The world’s first commercial-scale seawater-based biofuels project boosts Egypt’s aquaculture profile. (Photo: Global Seawater).

EGYPT, Tuesday, April 13, 2010, 00:40 (GMT + 9)

Houston-based energy projects development company Energy Allied International and the Seawater Foundation and Global Seawater, Inc, pioneers in the development of Integrated Seawater Agriculture Systems (ISAS), have signed an MOU to develop the world’s first commercial-scale seawater-based biofuels project in Egypt: “New Nile Co.”

It will be one of the largest biofuels investments thus far in the Middle East or Africa.

ISAS is an advanced biofuels production model that uses effluent from seawater aquaculture as a natural fertilizer to grow large plantations of the halophyte (naturally salt resistant plant) salicornia, which can yield hefty volumes of high-grade vegetable oil for use as a biofuel feedstock.

“Energy Allied International’s expertise in developing large scale energy projects in the Middle East and Africa, tied with the Seawater Foundation’s and Global Seawater’s extensive knowledge of developing and operating ISAS models, is a winning combination to ensure the success of the world’s first, commercial scale, seawater-based biofuels project,” stated Dr Carl Hodges, chairman of The Seawater Foundation and co-chairman of Global Seawater.

Unlike first-generation biofuels producers that menace to displace staple foods like corn due to reliance on freshwater and nutrient-rich soil, New Nile will apply the ISAS model, thereby relying exclusively on untreated seawater and currently unproductive arid, desert and degraded lands.

“New Nile Co is poised to launch a great agricultural revolution in Egypt, by making productive use of the country’s abundant agricultural-skilled labour, unlimited access to seawater and vast desert lands,” said Mike Nassar, chairman of Energy Allied.

New Nile plans to produce tens of millions of lts of biofuels from a 50,000 ha-project site. Jointly with leading architecture design firm and the project’s lead planning advisor, Gensler, the developers are presently considering potential site locations along the Mediterranean and Red Sea coasts.

Already having successfully applied the ISAS model in Eritrea after conducting broad research and development in Mexico, the developers are secure of achieving similarly favourable results in Egypt.

Besides automotive markets necessitating the use of blended biofuels, New Nile will target the European civil aviation market. The latter is put through strict European Union (EU) regulations, and aviation will enter the EU Emissions Trading Scheme in 2012.

New Nile’s developers are currently discussing potential project site locations with the Egyptian Government and intend to complete the bankable feasibility study this year and being construction in early 2011.

By Natalia Real

SOURCE: FIS

Accelergy, USAF to evaluate Camelina, liquid coal jet fuel mix
Accelergy has begun production of biojet fuel using a mix of Camelina oil and liquefied coal for evaluation by the US Air Force (USAF). Separately, Accelergy signed a Camelina oil supply agreement with an Ohio company.

US Navy to test F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet with biofuels
In 2009, Accelergy entered into a cooperative research and development agreement with USAF for testing fully synthetic fuels that meet or exceed USAF JP-8 military jet fuel standards.

USAF currently uses JP-8 fuel in all of its aircraft and has been looking for a commercially viable 100% synthetic alternative to petroleum based fuels. To date, synthetic fuels have required blending with petroleum feedstocks on a 50% basis to be suitable in aviation applications.

As reported by Recharge, USAF has issued internal requirements that 50% of its fuel needs comes from domestic and cleaner sources by 2016.

Accelergy will use its coal-biomass-to-liquids technology at a pilot facility under construction at the Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) University of North Dakota.

Fuel deliveries to the Air Force Research Labs will begin in late 2010. The pilot facility will provide a valuable tool for evaluating new coal and biomass feeedstocks as the technology moves toward commercial deployment.

“Accelergy is the first to provide 100% synthetic jet fuel for the USAF with high thermal stability, increased energy density, lower environmental impact and competitive costs,” says tim Vail, company chief executive.

“The facility at EERC allows us to produce meaningful quantities of fuel, confirm our performance estimates and further refine our fuel product,” he adds. “With the test results in hand, the Air Force and defense contractors can then explore the full range of options for employment and advanced synthetic fuels in next-generation aircraft designs.”

Accelergy says its process technology maintains high overall thermal efficiency while significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions associated with comparable refining methods. It can also produce Jet-A fuel along with military JP5 and JP9 military jet fuels.

Camelina is a plant native to Northern Europe and Central Asia that has been traditionally cultivated as an oilseed to produce vegetable oil and animal feed. It does not compete with food crops as it requires little water or nitrogen to thrive, and can be grown on marginal farm land.

Among US states, Montana has been the most supportive of proposals to use Camelina as a raw material for biofuels and is also backing use of its abundant coal reserves for the same purpose..

Accelergy’s supply deal is with Great Plains Oil & Exploration – The Camelina Company , which is based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Financial and other details were not released.

A Great Plains official tells Recharge that the company is already growing Camelina in Montana and will extract its oil there after it obtains a crushing plant.

“This will be a great plus for Montana, and is another step on our way to energy independence,” says Governor Brian Schweitzer, who sees creation of jobs as Camelina use becomes more widespread.

Accelergy is based in Houston.

Richard A. Kessler

Source: Recharge news

For decades, farmers have been trying to find ways to get more energy out of the sun.

In natural photosynthesis, plants take in solar energy and carbon dioxide and then convert it to oxygen and sugars. The oxygen is released to the air and the sugars are dispersed throughout the plant — like that sweet corn we look for in the summer. Unfortunately, the allocation of light energy into products we use is not as efficient as we would like. Now engineering researchers at the University of Cincinnati are doing something about that.

The researchers are finding ways to take energy from the sun and carbon from the air to create new forms of biofuels, thanks to a semi-tropical frog species. Their results have just been published online in “Artificial Photosynthesis in Ranaspumin-2 Based Foam” (March 5, 2010) in the journal “Nano Letters.” (It will be a cover story for the print edition in the fall.)

Research Assistant Professor David Wendell, student Jacob Todd and College of Engineering and Applied Science Dean Carlo Montemagno co-authored the paper, based on research in Montemagno’s lab in the Department of Biomedical Engineering. Their work focused on making a new artificial photosynthetic material which uses plant, bacterial, frog and fungal enzymes, trapped within a foam housing, to produce sugars from sunlight and carbon dioxide.

Foam was chosen because it can effectively concentrate the reactants but allow very good light and air penetration. The design was based on the foam nests of a semi-tropical frog called the Tungara frog, which creates very long-lived foams for its developing tadpoles.

“The advantage for our system compared to plants and algae is that all of the captured solar energy is converted to sugars, whereas these organisms must divert a great deal of energy to other functions to maintain life and reproduce,” says Wendell. “Our foam also uses no soil, so food production would not be interrupted, and it can be used in highly enriched carbon dioxide environments, like the exhaust from coal-burning power plants, unlike many natural photosynthetic systems.”

He adds, “In natural plant systems, too much carbon dioxide shuts down photosynthesis, but ours does not have this limitation due to the bacterial-based photo-capture strategy.”

There are many benefits to being able to create a plant-like foam.

“You can convert the sugars into many different things, including ethanol and other biofuels,” Wendell explains. “And it removes carbon dioxide from the air, but maintains current arable land for food production.”

“This new technology establishes an economical way of harnessing the physiology of living systems by creating a new generation of functional materials that intrinsically incorporates life processes into its structure,” says Dean Montemagno. “Specifically in this work it presents a new pathway of harvesting solar energy to produce either oil or food with efficiencies that exceed other biosolar production methodologies. More broadly it establishes a mechanism for incorporating the functionality found in living systems into systems that we engineer and build.”

The next step for the team will be to try to make the technology feasible for large-scale applications like carbon capture at coal-burning power plants.

Dean Carlo Montemagno

“This involves developing a strategy to extract both the lipid shell of the algae (used for biodiesel) and the cytoplasmic contents (the guts), and reusing these proteins in the foam,” says Wendell. “We are also looking into other short carbon molecules we can make by altering the enzyme cocktail in the foam.”

Montemagno adds, “It is a significant step in delivering the promise of nanotechnology.”

Source: UC EDU

BA says the plant will reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill.

British Airways has struck a deal to build the first plant in Europe to produce jet fuel from waste matter.

Some 500,000 tonnes of waste will be used by the UK facility each year to produce 16 million gallons of fuel.

Construction of the plant in east London will start within two years. It is set to produce fuel from 2014, creating up to 1,200 jobs.

BA said the plant would produce twice the amount of fuel needed to power all its flights from London City Airport.

It would only account for about 2% of flights from Heathrow, however.

Greenhouse gas

BA argues the plant will cut the amount of waste that is sent to landfill, reducing the amount of methane that is produced.

Methane is thought to be a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

The plant will be built by a US company Solena Group, with BA committing to buy all of its output.

It will be another four years before it starts producing fuel, and it is unlikely to work at full capacity straight away.

The ideal source material for the plant is waste matter that has a high carbon content.

Biofuel creation

The waste is fed into a high temperature “gasifier” to produce BioSynGas.

A chemical process called Fischer Tropsch is then used to convert the gas into biofuel.

Waste products from the process can be used to power the plant as well as supply 20MW of electricity to the national grid.

A solid waste product can be used as an aggregate in construction.

The fuel produced by the plant is certified for use in other countries, but not currently in the UK.

BA says it is confident of getting the certification by the time the plant starts producing fuel, either for use in a blend with traditional kerosene or on its own.

By Richard Scott

Source: BBC

A research project will make jet fuel without wasting fresh water or farmland.

A project in the Middle East aims to make jet fuel from saltwater-tolerant crops grown in the desert. Researchers at the Masdar Institute in the United Arab Emirates are starting a two-square-kilometer demonstration farm that will combine fish and shrimp farming with the cultivation of mangrove trees and salicornia, a plant with oil-rich seeds that can be converted into fuel.

 The goal is to produce biofuels without taking away land from food crops or using large amounts of fresh water, which are two of the major shortcomings of conventional biofuels, says Scott Kennedy, an associate professor at the Masdar Institute who is leading the project. The project is supported by several major companies: Boeing, Etihad Airways (the national airline of the UAE), and UOP Honeywell, which will supply technology for converting the biomass to chemical precursors and fuels. The Masdar Institute is part of a zero-emissions city being built in Abu Dhabi, the largest emirate in the UAE.

Kennedy and his colleagues will refine a technique called integrated seawater agriculture. It begins with digging a canal from the sea. That canal delivers water to several stages in the system. First, the researchers pump saltwater into ponds or flow it past cages used for growing shrimp or fish. Ordinarily, such aquaculture is an “environmental disaster,” Kennedy says. The runoff contains large amounts of feces that can cause dangerous algae blooms, for example. But in the Masdar system, the researchers will use that effluent downstream to fertilize salicornia.

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The salicornia is grown in saltwater-irrigated fields, and can be harvested like other crops, such as wheat or rice. The runoff from that irrigation, now saltier and still containing some effluent from the fish and shrimp, together with more water from the canal, is next fed to a stretch of planted mangrove trees, which can grow in that saltier water. The mangrove forest provides a barrier, so that none of the polluted water from the fish farm returns to the ocean. The leaves can also be used as food for the fish.

The oil-rich seeds of the salicornia can be pressed using processing similar to that used for other oil seed crops, such as sunflowers. That oil can then be modified by a proprietary UOP Honeywell process that makes it suitable for blending in jet fuel. The rest of the plant can then be further used to produce liquid fuels, or burned to produce steam for electricity generation.

The fish farms provide both a source of income and a source of fertilizer, which reduces overall carbon emissions, since producing and using fertilizer is ordinarily a major source of carbon emissions in biofuels production. The mangrove forest also sequesters carbon dioxide in its root system. Most biofuels are at best carbon neutral, emitting as much carbon dioxide when they’re produced and burned as the biofuel crops take in as they grow. One of the key parts of the Masdar research project is determining just how much carbon can be economically sequestered.

A version of the system has already been demonstrated in the north African country of Eritrea by Carl Hodges, the founder and chairman of the Seawater Foundation. (He’s acting as a special advisor to the Masdar project.) In that project, the salicornia and leaves from the mangroves were used as animal feed, and some of the oil from the seeds was converted to biodiesel. That project ended as a result of political upheaval in that country, Hodges says, but it demonstrated that the integrated approach could work.

The effort to avoid using fresh water and land that’s used for food “should be applauded,” says Mark Schrock, a professor of biological and agricultural engineering at Kansas State University. But he says it will be important to quickly develop a mechanized means of harvesting the salicornia. This could be a challenge because, although it can be harvested with existing equipment, the plant has high salt levels that could damage these machines, says Wayne Coates, a professor at the Office of Arid Land Studies at the University of Arizona.

It will also need to compete with other biofuels crops. Per acre yields of oil are on par with soybeans (which provide additional economic value from non-oil products), but are just one-eighth the yield of palm oil. The saltwater system, however, has the advantage of not requiring expensive land and water, and it produces its own fertilizer. Kennedy says that initial estimates suggest that fuel produced from salicornia could be competitive with petroleum-based fuels, but warns that detailed studies still need to be done.

Kevin Bullis

Source: Technoloy Review

www.salicornia.net coming soon

SAO PAULO (Reuters) – Royal Dutch Shell plans to form an ethanol and fuel distribution joint venture worth up to $12 billion with Brazilian sugar and biofuel giant Cosan, becoming the latest global energy company to buy into one of Brazil’s fastest-growing industries.

The deal, announced on Monday, marks Shell’s first foray into ethanol production and follows moves by British oil company BP, which in 2008 took a stake in a big Brazilian biofuel project and unveiled $1 billion in investments.

Cosan shares jumped 12 percent in Sao Paulo, compared with a 1.1 percent gain by the benchmark Bovespa index. Shell shares rose 1.1 percent in London, outperforming a 0.3 percent rise in the Dow Jones European oil and gas index.

“It’s a vote of confidence from an oil major for the Brazilian ethanol industry,” said Jonathan Kingsman, managing director of the Lausanne-based Kingsman SA ethanol and sugar consultancy. “I expect more interest from the oil companies in Brazilian ethanol, both in production and distribution.”

The 50-50 joint venture will be the third-largest fuel distributor in Latin America’s largest country, with almost 4,500 filling stations nationwide. By joining forces, Cosan and Shell will be better positioned to compete with the two top players in the market, state oil giant Petrobras and Ipiranga, a unit of Brazil’s Grupo Ultra.

Cosan first branched out into the fuel distribution business in 2008 when it acquired U.S.-based Exxon Mobil Corp’s Esso chain of service stations for nearly $1 billion. Cosan also agreed in December to buy a local chain of filling stations called Petrosul for an undisclosed sum.

While the deal will not immediately add to Cosan’s existing cane crushing capacity of about 60 million tonnes a year, it will give it a deep-pocketed partner at a time when some of its smaller rivals are vulnerable to takeovers.

The companies hope to more than double ethanol output to up to 5 billion liters a year from about 2 billion now, Shell’s downstream director, Mark Williams, said in London, without giving a time frame. The increase would come from takeovers and organic growth, he added.

The deal is another feather in the cap of Cosan Chairman Rubens Ometto, whose family has been in the sugar business since 1936. On Ometto’s watch, Cosan went on an acquisition spree and expanded into fuel distribution and port terminals.

Ometto hopes to capitalize on Shell’s global clout to make ethanol a widely traded commodity.

“Brazil’s aim is to become an ethanol exporter. Shell has distribution facilities throughout the world that we could use in a much more integrated way,” Ometto said in Sao Paulo.

“This step will be very important to consolidate ethanol as a clean and renewable fuel … and help it become a global commodity.”

Oil companies and major global investors have been searching for partnerships in Brazil’s promising ethanol sector, which is still largely dominated by family companies with complex ownership structures.

Shell has been looking for opportunities in Brazil’s ethanol industry for years. About 90 percent of all new cars in Brazil are flex-fuel, running on any mix of ethanol and gasoline, making the country a huge market for biofuels.

Other foreign companies have also been delving into Brazil. U.S. agribusiness giant Bunge Ltd struck a deal in December to buy sugar and ethanol producer Moema for $452 million, while French commodities company Louis Dreyfus said in October it would take over the Santelisa Vale mill for an undisclosed sum.

COSAN EYES OVERSEAS MARKETS, TECHNOLOGY

The combined entity will have about 40 billion reais ($21.4 billion) in annual sales, Cosan Chief Financial Officer Marcelo Martins said on a conference call with analysts and investors.

For Cosan, the world’s largest sugar and ethanol producer, teaming up with Shell could give it access to a vast overseas distribution network and new technologies in ethanol production, an area where Shell has been investing. Shell’s network may help Cosan export more ethanol as output grows.

“We’ll have a partner with an absolutely huge international presence in fuels sales,” Martins said.

The so-called second-generation in ethanol production has yet to reach commercial scale, but some companies are betting on the use of cellulosic material such as bagasse or cane stalks and grasses to make biofuels, in part to move away from making fuel from foodstuffs.

Cosan, which recently obtained a court injunction to remove its name from a government black list of companies with workers in slave-like conditions, said it had 180 days to discuss the nonbinding memorandum of understanding exclusively with Shell International Petroleum Co Ltd.

As part of the transaction, Cosan will transfer its sugar, ethanol, fuel distribution and energy generation business to the merged entity, with assets valued at $4.93 billion and debt of $2.52 billion.

Shell will contribute its retail fuel and aviation distribution business, valued at up to $3 billion, and inject $1.63 billion into the merged company in up to two years.

Brazilian investment bank BTG Pactual advised Cosan on the transaction, while JPMorgan Chase advised Shell.

Cosan and Shell will have the option of buying each other’s stake in the venture after 10 years, with the price to be determined at the time of purchase.

Earlier on Monday, Cosan released its quarterly earnings for the three months ended December 31. It posted net income of 167.1 million reais, up sharply from 5.2 million reais a year earlier. ($1=1.87 reais)

Reporting by Elzio Barreto and Inae Riveras; additional reporting by Reese Ewing in Sao Paulo and David Brough, Nigel Hunt and Tom Bergin in London; editing by Todd Benson, Dave Zimmerman and John Wallace.

Source:  Reuters

Soybean, one of the most important global sources of protein and oil, is now the first legume species with a published complete draft genome sequence. The sequence and its analysis appear in the January 14 edition of the journal Nature.

The research team comprised 18 institutions, including the U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute (DOE JGI), the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS), Purdue University and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The DOE, National Science Foundation, USDA and United Soybean Board supported the research.

“The soybean genome’s billion-plus nucleotides afford us a better understanding of the plant’s capacity to turn sunlight, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water, into concentrated energy, protein, and nutrients for human and animal use,” said Anna Palmisano, DOE Associate Director of Science for Biological and Environmental Research. “This opens the door to crop improvements that are sorely needed for energy production, sustainable human and animal food production, and a healthy environmental balance in agriculture worldwide.”

With the soybean genetic code now determined, the research community has access to a key reference for more than 20,000 legume species and can explore the extraordinary evolutionary innovation of nitrogen-fixing symbiosis that is so critically important to successful agricultural crop rotation strategies.

Jeremy Schmutz, the study’s first author and a DOE JGI scientist at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Alabama, said that the soybean sequencing was the largest plant project done to date at the DOE Joint Genome Institute. “It also happens to be the largest plant that’s ever been sequenced by the whole genome shotgun strategy—where we break it apart and reassemble it like a huge puzzle,” he said. Of the more than 20 other plant genomes taken on by the DOE JGI, those already sequenced include the black cottonwood (poplar) tree and the grain sorghum, both targeted because of their promise as biomass feedstocks for biofuels production.

“This is a milestone for soybean research and promises to usher in a new era in soybean agronomic improvement,” said co-author Gary Stacey, Director, Center for Sustainable Energy and Associate Director and National Center for Soybean Biotechnology, University of Missouri. “The genome provides a parts list of what it takes to make a soybean plant and, more importantly, helps to identify those genes that are essential for such important agronomic traits as protein and oil content.”

Soybean, one of the most important global sources of protein and oil, is now the first legume species with a published complete draft genome sequence.

From the sequence analysis, Stacey said that he and his colleagues have identified more than 46,000 genes of which 1,110 are involved in lipid metabolism. “These genes and their associated pathways are the building blocks for soybean oil content and represent targets that can be modified to bolster output and lead to the increase of the use of soybean oil for biodiesel production.”

While biodiesel from soybean oil represents a cleaner, renewable alternative to fossil fuels with desirable properties as a liquid transportation fuel, there simply is not enough oil produced by the plant to be a competitive gasoline on a gallons-of-fuel yield per acre. The availability of the soybean genome may provide some key solutions. “We can now zero in on the control points governing carbon flow towards protein and oil,” said Tom Clemente, Professor, Center for Biotechnology, Center for Plant Science Innovation at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. “With the combination of informatics, biochemistry and genetics we can target the development of a soybean with greater than 40 percent oil content.”

The availability of the soybean genome sequence has accelerated other soybean trait discovery efforts as well. For example, researchers have used the sequence to zero in on a mutation that can be used to select for a line that has lower levels of the sugar stachyose, which will improve the ability of animals and humans to digest soybeans.

In another effort, by comparing the genomes of soybean and corn, a single-base pair mutation was found that causes a reduction in phytate production in soybean. Phytate is the form in which phosphorous is stored in plant tissue. Because phytate is not absorbed by the animals that eat the feed, the unabsorbed phytate passes through the gastrointestinal tract, elevating the amount of phosphorus in the manure. Limiting phytate production in the soybean could reduce a major environmental runoff contaminant from swine and poultry waste.

Of additional importance for soybean farmers is that the genome sequence has provided access to the first resistance gene for the devastating disease Asian Soybean Rust (ASR). In countries where ASR is well established, soybean yield losses due to the disease can be as high as 80 percent.

Provided by DOE/Joint Genome Institute

Source: Physorg

Moema Par is a holding company that owns one sugarcane mill and has ownership in five others. Together the six mills, known as the Moema Group, have the capacity to crush 15.4 metric tons. This agreement, which is structured as a share exchange worth approximately $896 million, gives Bunge 60 percent effective share of the total capacity.

“This transaction fulfills Bunge’s strategic goal of building a large-scale, fully integrated business in sugar and bioenergy,” stated Alberto Weisser, Chairman and CEO of Bunge Limited. “It adds significant scale to our current milling operations and enables us to vary production among multiple sugar and ethanol products, according to market conditions. The Moema Group cluster is also strategically located near large domestic markets in Brazil and has excellent access to export logistics systems. All of these strengths make it a perfect fit with our global trading and marketing operations.”

The Moema Group cluster is located on the border of São Paulo and Minas Gerais states, the two largest domestic ethanol markets in Brazil. According to Bunge, the mills benefit from cost savings due to their cluster configuration, and have favorable road and rail access to three of Brazil’s largest export ports (Santos, Paranagua and Vitoria). The mills can produce both raw and crystal sugar, as well as hydrous and anhydrous ethanol. In addition, the mills have co-generation facilities, are self-sustaining in terms of energy requirements and sell excess power to the grid. The majority of the cluster’s sugarcane is harvested mechanically, which is now law in São Paulo.

According to Bunge, they may enter into agreements to secure some of all of the remaining interests in the mills that comprise the Moema Group in the next few weeks.

Source: Domestic Fuel

In past days the envelopes with the technical offer of the Official Plan of Renewable Energies (GENREN) bid were opened. The proposing companies are now waiting for the economic offer envelopes.

he Argentine government announced the results of the 1,015 megawatt (MW) renewable energies tender proposed last May. The total offers reached 1,461 MW, a 46% oversubscription. The offers were broken down by technology: 1,203 for wind power; 155.4 MW from biofuels; 54.1 MW from biomass; 14 MW from biogas; 22.5 MW from photovoltaic solar energy; and 12.7 MW from small hydro projects.

The opening of the sealed envelopes was done at a ceremony at the presidential mansion known as la Casa Rosada, which included words from Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner as well as from the Federal Planning Minister, Julio de Vido.

According to a recent study by the Argentine Renewable Energy Chamber (CADER), nearly 70% of Argentina’s territory is covered with winds whose annual average speed, measured at 50 meters above ground level, surpasses 6 m/s. In Central and Southern Patagonia the speeds can reach on average 9 m/s and up to 12 m/s. Most areas in the vast Patagonia region experience annual average capacity factors above 45%. The provinces of Córdoba, part of San Luis, La Pampa, San Juan, La Rioja and the central and southwestern regions of the province of Buenos Aires yield capacity factors between 35% and 40%.

But despite such massive potential, the 30 MW of wind generation that has been installed to date comes mainly from projects completed between the mid-1990s and early 2000s that were developed by small cooperatives in the Patagonian region.

The tender had been launched by the government last May to assist in the requirements under Renewable Energies Law 26.190 from 2006 that requires that by the year 2016, fully 8% of the country’s energy matrix must be derived from renewable sources. Once all offers have been reviewed, the government must evaluate each one objectively – prices offered and the companies’ technical and financial capacity, among others. According to calculations by the Argentine Renewable Energies Chamber, if all 1,462 MW are accepted it will result in investments in excess of US$2 billion and the creation of approximately 1000 new jobs.

After the public announcement, the President of the chamber, Carlos St. James, exchanged thoughts about the next steps with President Fernandez, expressing optimism about the future of the industry. “These offers, considering the quality and prestige of the multinational companies making them, leaves no doubt that Argentina is on its way to developing a full-fledged renewable energies industry. This is a clear demonstration of what can be achieved when a fluid communication is established between the public and private sectors.”

As the chamber had indicated in its recent State of the Argentine Wind Industry study published last May, Argentina has unequaled potential to develop wind energy, as seen by the dominance of wind projects in the tender totaling 1,203 MW, more than 80% of the total offerings. According to Mauro Soares, President of the Wind Energy Committee of the Chamber, “This tender generated unparalleled activity and interest from our sector; the number of proposals focused on wind was very gratifying. Now we will finally see this energy become part of our country’s energy matrix. We welcome this launch of the industry in Argentina, and I congratulate all those that worked towards making it possible.” Also, Sebastian Kind, co-author of the study and board member of the chamber, stated, “Today we saw a high degree of confidence of the sector’s potential; the 1461 MW offered represent solid foundations for a prosperous renewable industry. Argentina has a unique opportunity to generate new skills and develop technology while providing clean and competitive energy for our future.”

According to a recent study published by New Energy Finance, based in London, the global renewable energies industry invested US$155 billion in 2008, with a compound annual growth rate of 45%. Latin America captured US$12 billion of this total, but it is growing at a CAGR of 145%.

The Argentine Renewable Energies Chamber (Cámara Argentina de Energías Renovables, or CADER) is a non-profit industry trade association dedicated to the sustainable development of renewable energies in Argentina. It seeks to play a vital role in the establishment of a solid and vibrant industry, one which is respected globally for its standards and practices.

The Chamber counts among its members companies that believe these principles and work towards developing the local solar, wind and biomass sectors. Its great diversity in members creates one of the Chamber’s greatest strengths, since it is the only organization that represents the entire spectrum of this nascent industry’s value chain.

In past days the envelopes with the technical offer of the Official Plan of Renewable Energies (GENREN) bid were opened. The proposing companies are now waiting for the economic offer envelopes, which will be handed once the technical analysis is concluded. The complete list of proposing companies follows.

1. Emgasud Renovables: 4 wind farms (3 of 50 MW and one of 30 MW, two in Madryn and one in Rawson)

2. Patagonia Wind Energy: one 50 MW wind park, in Madryn.

3. Energías Sustentables SA: one 20 MW wind farm, in West Madryn.

4. International New Energy: one 50 MW wind park, in North Madryn.

5. Sogesic SA: 2 wind parks, of 50 MW, in Tres picos.

6. Unitec Energy – San Jose Argentina – INVAP (UTE): 2 wind parks, of 50 MW.

7. Isolux Ingenieria – Gas y Petróleo de Neuquén – Ingenieria Sima SA, (UTE): one 50 MW wind park.

8. Isolux Ingenieria: 4 wind parks of 50 MW in Loma Blanca 1.2.3 and 4.

9. Impsa Wind SA: 10 wind parks. Kaluel Kayke I (50MW), II (25MW), Malaspina I (50 MW), II (30MW), Condor Cliff La Barrancosa (50MW), Piedra Buena I (50MW), II (30MW), Las Heras (50 MW), Tornquist (50MW).

10. Pan American Fueguinas SA: 28 MW wind park in Cerro Dragon.

Patagonia in Argentina has some of the best conditions in the world for wind power generation. Not only are the winds strong in Patagonia, but they are also fierce in the south of Buenos Aires province and interior provinces such as Córdoba. Blessed with such potential, Argentina should be a world leader in wind energy.

Source: evwind

OLD TOWN, Maine (Reuters) – From the outside, the rustic red-brick mill on a bend in Maine’s Penobscot River resembles any other struggling American pulp and paper mill.

But along with its usual business of pulp-making, the century-old mill is doing something unprecedented: Developing technology to produce bio-butanol, a jet fuel, from parts of trees that would otherwise go to waste, one of the world’s first to do so.

Production is still two years away, but the reinvention of Maine’s Old Town Fuel & Fiber mill is already drawing interest as a potential model for a new wave of biofuel companies that could slash dependence on oil, create jobs and reduce the emissions that lead to global warming.

Loggers, a fading way of life in rugged northern United States and Canada, see the mill as a lifeline for their crippled industry. Environmentalists see it as a test of the Obama administration’s push for a big expansion in biofuels.

And chemical and oil companies are waiting to see if the mill can do what none has done before by extracting sugars from wood chips into a biofuel that many regard as more efficient than corn-based ethanol as a possible substitute for gasoline.

“There has been a lot of interested parties in what we are doing here,” said Old Town’s president, Dick Arnold. “There have been several oil companies that have been interested in our extract and production of biofuels. There has been a number of chemical companies that have expressed the same desire.”

Like its once-mighty peers, Old Maine’s mill has suffered in recent years from declining pulp prices and loss of market share to Chinese and Latin American rivals. Georgia-Pacific Llc, the maker of Quilted Northern bathroom tissue, shut it in May 2006, laying off all 400 workers. A group of investors known as Red Shield bought it a few months later.

Red Shield won a $30 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to work with the nearby University of Maine on a pilot ethanol production plant, but they ran out of cash and filed for bankruptcy last year, shutting the plant again.

Enter Lynn Tilton, a New York venture capitalist who owns one of the nation’s largest helicopter makers. Tilton’s Patriarch Partners bought the mill in November, invested about $40 million and shifted its focus to cellulosic bio-butanol.

ALTERNATIVE TO ETHANOL

Tilton can use bio-butanol in her own helicopter and aircraft businesses but is eyeing a potentially huge market after Congress decreed that the United States must use 21 billion gallons of “advanced” biofuels such as cellulosic ethanols, bio-butanol and “green gasoline” a year by 2022.

Whether the technology takes off comes down to cost — and to corn. For much of the last decade, federal officials have touted the potential of corn ethanol as the best substitute for gasoline, but critics question that assumption, noting it corrodes pipelines and raises food prices.

Bio-butanol, a relative of ethanol, is less corrosive and easier to mix with gasoline. Unlike ethanol, it can be transported by pipeline. And its energy content is about 30 percent higher than ethanol’s. If regulations allow, it could be pumped into a fuel tank with no changes to a car engine.

Butanol is also sometimes used as a petrochemical in brake fluids, paint thinners and plastics. Its supporters include chemicals maker DuPont Co and oil giant BP Plc, which have formed a joint venture to make bio-butanol.

“It’s really comparable to gasoline,” said Mark Bunger, a biofuels analyst at Lux Research, a Boston consulting firm specializing in emerging technologies. “The issue has been that ethanol is easier to make, it’s just not easier to use. Butanol doesn’t have those same restrictions.

“For a lot of chemical reasons, it’s a good alternative. If you’re a venture capital company and you said you are going to be making ethanol, I would say, ‘Do you have another idea?’. But if they are really focusing on butanol, that is a smart move.”

He cautioned, however, that it remains unclear if bio-butanol can compete on cost with oil or substitutes like ethanol without government subsidies. “A lot more research and technical development is needed to make it cost competitive.”

OBAMA FACTOR

Other companies are trying, such as startups Tetravitae Bioscience in Chicago and Cobalt Biofuels in Mountain View, California. But Old Town is the first to do so with a fully functioning timber mill that already generates cash flow by selling traditional pulp to paper companies.

Bio-butanol will be derived from wood that would have gone to waste in pulp production, or have been left on the forest floor as unusable by loggers.

“I wouldn’t go deep into a hole without the ability to generate cash flow on what we do now,” Tilton said. “That is the beauty of this. We are not building a start up facility to create ethanol where you are out $300 million before you start creating any kind of cash flow.”

Already the plant has put in place a system for extracting sugars from the wood and expect by year end to start construction of a biorefinery to turn it into butanol. She expects the mill will need another $75 million to meet its target of producing butanol in two years.

“Some of that will come from the Department of Energy and some we will invest. And how that return on investment will be garnered will be deeply dependent on government demands, pricing for the product as well as our ability to take this technology and roll it out across other platforms.”

A big factor, she said, is the Obama administration’s push for renewable energy through tax breaks, loan guarantees and millions of dollars in grants, with more support expected in upcoming energy bills.

“If one believed that ultimately this would peter out and green energy would become less of a focus going forward, this would be a very risky investment because truthfully pricing will be dependent on supply and demand. If it is not forced as a mandate, then I think the pricing won’t be there,” she said.

To that end, the mill is on track, said Arnold. Two towering vessels, each 100-feet (30-metres) high, extract sugar from wood chips that will eventually make butanol, while also maintaining the traditional process of extracting fiber from wood to create sheets of dried pulp to sell.

“That $30 million award from the government will help us finance the building of the balance of the biorefinery,” he said. “We believe that in the next two years we will have an operating biorefinery at the mill.”

Initial volumes will be small, about 1.5 million gallons of bio-butanol a year produced from 80 dry tons of wood. “But we believe this technology can be replicated. And there are a lot of assets out there in terms of pulp and paper mills that are suffering that could be used for expansion,” Arnold said.

Jason Szep

(Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Source: Reuters