Does Biodiesel Deserve a Better Deal??

Biodiesel and ethanol both fall under the category of “biofuels,” which describes any fuel synthesized from plant or animal matter. But that’s pretty much where the similarities end.

Biodiesel offers a significantly improved environmental impact compared to both ethanol and standard petroleum-derived diesel. It can be used in standard diesel engines with little or no negative impact on engine health. Just add it to the tank of your Toyota, Nissan, Volkswagen or Mercedes diesel vehicle – or pretty well any other diesel including light trucks.  In tropical warm weather it even starts well in the morning.

Meanwhile, ethanol deserves scrutiny for its relatively high emissions, and the way it can damage engines that aren’t specifically designed to burn the fuel.

In recent years, ethanol has been the target of a backlash from environmentalists and critics of government waste, who argue that the limited benefits of the fuel don’t justify the federal support it received over the last few decades. In the USA, the Renewable Fuels Standard, which sets a production mandate for both ethanol and biodiesel, has recently been a target of reformers, who would like to see the standard cut to reflect the low demand and perceived declining promise of ethanol. If that happens, biodiesel production could get caught up in the reforms, with the EPA opting not to raise production targets for biodiesel in 2014.

Biodiesel can be produced from vegetable oils, animal fats or recycled food by-products like restaurant grease, or from algae, which can be grown using waste materials like sewage. It can be sold in a variety of blends with petroleum diesel or as a pure 100-percent blend known in some areas as B100.

Locally in the NT there is one small scale production facility near Berrimah, using waste vegetable oils and greases………plus one large mothballed facility at East Arm where current production is zero, but capacity is 130 million litres per year.

The mothballed biodiesel facility near Darwin

The cost of the fuel to consumers varies depending upon blend and location, but may be more expensive than mineral based diesel.  That extra cost brings the benefit of about a 50-percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, according to a 2010 study by Argonne National Laboratory in the USA.

Should there now be more emphasis on biodiesel production, with this very high reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, especially as Australian mineral derived diesel seems to be remaining persistently high in price?  

The Emerging Carbon Economy in North Australia

The print media is all over this today, with syndicated versions of the press release on line and in print at many regional newspapers.

It could be a good thing - but there is work to do beforehand, and it will not happen overnight.

There are some issues also worth considering, that are not in the report.  Algae production has started at Karratha - growing algal cultures and harvesting for conversion to biofuel or other materials including animal feeds is promising.   So is use of duckweed especially in wastewater ponds, or any nutrient rich water source, even irrigation tailwater [ ther ewill be more of that] to clean it of nutrients before it re-enters downstream rivers.

Northern Australia has and is suffering from disinvestments in agriculture [broadly interpreted term] over many years.  There are few if any crops specifically with varieties developed for the region [ sugar may be an exception] and with major seed companies now dominating this sector I cannot see them investing in the region as the market is so small.

It may be possible to identify crop varieties from eg Brazil, or possibly through varieties developed in international centres eg IRRI or ICRISAT and used in Asian or African / Indian areas, but some work will be needed to identify them.  And governments have little appetite to spend those $$ at the moment.
While it is possible that the beef herd could expand significantly, the Australian government has not helped over recent years with their activities in curtailing the live cattle trade.  Yes, new abattoirs are coming, but they may not necessarily quickly allow for herd increases.  And can these animals be more methane efficient anyway?  If feed quality went up - maybe, and that often involves more legume in the diet - will we see more of a pangola / leucaena finishing system?  It works and that was demonstrated in the 1970s at Kununurra.

Do not hold your breath........but actively offer ideas.

The media release by the Federal government is below but the report is more difficult to find.  Try the link here for the report, and there is a summary also available -

http://www.regional.gov.au/regional/ona/carbon-economy-for-northern-australia-2012.aspx

The report is brief, 20 pages and easy to download.

Media release

Tapping the carbon market of northern Australia could provide a valuable new revenue stream for the region – once key obstacles are removed, according to a government report.

Reduced greenhouse gas emissions from fire and livestock, sequestering carbon in soils and vegetation, and the production of renewable feedstock for aviation biofuel are three of the main opportunities identified in The Emerging Carbon Economy for Northern Australia report.

"These opportunities will provide northern farmers the potential to reap a billion-dollar return," Regional Australia Minister Simon Crean said.

"CSIRO found the benefits of the carbon economy will not be confined to climate change action, but could generate environmental and livelihood benefits," he said.

 

The region covers some 300 million hectares north of the Tropic of Capricorn. Mr Crean said the federal government would work with state and local governments to help regions "embrace the carbon economy" by generating credits that they can sell to big emitters under its carbon market.
While the report identifies possible areas of income generation – such as a potential of $200 million dollars a year in abatement of carbon emissions through better savannah-burning management and $240 million from the livestock industry – it also specifies how much work still needs to be done.

For instance, the property rights to carbon would need clear ownership rules, while the scale of carbon stocks in the soil and its potential enhancement "warrant continued scientific enquiry", the report said.

Similarly, while indigenous groups have been able to earn carbon credits for savannah-burning under the government's Carbon Farming Initiative (CFI), the report found "practical barriers to wider implementation of this method remain".

Likewise, the government is yet to approve a methodology allowing farmers to earn credits under the CFI for methane abatement efforts in the livestock industry. The northern beef herd counts some 13 million animals.

The biofuel potential could amount to 5 per cent of the jetfuel use in Australia, although that assessment also is based on "early stages of investigation", the report said.

The Coalition has vowed to scrap the carbon tax and planned emissions trading market if it wins office, although it has signalled it may continue with some of the government's carbon farming program.


Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/northern-australias-carbon-market-potentially-vast-report-finds-20121129-2ahnv.html#ixzz2DfTApk3T

Using Carbon Dioxide for Algal Biofuels

It seems that Australia is about to move forward several steps in developing commercial use of waste carbon dioxide.

Origin Energy has announced a new medium scale [a prelude to larger scale use if successful] waste CO2 from its power plant to produce fresh water algae, which it then plans to harvest for potential biofuel production.

More here - http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20065708-54.html?tag=nl.e797

[ interestingly - reported in US not Australian media]

At about the same time, a leading US saltwater algal producer has announced a scaling up of existing work in the Pilbara region of WA, which uses CO2 from LNG processing as the accelerator of algal growth.

More here -http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/a/-/wa/9328127/algae-fuel-to-diversify-pilbara/

Both are in regions of Australia with plenty of sunshine, especially in the Pilbara.

Coincidentally, the aviation industry announced this week that they saw biofuel as a suitable fuel, with lowered CO2 emissions overall, as a substitute for existing fossil oil fuels.

Australia does have open spaces and sunshine, but so far a timid set of national and state governments, that seem reluctant to embrace non fossil fuels, although industry does seem more active to use them.

There is a major program in the private sector with wide support across industry and academia to develop base load solar thermal power stations, but so far without major support from government. More details are here -
http://beyondzeroemissions.org/blog/zero-carbon-australia-stationary-energy-plan-nsw-elements-110307

And there is a very comprehensive range of documents that do seem to provide evidence and analysis that would support the plan.

Could Australia prosper on waste carbon............after all, we are the highest per head producer of carbon???

Plant Power - Build Better Plants for More Carbon Capture or Bioenergy

WOW!!! Scientific American seems to have woken up to a fact probably well understood by many in the agriculture research area, and also by many farmers.

Better plants for carbon capture, biofuels, or for that matter almost anything else requires an investment in R and D, specifically some decent plant breeding and genetics. Along with some public policy work to see that the plants get used.

The article below appeared in http://www.sciam.com/ in mid October 2010, and at least the review does build a case for a decent and ongoing investment in plant research, something that seems to have been over looked in the rush to develop geosequestration of carbon. Algae also probably has a place, especially for coal power stations, as does agrichar.

The comments about a price for carbon are very US-centric, and reflect what I would consider as "head in the sand" thinking by many US policy gurus, as another study, on mainstream media reports today, has indicated that many countries already have an explicit or implicit carbon price, including China and the EC countries, and that the US is probably out of line in its current thinking.

The article really says little that is new, but getting this approach into the mainstream thinking is very necessary to ensure the $$$$ do flow into a very useful avenue of development, in a time when agriculture seems to be less endowed with investment for long term progress.

Review article below.

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Flower Power: Genetic Modification Could Amply Boost Plants' Carbon-Capture and Bioenergy Capacity
A new review sums up options for increasing global carbon-sequestration by flora, and speculates that genetically engineering crops and trees could enhance the process, trapping gigatons of the greenhouse gas as well as increasing bioenergy production.

Human activities currently add about nine gigatons of carbon to the atmosphere yearly.
Photosynthetic organisms on land and in the ocean absorb about five of those gigatons through the natural uptake of CO2, leaving to humans the task of dealing with the rest. But no matter how much carbon there is, capturing it and preventing it from reentering the atmosphere is an immense engineering challenge; even today's best technology is orders of magnitude less effective than photosynthesis at trapping atmospheric carbon.

A new analysis published in the October issue of Bioscience suggests that by 2050 humans could offset between five and eight gigatons of the carbon emitted annually by growing plants and trees optimized via genetic engineering both for fuel production and carbon sequestration.

Bioenergy crops represent an opportunity to mitigate atmospheric carbon dioxide in two separate ways, says lead author Christer Jansson, a senior staff scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's Earth Sciences Division. First, they are a carbon-neutral energy source that could offset the burning of fossil fuels. Second, "if they are the right kind of plants, they have a chance to transfer a lot of carbon underground for long-term sequestration," he says.

Plants take up CO2 and store carbon in their biomasses. Carbon can stay for decades or centuries in leaves, stems, branches, seeds and flowers aboveground, whereas carbon allocated to underground root systems is more apt to be transferred into the soil, where it can stay sequestered for millennia. Therefore, an ideal bioenergy plant would produce lots of aboveground biomass for fuel as well as have an extensive root system. Preliminary research indicates that genetic engineering approaches could be employed to enhance both these traits.

Using genetic modification to enhance photosynthesis and thus biomass yield is a realistic approach, says Stephen P. Long, a professor of crop sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign who was not part of the study. Long notes that transgenic tobacco plants, with simple modifications applicable to other plants as well, have already been shown to be more productive. "We are in a position now where we certainly know enough to where we could engineer quite a few of these changes," he says.

Meanwhile, regarding the problem of coaxing plants to allocate more carbon to their root systems, Jansson says an important difference between perennial and annual plants is a good place to start. "Perennials are more efficient than annuals at hiding carbon underground," he says. That's because annuals, which make up most of the world's food crops, spend much more energy producing seeds, stems and leaves than for building their root systems. On the other hand, perennials like switchgrass and Miscanthus have more extensive root systems—necessary because they remain dormant for part of the year and then must grow up again from their roots.

Whereas it may be exciting to imagine a bioenergy or food crop that produces lots of aboveground biomass and has large, carbon-sequestering root systems, research into whether this goal is realistic is still in its early stages. "Perenniality is a complex trait," Jansson says. He suggests it may end up being easier to modify perennials so they possess desirable annual-like features, as opposed to the other way around—but it's too early to tell. For the short term Jansson is confident that science can modify plants so they are more drought resistant and salt tolerant. Crops that could be maintained with brine or brackish water, such as industrial wastewater or seawater, would help preserve freshwater supplies. "These are important traits that need to be introduced into food and bioenergy crops," Jansson says, adding that "we will see this sooner" than enhanced photosynthesis or perennials with annual traits and/or vice versa.

The authors stress that genetic engineering should not be viewed as a cure-all, but rather part of a larger breeding effort. Further, Jansson says, "One problem is that the different aspects we mention—increasing photosynthesis, improving bioenergy crop yield, and putting more carbon into the root systems—are highly interlinked, and thus not necessarily additive." It could be, for example, that a modifying a plant to grow more roots takes away aboveground biomass production. Again, research in this area is too preliminary to tell.

Allison Thomson, who studies climate change and land use at the Joint Global Change Research Institute in College Park, Md., also expressed the need for caution when interpreting the study's projections. They are valuable in principle, she says, but also based on many assumptions regarding future economic conditions, land availability, and the size of bioenergy's role in a larger future energy strategy. For example, she says, "you can't really say how much bioenergy we are going use if you're not also considering other available energy sources and how much they emit." Furthermore, she points out, whether or not there is a price for carbon, which is hard to account for at this point, will figure heavily into future energy scenarios.

Also important to consider are potential land-use issues related to increasing demand for food. "When we do modeling, that's the one demand you can't ignore," Thomson says. "People want to eat before they want bioenergy."Besides all the unknowns, there is also existing regulatory policy regarding genetically modified organisms, which imposes high costs of compliance, thereby making it difficult to assess whether the ideas discussed in the paper are all doable.

Long says: "The bottleneck and damper on all this is really, 'How do you get transgenics out there, and meet all the regulatory requirements and costs?'"

Agriculture WILL be Part of Biofuels Future

While there have been many naysayers about the role of crops in biofuel production, recent developments do show a somewhat different pattern emerging as new generation production facilities are coming on line.

In 2007, the US Department of Agriculture estimated cellulosic ethanol production costs at $2.65/gal., compared to $1.65 for corn-based ethanol.

POET recently reported that it lowered production costs for cellulosic ethanol - including capital expenses - from $4.13 to $2.35/gal. in one year, as of November 2009, at its South Dakota pilot plant and hopes to lower it further.

Novozymes, the leading producer of enzymes in the world, recently estimated that the cost of enzymes for cellulosic ethanol production [ in the USA] has been reduced significantly in the last two years to about 50 cents/gal., reducing total production costs in the near term to about $2/gal.

Algae has great yield potential, but production cost estimates (net of capital costs) for growing and converting algae to fuel are significantly higher, ranging from $9 to $35/gal. depending on the production technology, the report notes. "Developing the capacity to use multiple feedstocks and to produce bio-based fuels that are equivalent to fossil fuels that can be used in current vehicles without limit and distributed seamlessly in the existing transportation sector may become the least-risky business model to pursue," the report concludes.

Read the full report at http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/BIO%200101/BIO0101.pdf

Some new plants are producing biodiesel from waste fats, rather than new farm based oils or similar eg palm oils.

Work continues in a range of countries, with biodiesel small scale plants making some inroads in developing countries.

Australia still seems to be locked into ethanol from sugarcane and grains..........yet the new cellulosic ethanol option would seem to be of increasing importance.

Will we see Australian grassy weeds - with lots of biomass for example gamba grass - be seen as valuable for cellulosic ethanol production. Many sure do produce a lot of biomass!!

There is also a good article here:
http://qcl.farmonline.com.au/news/nationalrural/agribusiness-and-general/general/role-for-ag-in-advanced-biofuels/1837573.aspx?storypage=0

Biofuel from Algae - Exxon Invests Big

The oil giant Exxon Mobil, whose chief executive once mocked alternative energy by referring to ethanol as “moonshine,” is about to venture into biofuels.

On Tuesday, Exxon plans to announce an investment of $600 million in producing liquid transportation fuels from algae — organisms in water that range from pond scum to seaweed. The biofuel effort involves a partnership with Synthetic Genomics, a biotechnology company founded by the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter.

The agreement could plug a major gap in the strategy of Exxon, the world’s largest and richest publicly traded oil company, which has been criticized by environmental groups for dismissing concerns about global warming in the past and its reluctance to develop renewable fuels.

This was reported today in the NY Times [July 14 2009]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/business/energy-environment/14fuel.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all#

While many organisations around the world are researching this topic, and making biodiesel or similar products on a small scale has already been done, scaling up to the size required, and having repeatability of algae production on a large scale are all a lot more difficult.

No one suggests this will happen tomorrow, but the fact that Exxon has invested, and at a considerable amount of $$, might seem to indicate that the algae to biodiesel pathway may be one of the favoured methods that could replace out of the ground oil especially for transport fuels.

Algae to biodiesel and then use would appear to offer a reasonably low carbon impact pathway, potentially less than fossil fuel burning.

We are looking at a 5-10 year timeline probably, unless someone else gazumps them..........and that could happen given the effort now going into algae to fuel research and development programs in both industry and academia.