How a Tortilla Crisis is Causing an Energy Innovation

The ‘Great Tortilla Crisis’ of 2006 is having an unexpected effect two years later – helping to determine the fate of ethanol as an energy source. Ethanol got the blame for rising food prices as American farmers used the corn they grew for fuel instead of food, making it too expensive for Mexico’s poor. Now, biofuel producers are searching for sources of energy that don’t take food off the table, turning to grass, grain stalks left behind by the harvest, garbage dumps and dinner table scraps.

From The Huffington Post:

Carlo Bakker’s tiny biofuel operation, World Mobile Plants, avoids edibles. He says his mini-refinery, loaded into a 40-foot shipping container on a flatbed truck, roams South Africa making biodiesel fuel from used cooking oil, or from sunflower seeds or the jatropha shrub, which grows in poor soil with little water. He says he plans eventually to use organic household waste as well.

Bakker says one mobile unit can make 260,000 gallons per year, which he sells for the equivalent of US$3.79 per gallon, on a par with regular diesel prices.

“We don’t compete with the food chain,” Bakker said during a biofuels conference in Amsterdam. “We see opportunities not only to make money but to help people.”

Now, we’re seeing a shift toward second-generation biofuels – those that use waste streams. Universities and corporate research laboratories are pouring millions of dollars into finding a way to break down woody or grassy biomass into cellulosic ethanol. We’re still a few years away from commercial plants, however.

Biofuel proponents are upset that all biofuels have been lumped together in this backlash, when some forms made from things like sugar cane don’t have an effect on the food supply. In Europe, biodiesel is made largely of rapeseed grown on disused land. Only 40% of crushed rapeseed is used for biodiesel while the rest is processed into animal feed.

However, biofuel still requires plenty of water and is sometimes grown on fertile cropland which, many argue, could be put to better use for food.

A long-term solution could still come from the biofuel industry, if they can solve these problems. Many people view biofuels as a ‘band-aid’ solution, however – only useful until we can move on to something that’s truly sustainable. There are those who believe that turning to genetic modification is the answer, but that’s a whole other can of worms and one that we hope will not be opened any time soon.

Link [The Huffington Post]
Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

Kudzu Ethanol Plant Planned in Tennessee

We told you a couple months ago about Kudzu, ‘the vine that ate the South’. Kudzu, originally from Japan, was introduced to the U.S. nearly 130 years ago and has since taken over the entire Southeast, with masses of it completely covering trees, fences and buildings. Kudzu has long been thought of as a nuisance, but recent research has revealed that Southeastern landowners might be sitting on goldmines: kudzu can be used to produce energy. A new plant in Tennessee aims to turn the stuff into ethanol, a great alternative to corn since it doesn’t require irrigation.

From Chemically Green:

So what does Kudzu have to do with ethanol? Simply, due to the starch (sugar) content, kudzu can be used to replace corn to make ethanol. Will kudzu take the place of food ingredients being used to make ethanol? A resounding “Yes!” is stated by Mr. Doug Mizell, co-founder of Agro* Gas Industries in Cleveland, Tennessee. Mizell and company co-founder, Tom Monahan, have dubbed the kudzu-based-ethanol, “Kudzunol.” Kudzu is an obvious resource: “There’s 7.2 million acres of kudzu in the south that’s absolutely good to no one,” said Mizell. “It grows a foot a day, 60 feet a season and can be harvested twice a year and not even hurt the stand.”

Agro*Gas plans to break ground on an ethanol producing plant in McMinn County or a surrounding county by end of the year and hopefully begin production in 2009.

The eco-friendly plant will be privately funded. How awesome is it that we can use this ‘weed’, which grows rampant all over an entire region of the U.S. as fuel? Plus, the entire plant is used in the fuel making process, so no part goes to waste, and it won’t be tied to the commodities market, so the price won’t raise and lower in relation to the stock markets. We love it. Go Green Kudzu!

Link [Chemically Green]
Photo credit: Jack Anthony

Green Meme Killers: Ethanol Is Causing The Food Crisis

I’m sure you’ve heard it, just as we have, from self-righteous sounding friends and family. You know the sort: they think that global warming is a Marxist conspiracy to take over the world, and that environmentalists must be stopped. “The reason food prices are so out of control is because we’re sinking so much into ethanol and biofuels.” Wrong, wrong, wrong.

The meme generally goes like this:

Last year, food-to-fuel policies led to ¼ of U.S. corn being turned into ethanol. That number will rise to over 30% this year. By 2012 as much as 40% of our corn and 30% of our vegetable oils could be be diverted to fuel production.

This diversion of food crops is reducing the supply of food and feed and contributing to food price inflation. Today, food prices in the US are rising at twice the rate of inflation. Globally, food prices rose 83% in the last 3 years.

Compelling evidence, right? Not quite. The reality is that while the U.S. is embracing ethanol on a growing scale, that’s not what is driving food prices through the roof. First, we have to consider that–and we don’t say this lightly, being a resident of a state the neither the midwest nor the south seems ready to claim–the weather in the farm belt has been batshit crazy lately. Why does that matter? It means that the 25% of corn that went to ethanol in 2007 isn’t the same 25% of corn that was cheaply available in, say, 2000. Last year it was the drought that almost killed Atlanta. In 2006? Another drought. 2005? A third goddamn drought. And of course, to make up for all of this in 2008, we so far have been having rains that would make Noah blush–if you think food prices are high now, wait until the next harvest–there’s 4 million acres of corn that didn’t get planted this year because the weather was too bad. The farmers have insurance and soybeans to fall back on. What do we have? Stocking up.

Which segues nicely to the second point: despite all of these shortages, food would still be cheap if it weren’t for futures trading. This is America, man! We make money off of everything, including corn crops that aren’t even in the ground yet. Shares of corn futures–bushels, just like a barrel of crude oil– are sold like stocks in a company, and the more crazy the weather acts, the more intense the demand is going to be for those shares. In 2004, futures closed at $2.4175. In 2008? $4.28. This isn’t about ethanol sucking up all the available corn–it’s about that corn being bought for, and in turn having to be sold for, way more money. Because the weather in the places that grow corn (see also: flyover country) has been biblically bad.

It’s not just corn, either–wheat is up, and so are soybeans, a reflection that this is a problem that’s striking in systemic fashion, not merely a symptom of the evil environmentalists convincing everybody that oil is bad. Not that we’re not trying to do that, too. But biofuels are innocent, and anybody that says otherwise has tunnel vision.

Aarrrr! ‘Biodiesel Pirates’ Stealing Used Cooking Oil

Green business owners hoping to make money off used cooking oil to fuel vehicles have had a frustrating problem lately: ‘biodiesel pirates’ have been stealing their oil. As the price of gas rises ever higher, and many commuters find that their local mass transit systems aren’t so great, people are getting more and more desperate.

From MSNBC:

A few years ago, drums of used french fry grease were only of interest to a small network of underground biofuel brewers, who would use the slimy oil to power their souped-up antique Mercedes.

Now, restaurants from Berkeley, Calif., to Sedgwick, Kan., are reporting thefts of old cooking oil worth thousands of dollars by rustlers who are refining it into barrels of biofuel in backyard stills.

“It’s like a war zone going on right now over grease,” said David Levenson, who owns a grease hauling business in San Francisco’s Mission District. “We’re seeing more and more people stealing grease because it lets them stay away from the pump, but it’s hurting our bottom line.”

Drivers for Blue Sky Bio-Fuels, a grease hauler that also manufactures biodiesel for San Francisco’s municipal program, often find the 300-gallon dumpster they store outside the Oakland Coliseum nearly dry, despite the dozens of concessions stands that regularly dump their oil there. Losses at that one site alone have cost the company $3,700 in foregone oil revenues in the last year, said Wesley Caddell, the Oakland firm’s business developer.

Sounds like some improved locks are in order. It seems like it was only a matter of time before people started realizing that used cooking oil was pretty easy to come by, and a lot of folks have come to expect that they can help themselves to it when it’s unsecured outside restaurants. If you want to make money off of it, you’ve got to protect it from thieves, people. Unfortunately, even ‘green’ folks can be dishonest.

Link [MSNBC]
Photo credit: Flickr user Per Ola Wiberg

Excuse Me, I’m Going to Need This to Run My Car, Or The Insanity of Food Based Biofuels

I think this comic pretty much sums up the stupidity of using corn and other food crops to create ethanol to run in cars.

Cartoon by Michael Ramirez