Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Could “putting the cow inside the plant” make a new biofuel?
The Next Big Thing in biofuel might involve genetically engineered plants that digest themselves, making it cheaper to turn them into fuel. That’s one of the new ideas that Arun Majumdar finds fascinating. As the head of the U.S. Energy Department’s ARPA-E – the path-breaking agency that aims come up with efficient, green energy solutions — Majumdar said this concept is one of a few dozen that are in the development stage now.
Majumdar let his enthusiasm show as he described this project at the Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit on Thursday. He was talking about a project in its early stages at Massachusetts-based Agrivida.
“If you look at biofuels, cellulosic biofuels … you take agricultural waste, you separate out … the cellulose, then you throw a bunch of enzymes at them. And these enzymes are there in the cow’s gut, or termites, that break down this long chain polymer, this cellulose, into small bits and pieces called sugar molecules. And then you take those sugar molecules and feed them into another bug and then you produce gasoline,” he said.
The costly part of this process, Majumdar said, is growing these enzymes in a bio-reactor instead of in a cow.
Scottish scientists brew up whisky biofuel
Scientists in Scotland have unveiled a new biofuel made from whisky byproducts that they say can power ordinary cars more efficiently than ethanol.
A research team from Edinburgh’s Napier University spent two years creating the biofuel butanol that can be used in gas tanks either as a stand-alone fuel or blended with petrol or diesel, they announced Tuesday. It is derived from distillation byproducts pot ale (liquid from copper stills) and draff (the spent grains).
from Global News Journal:
Biofuels’ green credentials called into question
Biofuels were once seen as the perfect way to make transport carbon-free, but a series of EU studies are throwing increasing doubt on the green credentials of the alternative fuel.
The latest to be released gave a preliminary assessment that biodiesel from soybeans could create four times more climate-warming emissions than conventional diesel.
Will biofuel from algae look like Big Oil or Big Agriculture?
Hundreds of companies and laboratories are racing to find an economical way to make “green crude” from algae. The biofuel industry is grappling with a series of hurdles, which players readily recognized at a summit this week in San Diego and we cover in this story.
One question asked by one of the sector’s early leaders is will biofuel from algae look like Big Oil or Big Agriculture.
Green Portfolio: Pacific Ethanol plummets
Shares in Pacific Ethanol lost almost half their value in morning trading after the biggest West Coast-based producer and marketer of ethanol announced that it had put its production facilities in California, Oregon and Idaho into Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
The company said on May 12 that it would likely need to file for bankruptcy if it was not able to restructure its debt.
Fessing up to water issues – and biofuel
Water scarcity is a growing risk for businesses and investors and companies should offer more transparency regarding their exposure to water shortages and other climate change concerns, according to investor group Ceres.
“There are still big challenges out there… but disclosure is dismal,” said Brooke Barton, manager for corporate accountability at Ceres, a Boston-based public interest coalition, which holds a conference on green investing in San Francisco this week.
