Renew News » Bio-Fuel http://www.renewnews.com A down-to-Earth resource about renewable energy and renewable resources. Sat, 03 Sep 2011 16:50:51 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 BeUtilityFree Puts The Means Of Renewable EnergyProduction Into The Hands Of The People. http://www.renewnews.com/2008/06/25/beutilityfree-aims-to-put-the-means-of-production-of-renewable-energy-into-the-hands-of-the-people/ http://www.renewnews.com/2008/06/25/beutilityfree-aims-to-put-the-means-of-production-of-renewable-energy-into-the-hands-of-the-people/#comments Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:13:10 +0000 Brett http://www.renewnews.com/?p=122 I’ve been adding articles to this site from time to time and I think I ought to make a plug for the company I work for, which is working on making renewable energy available to everyone. Hey, Mark okayed it, so plugging your company must be cool! ; )

Shameless Plug for BeUtilityFree

Take the idea of energy sustainability and apply it to what are probably your largest energy uses: your home and car. That’s the approach of BeUtilityFree. Take a look at what we do at www.beutilityfree.com. (I’m the webmaster as well as a renewable energy installer, so I’d love to hear feedback on what you think of the site at brett_s AT BeUtilityFree.com.)

The grand plan is to start out by reducing the amount of energy you use through replacing your current fixtures and appliances with more efficient ones, or designing your new home with efficiency built right in. Then you can buy a much more affordable renewable energy system that will cover your modest needs.

Once you own your means of production, you start getting paid back through avoiding the ever-rising cost of fuel, selling renewable energy credits for your production, taking tax breaks and utility incentives and maybe even selling excess energy.

We sell energy-efficient appliances and lighting and renewable energy systems like solar electric, solar hot water, wind power, hydrogen cogeneration and ethanol stills. We’ll design renewable energy systems, install them or just sell the components to those who have the skills to set them up themselves.

Our special, can’t-find-them-anywhere-else items are Nickel-Iron batteries, the Superior Solar Storage Tank and our 3″ and 4″ column Ethanol Stills.

We are hoping to unveil a few exciting things in the near future. Among them are:

  • A turn-key ethanol plant. Just put feedstock, water, enzymes and yeast in one end and watch the fuel pour out the other. We’re currently testing enzymes for cellulosic production so that making ethanol can be as inexpensive and sustainable as possible.
  • A Purchase Power Agreement plan that lets anyone get solar energy from their rooftop without any up-front investment. We’d retain ownership of the solar system and sell you the energy at a rate lower than the utility company’s.

If we can get everyone to pump renewable energy into the grid or unplug and make their own energy sustainably, we’ll have taken a huge step toward getting this climate problem licked. And if everyone owns the source of their energy, we can all get out from under the thumb of the utility company and the US Oil War Machine and get back to making a poistive difference in the world.

Brett

]]> http://www.renewnews.com/2008/06/25/beutilityfree-aims-to-put-the-means-of-production-of-renewable-energy-into-the-hands-of-the-people/feed/ 0 University of Wisconsin, Madison to Lead National Bioenergy Initiative http://www.renewnews.com/2007/07/11/university-of-wisconsin-madison-to-lead-national-bioenergy-initiative/ http://www.renewnews.com/2007/07/11/university-of-wisconsin-madison-to-lead-national-bioenergy-initiative/#comments Wed, 11 Jul 2007 15:40:41 +0000 Mark http://www.renewnews.com/2007/07/11/university-of-wisconsin-madison-to-lead-national-bioenergy-initiative/ Wisconsin will soon light the way to energy independence, thanks to a $125 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy. UW-Madison announced plans for the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, where UW scientists will work in partnership with two other universities to develop methods of converting plants into renewable liquid fuels.

Read the full story here.

]]> http://www.renewnews.com/2007/07/11/university-of-wisconsin-madison-to-lead-national-bioenergy-initiative/feed/ 0 Discovery’s Future Car TV Show Talks Fuel http://www.renewnews.com/2007/02/22/discoverys-future-car-tv-show-talks-fuel/ http://www.renewnews.com/2007/02/22/discoverys-future-car-tv-show-talks-fuel/#comments Thu, 22 Feb 2007 06:23:54 +0000 Mark http://www.renewnews.com/2007/02/22/discoverys-future-car-tv-show-talks-fuel/ The Discovery channel is 3/4 of the way through their four part series on the car of the future, appropriately called Future Car. The most recent episode was about fuel and hit on everything from ethanol, bio-diesel, hydrogen and solar all the way to having a car powered by air.

A few of the finer details are a little off, but all in all the shows have been great. It’s really cool to see what the designers are thinking about, and what is on the way. Perhaps the most interesting thing for me in this episode on fuel is that a lot of the future is already available now. Of course they showed prototype cars that can do some amazing things, but really the near future of fueling our vehicles is not so much about bringing in new technology, as it’s about getting more people on-board with the advances that are already commercially available like ethanol, biodiesel and hybrids.

One of the great things about cable is that you get more than one chance to see a good show. If you missed any of Future Car, check out the schedule for your second chance.

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Gotta pay the bills:

The exquisite combination of exterior paint colors is used by the professional exterior designers to give a unique look to the fence gate. There is a need of fine-quality material for the establishment of driveways in the patio or garage.

]]> http://www.renewnews.com/2007/02/22/discoverys-future-car-tv-show-talks-fuel/feed/ 0 Indianapolis Using Biodiesel Hybrid Buses http://www.renewnews.com/2007/01/18/indianapolis-using-biodiesel-hybrid-buses/ http://www.renewnews.com/2007/01/18/indianapolis-using-biodiesel-hybrid-buses/#comments Thu, 18 Jan 2007 20:07:16 +0000 Mark http://www.renewnews.com/2007/01/18/indianapolis-using-biodiesel-hybrid-buses/ Being a top soy bean producer, it is in Indiana’s economic as well as environmental interest to use soy-derived bio diesel. Indygo, Indianapolis’ mass transit company has recently introduced hybrid buses that burn fuel produced right here in Inidana.

Read about Indianapolis’ first winter Ozone Action Day here.

Read more about the new busses here.

]]> http://www.renewnews.com/2007/01/18/indianapolis-using-biodiesel-hybrid-buses/feed/ 0 Runnin’ with E85 http://www.renewnews.com/2006/12/09/runnin-with-e85/ http://www.renewnews.com/2006/12/09/runnin-with-e85/#comments Sat, 09 Dec 2006 06:13:34 +0000 Walter http://www.renewnews.com/2006/12/09/runnin-with-e85/ I’ve had a flexible fuel vehicle (FFV) for a couple of years, a 2003 Ford Taurus. The FFV is one that can run on a mixture of ethanol (sometimes methanol, but not in my case) and gasoline, at any mixture ratio from 0% ethanol to 85% ethanol, which is what E85 is – 85% ethanol, 15% gasoline. Ford has offered a flexible fuel vehicle for a while now, and I recently saw a Chevy SUV that had a “FlexFuel” tag. There are probably others, and it seems like the numbers are growing. The difference in these cars is that there’s some kind of gizmo under the hood that detects the ethanol/gasoline mixture, and adjusts fuel/air ratio and ignition timing accordingly. The car also must have special fuel supply lines to carry the ethanol, so don’t go putting E85 in your AMC Pacer just because you want to cut down on our dependence on foreign oil. You’ll just hurt the Pacer.

Just this week, I put my first tank of E85 in the Taurus. You’re probably wondering why it took me a couple of years to try out the E85. This isn’t the car I drive every day, but more importantly, there’s only one station in town (Albuquerque, NM) pumping E85. And it’s only open 8-5, M-F. Bummer, because here I have a car that, straight from the factory, can run mostly on renewable bio-fuel. You’d think with quite a few FlexFuel cars out there, you could buy E85 easier. Well, you can if you live closer to the corn it’s made from. I looked at the Alternative Fuels Data Center website’s map (www.eere.energy.gov/afdc), and there are many E85 stations in the midwest, but only a handful in the Southwest.

Before I had a chance to try E85, I watched the price a little, and it seems to be always 30 or 40 cents more than gasoline. Now, I can understand that it might be more expensive than gas. After all, gas must be collected, refined, and distibuted. But with ethanol, you have the extra step of growing the corn. But the part that bugs me is that E85′s price seems to follow the price of gasoline. I hope that the cost breakdown isn’t like this: $0.40 to make a gallon of ethanol, and 1 gallon of diesel to bring that gallon of ethanol to Albuquerque.

Anyway, I tried it. In combustion, ethanol has less energy per gallon than gasoline, so running on ethanol has to have less power or worse mileage, or both. The Taurus didn’t seem to run any different, and it didn’t seem to have less power. So the lower energy content must show itself mostly in the mileage. It did. For that tank, I got 13.4 mpg. Hmmmm. Now, I don’t keep track of mileage too carefully, but I think this car usually gets something like 21 mpg.

In order to do a real cost comparison between the fuels, you have to account for both the price difference and the mileage difference. I made a little table in Excel to show the cost per mile in order to compare the two fuels. CPG is cost per gallon, MPG is miles per gallon, and CPM is cost per mile. Here it is:
CPG MPG CPM
gas $2.20 21.0 $0.10
E85 $2.68 13.4 $0.20

Remember, this is a snapshot of prices and an estimate of MPG on gasoline, but it would cost about twice as much to always run my car on E85. I would be willing to pay a little extra to run E85, but not twice as much. I’m sure the economics work out better for someone buying E85 in the midwest. But I’ll be doing some research into ethanol production and economics. With many cars out there that are ready to run on E85, it seems like the government could be subsidizing this industry (or more generously, if they already are) until it can be profitable on its own. Wasn’t it just a month ago that Bush was imploring the people to help reduce our dependency on foreign oil? FFV owners aren’t going to buy E85 unless they can afford it.

]]> http://www.renewnews.com/2006/12/09/runnin-with-e85/feed/ 4 A Plea to Our Nation’s Leaders: Get Us Off Foreign Oil! http://www.renewnews.com/2006/12/07/a-plea-to-our-nation%e2%80%99s-leaders-get-us-off-foreign-oil/ http://www.renewnews.com/2006/12/07/a-plea-to-our-nation%e2%80%99s-leaders-get-us-off-foreign-oil/#comments Thu, 07 Dec 2006 05:01:56 +0000 Mark http://www.renewnews.com/2006/12/07/a-plea-to-our-nation%e2%80%99s-leaders-get-us-off-foreign-oil/ Tonight I was visited by someone from the Citizens Action Coalition of Indiana, and it inspired me to make the following plea to our nation’s leaders:

To our Leaders at all levels,

It’s time to get serious about Renewable Energy. This country has made some good steps, but it’s time for more serious action. We need a National Renewable Energy Standard (RES) for the United States. We need it for four reasons: environmentalism, to maintain our economy, to avoid an energy shortage, and for national security.

A Renewable Energy Standard is a plan that requires utilities to gradually increase the percentage of renewable energy in the total energy that they provide. Twenty states already have their own Renewable Energy Standards, and it’s time to follow their lead. This can be done locally, statewide, or nationally. With enough leaders at all levels working on it we will be able to have an impact.

I live in Indiana, and the main thing that has been in the news in this state regarding Renewable Energy is biofuel. Since we are a corn and soybean-growing state it makes sense to promote biodiesel, and I am very happy with the progress and the attention that biodiesel has gotten so far, but there is another area that deserves greater attention in Indiana and throughout the nation: wind.

I have just learned that most of the northern half of Indiana is more than suitable for wind power, and there are many, many areas in the country that are underutilizing their wind power potential. I recently chose to pay more in my home for electricity that comes from wind power, and I was amazed to find that they were going to import it all the way from a Minnesota wind farm. That’s three states away! It just doesn’t make any sense to me that we don’t have enough wind power generation in this state for our needs. Not only would it create jobs, and leave us with cleaner air, but even better then all the obvious benefits, there is a great double benefit for our farmers. A farmer could be growing soybeans or corn for biodiesel in the same field where he was farming wind. Not only would he get the income from the crop, but he would also get a nice chunk of cash from the operators of the wind farm ($5000-7000/yr from what I hear). Wind power is profitable very quickly and with current technologies, and unlike oil, we will never run out of wind. I have even read about farmers who have started their own wind cooperatives. We need to do as much as we possibly can to encourage this kind of thing.

The most pressing reasons for massive and immediate action to support Renewable Energy are our wars in the Middle East. Our citizens are overseas dying in wars that our own President now admits are not working. Imagine where we might be now with Renewable Energy if even a tenth of the money spent on our failed wars had been spent on energy research five years ago when we went to Iraq. Now imagine where we would be if ALL of it had been spent on Renewable Energy research. We could have taken the wind out of the sails of our problems in the Middle East. It’s surprisingly hard to imagine, but we could someday be free of foreign oil in a sustainable way, and that would make a number of our current foreign affairs problems vanish.

As a leader you are in a special position to make a greater change than someone like me. Most of the time issues that are even remotely environmental, like Renewable Energy, are seen as a Liberal crusade, but I think that most Americans would support action that would make us less reliant on foreign oil. Renewable Energy is an especially good choice since it can be cost effective (and cheaper in some cases), but it requires forward-thinking, planning, and government support. I am no expert, but it is my understanding that the petroleum industry enjoys special considerations from the government that Renewable Energy doesn’t get. It’s time to either level the playing field, or tip it the other way.

It’s not too late. Any action that you, as a leader, can take to make it easier, cheaper, cooler, or more profitable for greater use and development of Renewable Energy will create jobs, sustain our economy, clean our environment, save lives in our Middle East wars, and perhaps even reduce the threat of terrorism by getting us out of that region.

Thank you for your time, and thank you for your efforts to make our nation great.

Mark Hayward

More info on wind power

]]> http://www.renewnews.com/2006/12/07/a-plea-to-our-nation%e2%80%99s-leaders-get-us-off-foreign-oil/feed/ 0 The Distant Future of Biofuels http://www.renewnews.com/2006/11/10/the-distant-future-of-biofuels/ http://www.renewnews.com/2006/11/10/the-distant-future-of-biofuels/#comments Fri, 10 Nov 2006 21:13:13 +0000 Mark http://www.renewnews.com/2006/11/10/the-distant-future-of-biofuels/ This month in Discover Magazine there is an article celebrating their Scientist of the Year and two nominees. The Scientist of the Year is Jay Keasling, and he is what has become known as a synthetic biologist. His immediate work is shooting for a low-cost, mass manufacturing method for producing an effective drug against malaria called artemisinin. His lab is working on reengineered yeast to produce the drug. The interesting thing that is mentioned very briefly in the article is that in the future he thinks that it won’t be too large a step to modify the process to create biofuels. You put sugar and bacteria or yeast into one end of a big vat, and you get fuel out the other end. This is a very distant technology, but it’s very exciting.

Read the articles: Scientist of the year and the two runners-up.

]]> http://www.renewnews.com/2006/11/10/the-distant-future-of-biofuels/feed/ 0 Biobutanol is the Next Big Thing in Renewable Energy http://www.renewnews.com/2006/10/11/biobutanol-is-the-next-big-thing-in-renewable-energy/ http://www.renewnews.com/2006/10/11/biobutanol-is-the-next-big-thing-in-renewable-energy/#comments Wed, 11 Oct 2006 04:51:57 +0000 Mark http://www.renewnews.com/2006/10/11/biobutanol-is-the-next-big-thing-in-renewable-energy/ As excited as I am about Biodiesel and SVO (Straight Vegetable Oil) as fuel for vehicles, I don’t have a diesel car and don’t see one in my near future. If you are like me there is new hope: Biobutanol.

Biobutanol is a form of alcohol that can replace gasoline. It is similar to ethanol but has more favorable characteristics as auto fuel.

  • the “bio” in biobutanol refers to the fact that butanol can be made from biological sources including a wide variety of crops, which leads to all kinds of environmental, economic and societal benefits (like less dependency on foreign oil)
  • butanol has a higher energy content than ethanol
  • it is less corrosive than ethanol so it can be transported through existing infrastructure (trucks, pipelines, etc)
  • requires little or no modification to work in your car
  • can be a 1:1 replacement for gasoline (unlike ethanol that can be up to only 10% in most vehicles)
  • it may even be able to be used in diesel engines

So if it’s so great why can’t you buy it right now? It seems as though the new technology to produce biobutanol efficiently is so new that it is not yet scaled up to an industrial level, and very little testing has been done on how cars will react to the fuel. The good news is that several groups are working on it, like a fairly new partnership between BP and DuPont, and it seems like a very promising fuel. You can find a whole lot more information at butanol.com

]]> http://www.renewnews.com/2006/10/11/biobutanol-is-the-next-big-thing-in-renewable-energy/feed/ 0 Biodiesel May Be Catching On http://www.renewnews.com/2006/07/07/biodiesel-may-be-catching-on/ http://www.renewnews.com/2006/07/07/biodiesel-may-be-catching-on/#comments Sat, 08 Jul 2006 03:48:01 +0000 Mark http://www.renewnews.com/2006/07/07/biodiesel-may-be-catching-on/ As I travel around the Midwest doing yo-yo shows, I have been seeing more and more evidence that biodiesel is entering the public consciousness. In the style of the old (like 1950s era) Burma Shave ads, I have started seeing biodiesel ads. These are in the same style as the ones that you have probably seen from the gun enthusiasts where there are four or five signs in a row on the shoulder of the highway, where each one has a part of a larger message. The soy farmers have latched on to this technique and I like it.

I think it’s really cool that biodiesel is starting to become a patriotic product. I can’t remember what they actually said, but the most recent group of signs that I saw was something like: “Grown in the Heartland/ American Made/ Fill Up With Biodiesel/ Keep America Safe/ www.ILsoy.org” I think this is a really great thing. Farmers get a greater market for their crops, and we reduce our dependency on foreign oil all in one fell swoop.

]]> http://www.renewnews.com/2006/07/07/biodiesel-may-be-catching-on/feed/ 0 Biodiesel Co-op Starts Up in Madison WI http://www.renewnews.com/2006/06/25/biodiesel-co-op-starts-up-in-madison-wi/ http://www.renewnews.com/2006/06/25/biodiesel-co-op-starts-up-in-madison-wi/#comments Sun, 25 Jun 2006 15:49:56 +0000 Mark http://www.renewnews.com/2006/06/25/biodiesel-co-op-starts-up-in-madison-wi/ A group of ten forward-thinking Madisonians have turned the former Car Care Clinic at 1894 E. Washington Ave into PrairieFire BioFuels Cooperative. If all goes well they will be selling 100% biodiesel from a real, honest-to-goodness pump on E. Washington Ave. by the end of the summer. At the moment all fuel sales are done at 100 S. Baldwin St. When winter comes there will be blends available that won’t congeal in the cold weather.

In addition to the fuel sales, you can pay PrairieFire to convert your diesel vehicle to use Straight Vegetable Oil (SVO), or they can teach you how to make your own biodiesel.

There were a couple of articles on this new co-op in Madison, but they don’t seem to be available online, so you’ll just have to check out their website: www.prairiefirebiofuels.org

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