Ethanol’s chief benefit is environmental.  …Last summer, there were no smog alerts in the GTA and 5.5 million Canadians breathed easier. Ethanol was a major factor in cleaning the air above Canada’s biggest metropolis.

A lesser-known fact is that the smaller, lighter car engines with high horsepower coming on to the market today require a higher-level octane gasoline. The traditional way to increase octane is to boost the level of aromatics in the fuel, specifically benzene, toluene and xylene. All three of these compounds are carcinogenic. The alternative method of increasing octane is to add ethanol, which has an octane of 114 and delivers plenty of extra power. That’s why Indy and NASCAR racers use ethanol.

Ethanol also reduces the price of gasoline at the pump. With about 15 billion gallons of ethanol in the North American gasoline pool today, gasoline is about 10¢ cheaper per litre in Canada and about 40¢ cheaper per gallon in the United States.  READ MORE

“I think it’s going to be a chaotic spring, with huge price increases in some places,” says Tom Kloza of the Oil Price Information Service, who expects average prices to peak at $4.05 nationally, although he and other industry trackers say prices could be sharply higher in some places, such as Chicago.

…Refiners also switch from winter formulations to more expensive seasonal formulations to meet stringent environmental standards, which can tack on 15 cents a gallon, says Brian Milne of energy tracker Televent DTN.

…“Higher demand, Iran, lost refining capacity are all potential problems,” Milne says. “We’ll get over $4 a gallon, but it’s going to be tough to sustain that level. People will drive less.”

The committee debated the merits of the bill and a pair of amendments for about 45 minutes before passing the bill by a vote of 19-7. If passed into law, Sensenbrenner’s bill would delay the implementation of E15 by at least 18 months while the NAS conducts its testing. The bill allows for up to $900,000 of the U.S. EPA’s research and development funds to be used to finance the testing.

…Opponents, however, claim that Sensenbrenner’s proposal is little more than an effort to disrupt the EPA’s regulatory abilities and expressed confidence that the bill will not be passed into law.

… “Those of us in California and around the country do have concerns about corn-based ethanol,” Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said. “It’s a complex and important issue…but we should not stop the EPA from conducting its required activities under the Clean Air Act. To do so would weaken and undermine our environmental laws and procedures.”  READ MORE

“We do full service restaurant care, which includes grease trap cleaning and maintenance, plumbing, water systems repair, and grease recycling,” Borish said. “The cooking oil is one of the waste streams we bring back to our plant, where we process it, recycle it and sell it to commodities brokers [for use] as feedstock for the biodiesel [industry] or as animal feed,” he continued. Borish estimates that his company currently sells approximately 18,000 gallons of recycled cooking oil into the biodiesel industry each week.  READ MORE

Drevna told the biodiesel crowd that RFS2 is very narrow from a biodiesel industry perspective. “But when refiners look at it,” he said, “they have to look at the whole thing,” meaning the four buckets of conventional, cellulosic, advanced and biomass-based diesel. “And it’s not working as intended,” Drevna added.

When 20-plus percent of the oil industry’s market is mandated away, that’s not good, he expressed.

…Drevna was quick to bring up the shutdown of two refineries on the East Coast, stating that the halt in operations was a result of RFS2 taking away more than 20 percent of the market by 2022. Maniscalco countered that by offering other reasons such as issues surrounding Brent crude and West Texas Intermediate, desulfurization requirements, the age of the refinery equipment and more.  READ MORE

An independent peer review meeting is scheduled for March 14, 2011 in Arlington, VA. [Federal Register Jan 28, 2011] READ MORE  Download Report

This webinar will summarize findings from 16 breakout sessions held over the two day span (link to background material, presentations and the conference agenda here: http://sentech.srahosting.com/CTAB/). Subject matter experts who chaired the sessions will weigh-in on how the DOE Biomass Program can most effectively guide R&D in the future to help advance the commercial biofuels industry.  READ MORE

The US Navy intends to have a fleet of warships known as the “Great Green Fleet” running on biofuels by 2016, and by 2020 it plans to run half of its entire fleet on alternative fuels.

“The US Navy is meeting institutions in Queensland involved in research and development which could deliver the technology that could be passed on to industry partners, who would ultimately be the suppliers of these fuels on a commercial scale,” QUT’s Professor Sagadevan Mundree said.

Professor Mundree and Dr Ian O’Hara from QUT met with Chris Tindal, the US Navy’s director for operational energy, yesterday afternoon (February 6) in Brisbane to explain the capabilities of QUT’s Mackay Renewable Biocommodities Pilot Plant.  READ MORE

The project, which is projected to cost 2 million euros, is 50 percent funded by the Fund for Support to Innovation of the Energy Agency (Adene).

…The project will research areas including improving plant varieties, harvesting, oil extraction and use of sub-products.

Galp Energia’s jatropha plantations in Mozambique are increasing in size and by 2016 the company expects to have a planted area of 23,000 hectares and production of 30,000 tons of oil.  READ MORE

…Mabus pointed out that the oil shocks cost the US Navy in terms of readiness and operation. “The only place we’ve got to go get that money is operations or training, so our ships steam less, our planes fly less, we train our sailors and Marines less.”

His focus, he insists, is not on the adoption of renewable energy for reasons of reducing carbon emissions, but US naval preparedness. “We’re moving away from it for one reason, that is it makes us better war fighters. We would never give these countries the opportunities to build our ships, our aircraft, our ground vehicles, but we give them a vote in whether those ships sail and whether those aircraft fly or those ground vehicles operate when we allow them to set the price and the supply of our energy and we’ve just got to move away from it.”

…”In the 1850s, we went from sail to coal. In the early part of the 20th century, we went from coal to oil. In the 50s, we pioneered nuclear. We were the first service, first people to ever use nuclear power for transportation. And now, we’re changing it again. And every single time, from the 1850s to today, you’ve got nay sayers, they say you’re trading one form of energy that you know about, that’s predictable, that’s affordable for another that’s not and you just shouldn’t do it. And every single time, they’ve been wrong and I’m absolutely confident they’re going to be wrong again.

…(C)ould airlines, that are urgently seeking affordable aviation biofuels, provide the financing, in the form of advanced payments for aviation biofuel orders?

Here’s how such a scheme might work. (In our example, we are using a $400 million, 38 million gallon plant producing in-spec aviation biofuels at $4 per gallon. Actual project capital requirements may vary.)

Step 1. A consortium of 10 airlines each provide $30 million, which will ultimately pay for 7.5 million gallon initial orders at $4 per gallon, for each airline. …

Step 2. Working with the USDA, the project secures a 15-year, affordable feedstock supply; the airlines provide 15-year off take contracts, with the US Navy providing a backup off take guarantee on the full faith and credit of the United States.

Step 3. A 38 million-gallon advanced aviation biofuel facility is constructed using the airline financing and project equity.

Step 4. Following completion, start-up and demonstration of the facility – essentially, taking out the technology risk – the project is refinanced at commercially-viable rates using the traditional project lending sources, or the bond market.

Step 5. The airline’s debt portion is converted to pre-paid orders, and the 38 million gallon facility delivers 75 million gallons of fuel to the airline buyers over a two-year period.

Step 6. Following completion of step four, the project moves to a “business as usual” relationship with its buyers.   READ MORE and MORE  and MORE (C-SPAN/Q&A.org)