From Grease Trap to Fuel Pump

The city of San Francisco recently announced its plans for a grease-to-diesel plant [CNET]. Through the program SFGreasecycle, the city had already been collecting “yellow” grease from restaurants and other establishments for no charge, which it processed and sold to bio-diesel producers. Now, the city will expand its program to include pickup of “brown” grease, which is tougher to process. This brown grease will be processed into three grades of biofuel: high-grade American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) certified biodiesel for vehicles, lower grade biofuel source for running sewage treatment plant turbines and pumps, and rich energy for cogeneration – the process of capturing methane gas at the sewage plant and converting that to heating/electrical needs [SFWATER.ORG].

Although I don’t know much about biofuels and associated technologies, my general preconception is that the fuels suffer from horrible inefficiencies. I have heard and read a lot of criticism of the food for fuel cycle, and so am usually hesitant to get excited about biofuels. However, I like the approach of recycling a waste product such as grease to create fuel. San Francisco is able to claim several advantages from their program. Because the city picks up waste for free, business owners benefit directly from saved costs of disposal. In addition, the city can mitigate cleanup costs associated with illegal dumping from owners who pour out grease rather than pay to dispose of it properly.

The scope of the SFGreasecyle program is relatively small, with a daily production expectation of 500 gallons of fuel [CNET]. The program will also receive over $1 million from the state of California to fund the plant’s development. I am definitely interested in seeing how this development plays out. If SF can produce these fuels economically, I would love to see other cities implement a similar system. I think this is an excellent example of how policy can affect multiple problems with innovative solutions.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-10158246-48.html

http://www.sfwater.org/detail.cfm/MC_ID/18/MSC_ID/114/C_ID/4018

Economic Downturn Affects Ethanol Production

In 2007, Congress passed an energy law that set targets for increased usage of alternative fuels such as biofuels. The law mandated that refiners blend ethanol into the nation's fuel supply in increasing amounts - by 2015, corn ethanol targets are 15 billion gallons, which is twice the current usage. In answer to the controversy over corn ethanol's affect on food prices, Congress also mandated that ethanol be produced from biomass alternatives to corn such as straw and wood chips. The initial targets of advanced biomass start small: 100 million gallons in 2010 and 250 million gallons in 2011, but build to 2 billion gallons of biomass ethanol by 2022. However, these goals which appeared modest in rosier economic times now seem overreaching. 

In today's slower economy, drivers are using less fuel and the ethanol industry is faced with excess capacity. Oil and gasoline prices have plummeted since last summer while corn prices have remained relatively high. Blending  ethanol into fuel is no longer the smart economic choice it was months ago, and refiners are only buying enough to meet federal blending mandates, which is a level far below industry capacity. Energy experts predict that gasoline usage in 2009 and 2010 may be 6% or more below 2007 consumption levels. At current ethanol blending requirements, there would be no need for increased ethanol production. 

One of the largest producers of ethanol halted production at 75% of its plants. Three ethanol producers have declared bankruptcy.  The president of the Renewable Fuels Association estimates that 24 plants out of the nations' 180 plants have shut down recently. Private funding of pilot advanced biofuel plants has been another casualty of the recession. Unless ethanol blending targets such as those established in the 2007 energy law are boosted, development of these fuels may slow considerably. However, there is a glimmer of hope on the horizon for alternative biofuels. POET, a South Dakota-based ethanol producer, just announced an $8 million pilot plant to produce cellulosic ethanol from corn cobs which it plans to open in 2011. 

Sources: Ethanol, Just Recently a Savior, Is Struggling

20,000 Gallon Per Year Cellulosic Ethanol Pilot Project Opens in South Dakota

Green IT - economics meets environment

IT and Energy

IT industry is amongst the faster growing consumers of energy and thus source of indirect emissions through electricity use. There's huge potential for energy efficiency in this area and thankfully wise people have taken notice and are already onto the task. 

"With a 10 percent improvement of overall energy efficiency in data centers by 2011, approximately 10 billion kilowatt-hours would be saved, equivalent to electricity consumed by 1 million U.S. households annually. This energy cutback would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 6.5 million tons per year—equal to the removal of nearly 1.3 million cars from the road annually."

U.S. Department of Energy

Here's a brief discussion on the major players who can help the environment through economics of energy efficiency - 

Corporations through 'Green Grid' - 

Recognizing the potential to save energy and help environment in this regard, a consortium of leading IT co.s including AMD and Hewlett Packard founded the Green Grid. The idea behind the GreenGrid is to make IT more energy efficient. The initiatives range from reducing electricity used to run the servers in a data center as well as reduce the energy required to mantain sub zero temperatures in the data centers. The green grid has alliances with - The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), US Department of Energy (DOE), US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) et. al and they work on developing standards for energy efficient IT operations. 

 

IT Consulting Companies -

Software Services companies like India's Wipro IT Consulting Services recognize the upcoming need for such solutions and are poised to realize the business potential in this arena. These companies are offering specialized consulting services to make IT operations more energy and environment efficient. 

http://www.wipro.com/greenit_new/pdf/whitepaper/wcir_the_green_data_center.pdf. 

Here's an example of potential energy and emissions savings as projected by Wipro - 

At a time when companies are looking for ways to reduce cost, savings to the tune of 80% will surely catch attention.  As this business area grows there can be a huge requirement for skilled professionals with experience and training to implement such initiatives. 

Non Profit Groups - 

An organization working on imparting training to professionals in this arena is the 'Environmental Defence Fund'. Through their Climate Corps internship program they tie up with companies looking for improvement in their energy profile to recruit summer interns from variuos MBA programs all over US, impart them training to optimize various business operations (in IT and other sectors as well) and send them to these companies over the summer to produce tangible results (http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=31477). 

IT is growing as a big consumer of energy. There's an intent in the industry to become more responsible in energy usage, as well as making green choices about the source of energy. In current economic conditions the initatives to purchase green energy for IT have been hurt, but at the same time the tough economic environment has accentuated the essentiality for IT companies to be more responsible, more efficient with energy.

Obama's Energy Ambitions

In his “New Energy for America” plan, President Obama sets very ambitious goals. Some of those ambitions include cutting carbon emissions by 80 percent by the year 2050, ensuring that 25 % of our electricity comes from renewable resources by 2025, and putting 1 million plug-in electric hybrids on the road by 2015 [1]. Are these goals attainable? He certainly lives up to his ambitious front with the new stimulus. He plans to kill two birds with one stone by creating new “green jobs” and providing tax cuts for energy efficiency. Such an approach may prove effective because, with the economy as it is, environmentally-friendly-energy-consciousness sinks to a lower priority. An important part of the future of the world is that people make different choices, and the stimulus will hopefully encourage them (and us) to do so. People are generally comfortable with the status quo and won’t change on their own. Perhaps this is the “change we need”. Is it enough, though? Such a hard-charging, front-loading approach to change in energy and the economy doesn’t seem very strategic in the long run. It seems like a one shot deal. What if the plan fails? How many times can you throw $798 billion into the economy? A quote from The Economist concerning the stimulus’s affect on the economy can also transfer to energy: “Fiscal stimulus, indispensible as it is, cannot create a lasting economic recovery in a broken financial system [2].” One could argue that the same could be said of a broken energy system.

1. Barack Obama and Joe Biden: New Energy for America. http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/factsheet_energy_speech_080308.pdf

2. "The Obama rescue." The Economist 14 Feb. 2009: 13.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's a ... wind turbine?

As concerns over climate change, geopolitical disputes, and increasing energy demands rise, the United States has recognized wind energy as an integral part of our energy mix in the future. However, agencies such as the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), U.S. Department of Energy (DoE), Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the National Weather Service (NWS) have reported that the towers and rotating turbine blades degrade radar quality due to adverse shadowing and clutter effects in the line-of-sight of radar applications [1,2]. These effects have the potential to threaten national security by impacting the country’s military air defense operations, decrease air safety by reducing Air Traffic Controllers’ ability to monitor the U.S. airspace, and decrease the accuracy of weather prediction [1]. Consequently, the U.S. government has implemented broad restrictions on the development of new wind projects that may interfere with civilian or military radar although mitigation techniques have been proposed that may allow the two to coexist [1].

On February 14, 2009, the FAA spoke out against the 420 MW Cape Wind Project, which includes plans to install 130 turbines in the Nantucket Sound. The site, off the shores of Massachusetts, was chosen because of its characteristically persistent and intense winds, but has been accused of interfering with 3 major FAA radar systems [4]. The FAA claims that the turbines will add extraneous clutter that may reduce its ability to monitor the sky since rotating turbines resemble aircraft on radar. Since this would be the United State’s first off-shore wind project, the FAA’s block forecasts a new era of controversy over off-shore wind projects. The Cape wind project has already weathered years of heavy criticism from the public because of environmental concerns and those who claim it will be an “eyesore” on the horizon [4].

In the near-future governing bodies such as the DoD, DoE, FAA, and NWS, must decide whether they are willing to put in substantial resources into upgrading already very expensive radar systems to filter out wind turbine clutter, or if they will redesign wind turbines to be less obtrusive to radar clutter, which may substantially increase the cost of production due to the need for more expensive radar absorbing materials [2]. The alternative would be to simply block the financing of off-shore projects in areas that would intercept civilian and military radar. In many senses the Cape Wind Project will set the tone for the off-shore wind industry in the next few months based on how this block by the FAA is handled.

1. Report to the Congressional Defense Committees: The Effect of Windmill Farms on Military Readiness, U.S. DoD, September 2006.

2. Rashid, L.S.; Brown, A.K., RCS and radar propagation near offshore wind farms, 2007 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society International Symposium (9-15 June 2007) pg. 4605 – 4608.

3. “FAA: Controversial Cape Wind project could be radar hazard,” The Boston Herald, February 14, 2009. http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1152140&srvc=business&position=3

4. Grad, P. “Offshore USA: The Cape Wind offshore wind farm: a first for the USA?”, Refocus, Volume 6, Issue 5, September-October 2005, Pages 34-36. doi:10.1016/S1471-0846(05)70456-X .

Emissions Waivers and the Economy

Recently, I read the article “Obama clearing way for California emissions waiver” by Ken Bensinger and Jim Tankersley published January 26, 2009 in the Los Angeles Times. The article essentially summarizes how President Obama is asking the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to allow waivers from federal rules that would allow states to set their own (and in most cases, stricter) standards for car emissions. President Bush had previously denied California a waiver that it had applied for back in 2007. However, Governor Schwarzenegger decided to sue the federal government upon news of the denial. Congress also launched an investigation into the process of EPA decision making.

Even though I am in support of the government trying to become as environmentally friendly as possible, and therefore limiting our greenhouse emissions, I do not think that allowing states to set their own emissions guidelines is necessarily the right way to go about helping the environment. If California and 17 other interested states are successful in obtaining the waiver and passing even stricter emissions standards, I think that it could potentially be the last straw for the American car industry. If auto manufacturers are forced to comply with these new standards, it would cost the companies billions to research and develop new cars that meet the stricter standards. And, considering that the only way the auto industry is managing to keep afloat these days is with billions of dollars from the federal government, forcing them to manufacture new cars to meet these standards could downright kill these companies. I think that this decision should possibly wait a couple of years until the car industry can recover and properly attack the issue of meeting possible stricter requirements.

Also, if states impose stricter guidelines for emission, this means that it is going to exponentially harder to get inspection stickers for our cars. This means people will have to spend even more on auto repairs to upgrade their car’s emission systems to meet the new requirements. And, in this economy, people do not necessarily have money to pay for those upgrades/repairs. So either one of two things will most likely happen: one, people will simply not pay to repair their cars and drive around with expired inspection stickers or two, pay for the repairs and possibly go into even more debt. And, if states really want to enforce the inspection stickers, they will have to have cops devote more time to writing tickets and taking them away from actual protective duties.

In addition to burdening drivers with the inspection stickers, drivers will also pay more in gas prices (which as we saw last summer adversely affects almost everyone). California already has ridiculously high emission standards, and because of this they have to have specially blended gasoline that typically runs a dollar or two more a gallon than regular fuel. If other states raise their standards, more people would be subjected to using higher priced fuel to help meet these new standards. And, once again in this economy, I do not think that people can afford this right now.

Overall, I am not saying that I disagree with the waivers. I think that we should monitor our emissions so that we play our part in helping control pollution. However, with the state our economy is in presently, I think that the waivers would simply make things so, so much worse.

My energy consumption

<

I was an oil and gas analyst for 2 ½ years, and then a consultant to end-consumers of oil and gas for another two years. I helped my clients hedge huge amounts of energy, but I did not have a true sense of just how much consumption those numbers represent.

So, I decided to try and determine how much energy I personally use. The main drivers of my consumption are obviously the power and heat that I use in my apartment, and the gasoline I use in my car. I also often take the bus to school and spend a good bit of time on campus in general, but my share of these public goods is difficult to calculate, so I made rough estimates of my share of use.

The easy way to figure out my natural gas and electricity consumption would be to simply look at my utility bills. Indeed, I did that, but I also tried to figure out how much power each of my appliances consumes by looking at the power ratings on the identification tags, or by looking up consumption ratings on the producers’ websites. Once I found the energy rating, I multiplied it by my estimate of how much I use the appliance each day to get total power used in watt-hours and kilowatt-hours. The results were fairly intuitive; here is what I found (the numbers in yellow were provided by the government required “Energy Guide”):

My stacked washing machine/dryer that came with my apartment uses the most power, then my refrigerator, followed by lighting. Surprisingly, my TV doesn’t consume much electricity even thought it consumes power while on standby, but this is largely because I don’t watch more than an hour of TV a day. Everything else combined consumes less than the nine incandescent bulbs that I use for three hours per day. When I compare the total amount of power I consume with this method (7.5 KWH per day) to the amount of power that Austin Energy says I use, my estimate seems to be almost 3.5 KWH per short.

I figure, however, that this difference is likely due to the fact that I averaged the summer and winter usage data from Austin Energy. When I compare my monthly estimate of 225 KWH (which does not include an estimate for power consumed for air conditioning) with Austin Energy’s number of 274 KWH for January the difference is much smaller. Still, I am using 10.9 KWH of power each day, which is equivalent to leaving on 4.5 incandescent bulbs (100 watt) for 24 hours a day… every day!

My consumption of natural gas is 0.46 Ccf per day, which is equivalent to almost 1.5 MMBTUs per month. More than a million BTUs is a lot, but the firms I used to hedge for consume about 10 million times more! These firms are building product manufacturers, drug makers, and other large industrial firms. So, while I don’t directly consume a huge amount of energy, I often don’t consider how much energy I consume indirectly.

As for gasoline consumption, I primarily ride the bus or walk, so it takes me almost a month to get through a 17.1 gallon tank of gas. Since I ride the bus a good bit though, I actually I tried to calculate my portion of Capital Metro’s daily diesel consumption based on data posted in its 2008 budget report. I came up with 0.001 gallons (rounded up) per day, and I have a feeling that is probably a significant overestimate.

So, based on my calculations I have concluded that if I want to save energy, then I should: consolidate laundry loads, ride the bus, and only use the lights I need and replace them with more efficient ones. As for the fridge… I don’t know… I’m not real fond of the idea of giving up cold beer.

The University as a Laboratory

This weekend I (among several other ETP students) attended the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGIU) meeting (1). Sponsored by UT, the goal of the meeting was to bring together college students whom all have made personal commitments to change, ranging in focus from energy and climate change to global health and poverty alleviation. CGIU awards students for their commitments and establishes a dialogue in which students can exchange advice on how they were able to bring focused action to their campuses.

I participated in discussions on Energy and Climate Change, with a focus on universities as a laboratory in which renewable technologies, sustainable building designs and new curriculum can be vetted. Certainly universities are places with good minds and often times are well funded, making them ideal places to test such practices. With over 4,000 colleges/universities and 17 million students in the U.S., there is great potential for these institutions to spur innovation and make substantial decreases in energy use (2).

One stream of discussion I would like to focus on is making adjustments to curriculum to include issues of sustainability, energy and an aspect of community service/action. I am particularly passionate about incorporating hands on, community service/action into university course requirements. In high school, having attended a Quaker school with community service requirements, I saw the impact several hundred students can have on a community and its' residents. If only a fraction of higher education institutions enacted mandatory service, with some course credits provided, I imagine the impact of several million young people on their communities would be great and would establish a connection with the townspeople that is often missing from the university experience.

It would be best if the immediate images associated with community service, such as cleaning up an empty lot or pulling weeds, were replaced with winterizing low income homes, partnering with local businesses to promote recycling efforts, organizing food drives or petitioning local governments to design and implement more sustainable transit systems. Again, the potential impact is huge when considering the possibility of millions of students taking to these actions.

So, here I would like to conduct an informal survey.

Would you embrace a requirement for service in your undergraduate institution?
and for those who would be opposed, why?



1: http://www.clintonglobalinitiative.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?pid=1853
2: http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908742.html

Coal Storage Under Texas

Texas is considering offering tax incentives for energy companies to build “clean coal” plants. This session, Texas legislature is introducing SB 483, a bill that could, if passed, give companies up to $100 million in tax breaks for building coal plants that capture at least 60 percent of the carbon emissions created by the plant. (1)

There are three main types of geological storage available to those utilizing the carbon capture methods. One place to store carbon dioxide underground is in reservoirs that have been drained of oil and natural gas. Second, once useable gases have been taken from coal-rich areas that can’t be mined, those pockets in the ground can also be used to inject excess CO2. The third place carbon dioxide is stored is within porous saline formations, such as sandstone or limestone. (2)

Lawmakers in Texas are proposing that we use the saline formations abundant along the coast to store the easily transportable carbon dioxide. The sandstone and limestone buried deep under the Texas coastal region and just offshore would be ideal to store large amounts of these gases. (3)

Since Texas is a leader in coal consumption, SB 483 is a smart incentive to reduce carbon emissions in our state. Carbon capture plants cost about 50 percent more than a regular coal plant (2), so tax breaks would make the cleaner energy source more economically viable. Though coal is still “dirty” and there are other cleaner alternatives for energy, with coal such a cheap and abundant resource in our energy-needy state, carbon capture is an important step toward a cleaner environment.

(1) http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/legislature/stories/011309dnbuscleancoal.178ec3.html

(2) http://www.nma.org/ccs/carbonstorage.asp

(3) http://www.fwbog.com/index.php?page=article&article=57