomass to produce auto fuels and other industrial products currently made from imported petrol."
  • Japan's Ministry of Agriculture has proposed allocating 1.2 billion yen (US$11.2 million) in the coming year for private projects including for development of cellulosic ethanol technology, in addition to support for "consortiums comprising farmers, engineers and regional governments to produce ethanol from non-food soft plant parts such as rice stems and use it locally."

• GM buys stake in ethanol made from waste, 14 January 2008, New York Times. General Motors has invested in a company that is seeking to create cellulosic ethanol but was a little evasive about the details of their investment.

• More Bad News for Ethanol, by Energy Roundup (the Wall Street Journal's energy blog): "Another brick in the wall against ethanol. Academics tasked with plotting California’s transition to a low-carbon fuel have delivered more bad news: Ethanol appears to come with a higher greenhouse-gas price tag than previously thought — higher, indeed, than fossil fuel."
  • This article reported on a 12 January report by the University of California at Berkeley’s Transportation Sustainability Research Center for the California Air Resources Board.
  • "'Simply said, ethanol production today using U.S. corn contributes to the conversion of grasslands and rainforest to agriculture, causing very large GHG emissions,” according to Berkeley professors Alex Farrell and Michael O’Hare.
  • “Even if only a small fraction of the emissions calculated in this crude way [through land use change] are added to estimates of direct emissions for corn ethanol, total emissions for corn ethanol are higher than for fossil fuels.”

• New Proposal from the European Commission for a Directive on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources: No revision of biofuel targets! (23rd January 2008). Following to the negative opinions as per the rising threats upon environment and communities due to the ambitious European target for biofuels (10% in 2020), the EC announced that "sustainability is essential in implementing this target – the directive includes clear sustainability criteria."
  • Read the proposal (23rd January 2008) (PDF file).
  • Read EC President Barroso's speech (23rd January 2008).

• A first for the US: company feeds biomethane into natural gas pipeline 22 January 2008, from Biopact, the biomethane facility in Texas has moved into full scale commercial operation.

• Europe, Cutting Biofuel Subsidies, Redirects Aid to Stress Greenest Options, 22 January 2008, The New York Times: "Governments in Europe and elsewhere have begun rolling back generous, across-the-board subsidies for biofuels, acknowledging that the environmental benefits of these fuels have often been overstated....But as they aim to be more selective, these governments are discovering how difficult it can be to figure out whether a particular fuel — much less a particular batch of corn ethanol or rapeseed biodiesel — has been produced in an environmentally friendly manner."
  • The article notes that "Several countries — including Australia, Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, as well as parts of Canada — have removed or are revising incentives for farmers, biofuel refiners and distributors."

• Internal EU report casts doubts on its biofuel strategy, 18 January 2008, by AFP: "An internal European Commission study, seen by AFP Friday, criticises an EU plan to boost the use of biofuels in transport, concluding that their costs outweigh the benefits."
  • The internal-use "working paper by the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission's in-house scientific body," "looks at whether using biofuels reduces greenhouse gas emissions, improves security of supply and creates jobs and delivers an unenthusiastic opinion on all three counts."
  • "EU taxpayers would have to fork out an extra 33-65 billion euros (48-95 billion dollars) between now and 2020 if the European Commission proposals [to increase biofuels use to 10% of total transportation fuel use] go ahead, according to the study."

• Amazon Deforestation Surging Again, 18 January 2008. According to Reuters, "Deforestation of the Amazon has surged in recent months and is likely to rise in 2008 for the first time in four years, a senior Brazilian government scientist said on Wednesday."

• Xethanol increases Cellulosic Ethanol Production Rates, 16 January 2008, from Renewable Energy Access, new developments have increased yields by as much as 21%.

• Europe May Ban Imports of Some Biofuel Crops, 15 January 2008, New York Times, due to concerns over the sustainability of biofuels, the European Union is considering a ban on certain types of biofuels, especially those grown on certain types of vulnerable lands.

• Is Ethanol for Everybody?, 10 January 2008 opinion piece in the New York Times by Roger Cohen, highlights the "enduring social problems" and hard lives of manual laborers in sugarcane fields for ethanol production in Brazil; "Only 20 percent of the 7.5 million acres planted with sugar cane in Brazil is mechanized. The rest depends on manual labor".
  • Brazil "uses sugar-based ethanol whose yield per hectare is eight times that of U.S. corn ethanol being developed at the cost of higher food prices and has shown the feasibility of a flex-fuel auto fleet." However, future success "will depend on several things: the labor standards adopted by the growing hordes of international investors drawn to ethanol; the opening up of the global trading system to this biofuel that many poor tropical countries will be able to produce; and the development of a global traded commodity market in ethanol with established norms."

• The hidden costs of biofuels, 9 January 2008, Editorial by Environmental Research Web, reports on an environmental life-cycle assessment study by EMPA (Switzerland) that finds "that not all biofuels can reduce environmental impacts compared to those from fossil fuels."
  • "Of the 26 biofuels examined, 13 reduced greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50%. These included biofuels made from liquid manure, biodiesel made from waste cooking oil, methanol and methane from wood, and bioethanol from domestic biomass (grass, wood, sugar beets or whey), Brazilian sugar cane and Chinese sorghum. At worst, the emissions from Brazilian soy biodiesel were slightly higher than those from petrol."[1]
  • The EMPA researchers found that most of the environmental impact associated with the biofuels came from the agricultural cultivation of the raw materials used to produce them.

• Detroit 2008: Ferrari goes green, ethanol-fueled F430 to be announced! from the Autoblog green. The Italian automaker joins the club of eco-conscious constructors, with an even more powerful engine (5 hp superior to the original model!).

• 'Sustainable' palm oil advert false, says Advertising Standards Authority - 9 January 2008, Friends of the Earth Press Release: "Friends of the Earth has today welcomed a decision by the [UK] Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) in which palm oil described as "sustainably produced" was ruled to be false advertising. The verdict followed a Friends of the Earth International complaint against an advert by the Malaysian Palm Oil Council. The advertising watchdog is the latest in a series of bodies to question palm oil's sustainability, furthering concerns about EU plans to import vast quantities of it for use as a biofuel."

• Biofuels and banquets put pressure on stocks of palm oil, 9 January 2008 by the Times Online, reported that "The Malaysian Government has been forced to release emergency stocks of palm oil to break a wave of panic-buying after cooking oil prices soared. The crisis has prompted palm oil rationing in a country that is one of the world’s largest producers."

• Grass biofuels 'cut CO2 by 94%', 8 January 2008, by BBC News: A new report by US researchers has found that fast-growing "switchgrass-derived ethanol produced 540% more energy than was required to manufacture the fuel" and "delivers vast savings of carbon dioxide emissions compared with petrol." The paper, "Net energy of cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass (PDF file)" in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, analyzed all of the energy input factors, including "nitrogen fertiliser, herbicides, diesel and seed production."
  • "Second-generation" biofuels, such as grass-derived cellulosic ethanol, "could produce much higher energy yields per tonne [than food crops such as corn] because it utilised the whole plant rather than just the seeds."

• "Corn... fuel... fire! U.S. corn subsidies promote Amazon deforestation", 8 January 2008 press release from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute: According to STRI researcher William Laurance, "Amazon deforestation and fires are being aggravated by US farm subsidies...that promote American corn production for ethanol." Corn subsidies also result in farmers reducing production of soy -- thus increasing global soy prices, which in turn promotes burning of forests in the Brazilian Amazon in order to clear land for soy cultivation.
  • According to Laurance, "The evidence of a corn connection to the Amazon is circumstantial, but it's about as close as you ever get to a smoking gun."[2]

• Efficient Biofuel Made From Genetically Modified E. Coli Bacteria, 7 January 2008 from ScienceDaily, reported that scientists at the California university UCLA "have developed a new method for producing next-generation biofuels by genetically modifying Escherichia coli bacteria to be an efficient biofuel synthesizer." The bacteria can create branched-chain alcohols, such as isobutanol, which could be more useful as liquid fuels than ethanol.

• Bright future for biofuels in Congo, UN says, 7 January 2008, from Reuters, reported that "The Democratic Republic of Congo is one of Africa's most promising biofuels producers due to its vast amount of farmland suited to a range of crops from palm oil to soybeans," according to Dr. Josef Schmidhuber, senior economist at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). "Other countries with similar potential to supply themselves with biofuels were Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Malawi," according to the article.

• UK govt scientist sees few benefits from biofuels, 4 January 2008 by Reuters: According to scientist Robert Watson, "Rising production of biofuels has distorted government budgets, helped to drive up food prices and led to deforestation in south-east Asia"; "biofuels production from sugar cane in Brazil may be one of the only sustainable current methods."

• Mexican Farmers Protest NAFTA, 4 January 2008, from the Environmental News Network.

• China vows help for biofuels from non-food crops, 4 January 2008, from Malaya Environment. "Beijing will provide financial support to biofuel producers, including farmers, if they are to be made from non-food crops such as agricultural waste, sorghum or cassava, the China Daily said on Saturday. "

• UCLA Researchers Modify E. Coli to Produce Efficiently Higher-Chain Alcohols for Advanced Biofuels, 2 January 2008, from Green Car Congress. UCLA researchers have developed strands of the bacteria which can produce alcohols from glucose that have energy densities closer to gasoline than more traditional biofuels.

• Researcher: Increase in Corn Production for Ethanol Helping Drive Amazon Deforestation, 1 January 2008, from Green Car Congress, links the drop in United States soybean production due to corn ethanol subsidies to the increase in soy production in South America and increased deforestation in the Amazon.

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