"The future is here. It's just not widely distributed yet." - William Gibson

We have to decouple feedstocks from fossil fuels

3 January 2010 Posts

What energy sources have a feedstock decoupled from fossil fuels? Solar, Wind, Geothermal, Tidal, Biomass? There are multiple problems that will make it difficult for biodiesel to ever compete without subsidies. In a nutshell the key problem is that the feedstock costs are linked to fossil fuel prices. The feedstock is generally a vegetable oil [...]

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Put a price on carbon already

1 January 2010 Posts

From the Economist survey: The credit crisis also revealed a basic problem with the clean-energy business. Fossil fuels are, in terms of the energy they store, remarkably inexpensive to get out of the ground and sell. That makes dirty industrial processes irresistibly cheap—so long as they are not required to cover the costs of the [...]

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The Truth about Biofuels

30 October 2009 Posts

A lot of posts this week based on the findings of various reports on biofuels. The problem is complicated because depending on the application and the change in land use the impact can swing widely from negative to positive. Some thoughts on what a good biofuels project/policy would consist of. 1. If you can grow [...]

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Biochar Applications in the Developing World

30 October 2009 Posts

A great example of using new technologies in the developing world. As I mentioned earlier this week, as we get closer to a carbon bill there will be wide application for any process that upgrade soil contents. The core of re:char’s technology, Jason explained, is a process called pyrolisis, which takes place by heating to [...]

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Rapier: Don’t Weep for the Trees

27 October 2009 Posts

From, Robert Rapier at R-Squared: As explained in the previous essay, my new role involves development of an integrated bioenergy platform. We believe this to be a different way of looking at the problem of turning biomass into energy, and then ultimately supplying that energy to customers. We are not tying ourselves to a specific [...]

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Bono: The Rebranding of America

26 October 2009 Posts

Bono in a provoking NY Time Op Ed this weekend: The world senses that America, with renewed global support, might be better placed to defeat this axis of extremism with a new model of foreign policy. … That’s why America shouldn’t turn up its national nose at popularity contests. In the same week that Mr. [...]

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Put a Cap on Mercury

26 October 2009 Posts

A lot of unknowns regarding the Clearn Air Act but looks like a cap on mercury similar to sulfur and nitrogen is likely. The Environmental Protection Agency, resolving a lawsuit aimed at cutting the flow of mercury and other toxic substances from coal- or oil-burning power plants, has agreed to develop standards by late 2011 [...]

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Coskata launches semi-commerical scale cellulosic plant

17 October 2009 Posts

“Bolson claims that Coskata’s process will be the cheapest in the industry, in part because its yield of ethanol per ton of biomass is high. Its process begins with the gasification of feedstock materials using existing technology. The product of the gasification–a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide called syngas–is then fed into bioreactors, where [...]

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