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ALASKANS WHO DON'T MUSH NEED HELP PAYING FOR FUEL TO RUN THEIR AUTOMOBILES/TRUCKS!!!
In Weston, Connecticut and Seattle and Whidbey Island, WA (checking out hybrid car on the main drag in Coupeville) some folks are into it  (photos above).




IN THE BATTLE OF THE LOBBYISTS...WHICH COMES FIRST, FARMERS OR THE POWER COMPANIES?
"We wanted to put forth language in the Comprehensive Energy Strategy to make anaerobic digestion more available and more feasible," says the governor's office.  How to do this?  Sit down with farmers. "We want to get the solutions to why they can't move forward with anaerobic digestion or any energy processes for their farms."  Full story here.


 
 ED ANDRIESKI / ASSOCIATED PRESS ARCHIVES 2009
Anadarko Petroleum Corp. drills a series of wells on a pad on a Weld County farm near Mead, Colo., in the northeast part of the state. The drilling process, hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," is sending tremors through world energy markets because it produces such abundant, cheap natural gas.

Surge of US natural gas production rattles Russians
America won't need to import if fracking brings self-sufficiency.
Anchorage Daily News
By KEVIN BEGOS
(09/30/12 23:18:16)

PITTSBURGH -- The Kremlin is watching, European nations are rebelling, and some suspect Moscow is secretly bankrolling a campaign to derail the West's strategic plans.

This isn't some Cold War movie; it's about the U.S. boom in natural gas drilling, and the political implications are enormous.

Like falling dominoes, the drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is shaking up world energy markets from Washington to Moscow to Beijing. Some predict what was once unthinkable: The U.S. won't need to import natural gas in the near future, and that Russia could be the big loser.

"This is where everything is being turned on its head," said Fiona Hill, an expert on Russia at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington. "Their days of dominating the European gas markets are gone."

Any nations that trade in energy could potentially gain or lose.

"The relative fortunes of the United States, Russia, and China -- and their ability to exert influence in the world -- are tied in no small measure to global gas developments," Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government concluded in a report this summer.

MORE GAS, LOWER PRICES

The story began to unfold a few years ago, as advances in drilling opened up vast reserves of gas buried in deep shale rock, such as the Marcellus formation in Pennsylvania and the Barnett, in Texas.

Experts had been predicting that the U.S. was running out of natural gas, but then shale gas began to flood the market, and prices plunged.

Russia had been exporting vast quantities to Europe and other countries for about $10 per unit, but the current price in the U.S. is now about $3 for the same quantity. That kind of math got the attention of energy companies, and politicians, around the world.

Some European governments began to envision a future with less Russian natural gas. In 2009, Russia had cut off gas shipments via Ukraine for nearly two weeks amid a price and payment dispute, and more than 15 European countries were sent scrambling to find alternative sources of energy.

The financial stakes are huge. Russia's Gazprom energy corporation, which is state-controlled, had $44 billion in profits last year. Gazprom, based in Moscow, is the world's largest producer of natural gas and exports much of it to other countries.

But last month Gazprom halted plans to develop a new arctic gas field, saying it couldn't justify the investment now, and its most recent financial report showed profits had dropped by almost 25 percent.

CANDIDATES HAVE NOTICED

The U.S. presidential campaigns have already addressed the strategic potential.

A campaign position paper for Republican Mitt Romney said he "will pursue policies that work to decrease the reliance of European nations on Russian sources of energy."

In early September, President Barack Obama said the U.S. could "develop a hundred-year supply of natural gas that's right beneath our feet," which would "cut our oil imports in half by 2020 and support more than 600,000 new jobs in natural gas alone."

Poland's Ministry of the Environment wrote in a statement to The Associated Press that "an increased production of natural gas from shale formations in Europe will limit the import via pipelines from Algeria and Russia."

The issue has reached the highest levels of the Kremlin, too.

Hill, of the Brookings think tank, heard President Vladimir Putin speak in late 2011 at a Moscow gathering of academics and media. She said in a blog post that "the only time I thought that he became truly engaged was when he wanted to explain to us how dangerous fracking was."

But one top Gazprom executive said shale gas will actually help the country in the long run. Sergei Komlev, the head of export contracts and pricing, acknowledged the recent disruptions but predicted that the U.S. fuels wouldn't make their way to Europe on any important scale.

"Although we heard that the motive of these activities was to decrease dependence of certain countries on Gazprom gas, the end results of these efforts will be utterly favorable to us," Komlev wrote in an email to the AP. "The reason for remaining tranquil is that we do not expect the currently abnormally low prices in the USA to last for long."

In other words, if the marketplace for natural gas expands, Russia will have even more potential customers because it has tremendous reserves.

Komlev even thanked the U.S. for taking the role of "shale gas global lobbyist" and said Gazprom believes natural gas is more environmentally friendly than other fossil fuels.

"Gazprom group generally views shale gas as a great gift to the industry," he wrote. When natural gas prices rise, "it will make the U.S. plans to become a major gas exporter questionable."

NUMBERS VERSUS HYPE

Whether exports happen involves a dizzying mix of math, politics and marketplaces, along with the fact that U.S. natural gas companies -- and their shareholders -- want prices to rise, too.

James Diemer, an executive vice president for Pace Global, an international consulting company based in Virginia, believes that shale gas costs more to extract than the current market price. Pace, which recently released a report called "Shale Gas: The Numbers vs. The Hype," has been studying shale gas for Gazprom and other clients.

"The capital will stop flowing" to U.S. shale gas, and the price will go up, Diemer predicted. He would not divulge the kind of work Pace is doing for Gazprom. Pace is owned by Siemens, a German company.

Pace's work for Gazprom has raised some eyebrows in Washington, and Hill noted that industry watchers in Europe already believe Russia is bankrolling environmental groups that are loudly opposing plans for fracking in Europe, which could cut down on Russia's natural gas market.

"I've heard a lot of rumors that the Russians were funding this. I have no proof whatsoever," she said, noting that many critics give the rumors credence because Gazprom owns media companies throughout Russia and Europe that have run stories examining the environmental risks of fracking.

Gazprom dismissed such conspiracy theories, saying that "nothing could be more out of touch with Gazprom's inherent interests," because the shale boom promotes gas as an abundant, affordable energy source.

Many U.S. media outlets, including the AP, have run stories about shale gas and the environment. Regulators contend that overall, water and air pollution problems are rare, but environmental groups and some scientists say there hasn't been enough research.

BIG BARGAINING CHIP

U.S. energy companies are eager to export natural gas products. The issue is sensitive enough that the Obama administration has delayed a decision on export permits until after the election. In April, the Sierra Club sued to block one plan for exports, saying it would drive up the cost of domestic natural gas and lead to environmental damage. But just the potential for exports could allow others to seek lower prices from Russia, said Kenneth Medlock III of the James Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University in Houston.

"It changes the position at the bargaining table for everybody," Medlock said. "You stack all that up, and you start to realize, 'Wow.'"

There's one enormous unknown with the shale gas bounty in the U.S., Hill said. Unlike in Russia and some other countries, neither the government nor any one private company can really control or direct it.

"The question is, can the U.S. do what the Russians do, which is use this as a political tool?" she said.

Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack

Lame frack attack by one sloppy hack
NYPOST
By JON ENTINE
Last Updated: 11:27 PM, March 30, 2012
Posted: 10:22 PM, March 30, 2012

New York Times natural-gas reporter Ian Urbina last week launched another salvo in his crusade against the shale-gas industry and the “fracking” method that’s opened up new vistas of gas exploitation. And, yet again, he screwed up.

In a March 18 article, Urbina reported that the Agriculture Department was about to require expensive and extensive home-by-home environmental reviews before issuing mortgages to aspiring rural homeowners who may want to lease out the natural-gas rights on their property.

But his main evidence was a few internal e-mails from lower-level regional administrators. For example, Jennifer Jackson, a junior program director for rural loans in the Ag Department’s New York office, had written: “We will no longer be financing homes with gas leases.”

We don’t know how Urbina got access to those internal e-mails — but it’s a good bet he was leaked them by sources who wanted this to be the policy.

He also cited an Agriculture congressional liaison’s e-mails to a few anti-fracking Democrats, which said the agency would consider revising current policies, but lacked the money for such a review.

His story notes that he couldn’t get comment from top Agriculture officials; I’m told there’s little trust in the department for the mistake-prone reporter.

More important: A bit more reporting — or, perhaps, more honesty about the biases of his sources — would have revealed that what was really going on was a campaign by activists pushing to use obscure environmental rules to scuttle shale-gas extraction.

The Agriculture Department has provided more than $165 billion in loans and guarantees under the Rural Housing Service Program, which helps the poor and small businesses almost exclusively. Activists hoped to see the National Environmental Policy Act applied to the program, further slowing (and stigmatizing) natural-gas exploitation.

But Urbina failed to note that NEPA, a vague 42-year-old statute that in limited cases requires environmental reviews before federal money is spent, had never covered any aspect of the rural aid —and that, were it applied, it would bring the whole program to a halt.

For that reason, Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack sent out an e-mail rebuke just hours after Urbina’s tale was published: “As indicated in previous statements, USDA will not make any policy changes related to rural housing.”

Even Mother Jones, no friend to fracking, called out Urbina the day after Vilsack’s e-mail. “According to sources who have been following the issue in Washington,” the magazine wrote, “the possible change to require NEPA reviews was only a discussion draft and had not been approved by senior officials.” Indeed, the policy reversal “would have made it more difficult — if not impossible — to obtain these rural loans.”

In other words, what Urbina reported as a fait accompli was really the unlikely agenda of his sources.

And not for the first time. Last summer, the Times’ public editor, Arthur Brisbane, wrote two columns sharply rebuking the reporter’s attacks on fracking. “My view is that such a pointed article needed more convincing substantiation, more space for a reasoned explanation of the other side and more clarity about its focus,” Brisbane wrote.

Undeterred, and apparently unrestrained by the Times’ news editors, Urbina subsequently dredged up a 27-year-old incident to claim that hydraulic fracturing fluids contaminated a well in West Virginia. That turned out to be false, too. With more than 1 million gas wells having been fracked in this country, there is still not a single documented example that the drilling has polluted groundwater.

What’s the take away? To anti-gas campaigners, and apparently Urbina, truth and the fate of poor rural Americans trying to buy homes or keep businesses afloat are acceptable casualties in the drive against shale-gas development.

Jon Entine is a senior fellow at STATS and the Center for Health & Risk Communication at George Mason University.
Fracking gets a clean bill of health
NYPOST
By KAREN MOREAU
Last Updated: 12:34 AM, October 18, 2011
Posted: 10:37 PM, October 17, 2011

Back in April, anti-drilling Chicken Littles gleefully cackled and clucked about a massive “blowout” at a Pennsylvania natural-gas well and speculated that “thousands of gallons of frack fluid” were poisoning water wells and contaminating a tributary of the Susquehanna River, which flows into Chesapeake Bay. The Maryland attorney general threatened to sue the drilling company, with New York’s attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, chiming in.

Well, there must be plenty of rejoicing over saved salamanders now that a report has found “no environmental impact” from the Luther Township, PA, gas-well malfunction, which accidentally released well fluids.

The 179-page report, which was prepared by SAIC, a firm that specializes in working with governmental agencies, contains extensive water-sampling and other data collected in conjunction with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the US Environmental Protection Agency. It shows no lasting effect on the environment as a result of a surface release of well fluids from Chesapeake Energy’s “Atgas” well site.

Chesapeake funded the study, which was conducted according to DEP protocols and accepted by the agency and presents the large set of data and technical tables. Based on the information gathered during the first two weeks after the incident, the review has produced several important conclusions. Most important: The discharge of well fluid from the event caused only minimal environmental impact. The impacts that did occur were localized, of short duration and confined to surface waters surrounding the site. There was no harm to a nearby unnamed tributary or its watershed and the Towanda Creek, and there was no effect noted about nearby or regional water wells.

This accident was among the most serious that can happen during the completion of an onshore shale-gas well. Yet nobody was injured, the public was never in danger, and there was no lasting impact on the environment, as the analysis shows.

New York’s DEC referred to the incident in its revised Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement and has recommended procedures to ensure public safety, while concluding that fracking can be done safely in most areas of the state.

But don’t expect the anti-fossil-fuel crowd to let scientific evidence get in its way. After all, this is the group that ignited public fear through the film “Gasland,” with its now infamous scene of a Colorado homeowner lighting his faucet on fire and claiming gas drilling was the culprit.

Never mind that the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission investigated and found no indications of oil- or gas-related impacts to the featured water well.

Dissatisfaction with state-level regulation is common among critics of drilling, who want to see more federal EPA regulation.  Even EPA chief Lisa Jackson, however, testifying this year before a US House Oversight Committee, acknowledged that the environmental risk of hydraulic fracturing was practically nonexistent.

“I’m not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself has affected water, although there are investigations ongoing,” she said.

The safety of hydraulic fracturing is well-documented, with zero confirmed cases of groundwater contamination in 1 million applications over 60 years.

And as the new report shows, that record remains intact -- despite the supposed big blowout in Luther.


Could Connecticut be on the biofuel frontier?
Christine Woodside, CT MIRROR
March 11, 2011

STORRS--Think of biofuel, and what comes to mind is vast acres of Midwest corn for ethanol, or a hobbyist fueling his tractor with old French fry fat. But in a lab at the University of Connecticut, researchers are looking into commercial-scale biofuel manufacturing using cooking oil, switchgrass and--perhaps most intriguing--algae.

The UConn team has received a $1.5 million federal energy grant they will use to transform a tiny lab where the dining halls' used cooking oil bubbles into fuel and runs the campus buses. This small room will become the test site for an industrial scale production of biofuels. They believe this could be the basis of a solid, local fuel economy.

Biofuels can be made of many things, from cooking oil to plants. Producing them requires relatively little space and leaves little environmental impact, said Richard Parnas, professor of chemical engineering at UConn, pointing to a cone-shaped container smelling like French fries in his campus lab.

Connecticut began to make small steps toward a biofuels industry six years ago, by classifying biofuel as a renewable energy resource. The UConn venture is one result, along with another biofuel producer and several biodiesel distributors.

For a few years now, Parnas has been producing biofuels in his own reactor on campus to help power the campus buses. The operation uses waste oil from the dining halls and will aim to use waste oil from restaurants around the region. But the big possibilities for biofuels remain the growing of algae, he says.

One acre of algae can produce about 20,000 gallons of fuel, compared with the 18- to 20-gallon yield from an acre of corn, making commercial production feasible for a densely-populated state like Connecticut. But the work with algae remains experimental: Parnas said he has witnessed some tests with algae so far only in Rhode Island. A colleague will be experimenting with other plants on the Storrs campus.

Biofuel research, nationwide, is still in its early stages. The federal government concluded after a research symposium a few years ago that even if plant-based fuels can be produced, it's not clear that they will find market demand.

Connecticut could take a leading role in biofuel research, said Fred V. Carsensen, director of its Connecticut Center for Economic Analysis and another partner in the UConn biofuel enterprise.

Five years ago, he noted, Connecticut committed itself to becoming a leader in stem cell research with an initial $20 million investment and a pledge of continued support. That effort, he said, "attracted world class researchers."

"Here's the analogy: If we did in biofuels or in alternative energy what we did in stem cells, the potential is enormous," Carstensen said.

But last year, he noted, then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell tried to cut the fund's allocation in half, to $5 million, though she was overruled by the legislature.

"The problem is that Connecticut does not have a tradition or a commitment to these kinds of well-designed, collaborative frameworks which are sustained," he said. "What was so scary about Rell proposing to cut the commitment to $5 million, it immediately calls into question the entire commitment."

The UConn biofuels project, RPM Sustainable Technologies, is an expansion of a consortium that has been producing biodiesel from waste cooking oil for the university's bus fleet. Boosted by the grant, and looking for investors, five partners will test a larger reactor that produces biofuels out of waste oil and study the potential of growing cellulosic plants and algae here.

Parnas is the main partner behind this project. He said that he is a "biofuels fanatic," and won an environmental award from the university in 2007 for his biofuel research. Biofuels can become part of the solution to the nation's energy problems, he believes, with more research, investment, and state policies to help those along.

Right now, with a $3.7 billion deficit, the state can't commit to incentives, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy said. He said, though, that biofuels interest him.

"I'm all ears, very interested in it," Malloy said "I'm also interested in different waste sources for the creation of fuel." But for the next five or so years, Malloy said, the only strategic investments the state can afford are those "that are not going to drive costs substantially higher. This is not a time to drive costs substantially higher."

But Connecticut already has a nascent biofuel industry and policies in place to help it grow. The state's first commercial biodiesel refiner, BioPur, moved from a goat-farm garage to a factory in 2006 and began producing 400,000 gallons a year from waste vegetable oil to blend with car and truck fuel and home heating oil. Other refiners have opened in Southington and Waterbury and one is planned in New Haven.

Starting next year, state law will require a minimum of 2 percent of biodiesel in home heating oil sold in the state. The percentage will increase to 5 percent by 2012, 10 percent by 2015, 15 percent by 2017, and 20 percent by 2020.

Michael Devine, a consultant who promotes biodiesel in heating oil, said that if Connecticut accelerates the move to 5 percent biodiesel in heating oil, local small businesses could produce and/or sell the roughly 32 million gallons of biodiesel that would represent.

Devine said he started his company, Earth Energy Alliance in Westport, after selling home heating oil for two decades and deciding that it is "a lousy product"--expensive and subject to supply uncertainties.

He thinks that the small group of distributors selling biodiesel now would grow to perhaps hundreds, since home heating fuel must be delivered by truck. "It allows entrepreneurship to flourish," he said. "It takes a marketing quandary and replaces it with local fuel distributed locally."

Alaska Waste turning food grease into fuel:  Biodiesel plant to be used for truck fleet
Anchorage Daily News
By ELIZABETH BLUEMINK, ebluemink@adn.com
(06/18/10 01:11:47)

The Anchorage area's private trash hauler is making a multimillion-dollar investment to transform food grease into fuel for its fleet of garbage trucks.

Alaska Waste unveiled its new $3 million biodiesel plant in South Anchorage on Thursday. The company is collecting waste fryer oil from 240 local restaurants, groceries, hotels and hospitals from Girdwood to Wasilla. Last week, the plant churned out its first batches of biodiesel.

Executives said the fuel is being tested and gradually will be used by the company's truck fleet, blended with varying amounts of petroleum-based diesel.

The advantage of biodiesel is that it creates much less greenhouse gas emissions than regular diesel, said Jeff Riley, Alaska Waste's chief operating officer.

Before Alaska Waste joined the biodiesel bandwagon, most of the greasy goo produced in the Anchorage area had been barged to the Lower 48 to be converted for other uses, or was tossed into local trash bins and landfills. However, a handful of people in Southcentral Alaska also collect used veggie oil for use in their vehicles and home heating.

These home brewers were worried at first, but it doesn't look like Alaska Waste will drain the supply of oil in town, said Will Taygan, a Peters Creek resident who owns Arctic Vegeworks.

"(Alaska Waste) has targeted more large-scale waste-oil producers," he said.

He said home brewers still have a more than adequate supply from smaller restaurants.

Biodiesel was a big fad a few years ago when gasoline was fetching record prices, but Taygan said the fad ended when petroleum prices declined.

"Everyone who was (brewing it) five years ago is still doing it, but the other folks have quieted down," he said.

Riley, of Alaska Waste, said the company built the plant to capitalize on a useful product, reduce air pollution and keep grease out of the landfill. In the future, he said, Alaska Waste might team up with local fuel distributors to enable Anchorage residents to purchase some of the biodiesel.

The roughly 3,000-square-foot plant occupies a large dirt lot behind the company headquarters off Dowling Road on Rosewood Street, just south of the city's recycling center.

Last year, Alaska Waste began installing storage tanks at local commercial kitchens. The tanks store used fryer oil until the company's small tanker trucks arrive to pick it up.

"It's a win-win situation," said Greg Todd, the franchise owner for Dairy Queen Grill and Chill, whichhas five restaurants in the Anchorage area.

He said it saves restaurant employees time and effort handling the waste, and the tanks are much less "nasty" than trying to put the oil in a trash bin or in a steel drum for collection.

Other suppliers include the Fred Meyer, Safeway and New Sagaya grocery stores, McDonald's, Carl's Jr., Walmart, the Lucky Wishbone and the Peanut Farm.

Alaska Mill Feed & Garden Center collected used fryer oil from local restaurants and sent it to customers in the Lower 48 until last year. That's when Alaska Waste bought the company's equipment and took over the supply route.

Mark Goodman, a manager at Mill Feed, said he is pleased with how things worked out because the new plant allows the waste oil to be put to a good use in Alaska.

The biodiesel plant was finished in April, and it didn't need any government funding, according to Riley.

He said the project's financial support came from JL Properties, a large real estate firm in Anchorage that partially owns Alaska Waste.

At least one other Alaska business -- Juneau's Baranof Hotel -- collects used restaurant oil to turn into fuel. The Baranof uses the oil in its heating system.


Airlines Seek to Boost Market for Biofuels
YAHOO
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:54 a.m. ET
December 15, 2009

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Fifteen airlines say they've signed memorandums of understandings that could lead to the purchase of hundreds of millions of gallons of fuel made from either coal or camolina, a weed that's a cousin to canola.

The agreements were announced Tuesday by Air Transport Association. United Airlines Chairman Glen Tilton -- who is also chairman of the airline association -- said the agreements show airlines are actively working to stimulate competition to jet fuel made from oil.

Airlines from the United States, Canada, Germany and Mexico have signed memorandums with AltAir Fuels LLC of Seattle to produce fuel from camelina and Rentech Inc. of Los Angeles to produce fuel from coal or petroleum coke.



READ THE CT MIRROR 2 PART STORY HERE

Waste-to-energy remnant donated to UConn
Kate King, Stamford ADVOCATE
Updated 10:03 p.m., Friday, March 23, 2012

STAMFORD -- More than a year after the Water Pollution Control Authority's Board of Directors halted her efforts to build the nation's first full-scale bio-solids gasification plant in Stamford, former WPCA Executive Director Jeannette Brown oversaw the transfer of the project's leftover equipment to the University of Connecticut.  Brown, who retired in June after 36 years at the helm of the WPCA, helped orchestrate donation of the equipment to UConn's Storrs campus and may participate in the university's upcoming waste-to-energy research.

On Thursday, Brown was at the Harbor View Avenue sewage treatment plant as the gasification equipment, which had been sitting unused on a trailer for 17 months, was hooked up to the back of a university pickup truck. She declined to comment.

The equipment, built in 2008 by Waterford-based Carlin Contracting, is a prototype gasifier capable of transforming feedstock into synthetic gas. It will be an integral part of the university's research on integrating gasification with solid oxide fuel cell technologies, said Radenka Maric, a Clean Energy Fund professor in sustainable energy for UConn's Chemical, Materials and Biomolecular Engineering Department.

"Wastewater residuals, as well as other carbon-based waste products, contain chemical energy, which, with the appropriate technology, can be captured and used to replace fossil fuels for the generation of electricity," Maric said Friday.

Maric said researchers plan to use Stamford's prototype to turn wastewater residuals, feedstock and agricultural waste into synthetic gas, which will then be cleaned to remove significant quantities of contaminants, such as tar and halides. Once cleaned, it will be entered into a fuel cell reactor to create "highly efficient, environmentally friendly, economically competitive and fully sustainable heat and electrical generation," Maric said.

"If successful with future funding, we are planning to design educational programs to inspire and educate the public and students about sustainable living, environmental impacts and technologies with a focus on energy-related processes such as gasification and fuel cells," Maric said.

"We will invite Stamford high schools to participate in our program and also (the) UConn Stamford campus."

Maric said Brown contacted her in April 2011 about donating Stamford's gasification equipment to UConn. In June, Brown and Carlin Contracting Senior Project Manager Jeffrey Fournier visited UConn to present information about gasification technology and Stamford's gasifier.

Brown is listed on the UConn CMBE department's website as a senior scientist, but Maric said she is participating in the research as a graduate disposition and is not a paid UConn employee. Brown, the 2011-12 president of the Water Environment Federation, is an adjunct professor of environmental engineering at Manhattan College in New York.

Fournier, whose company built the WPCA's $105 million plant upgrade in 2006, said he plans to participate in the UConn research project as a volunteer because he is passionate about renewable energy and believes it is the future of wastewater management. His main contribution will be to teach the UConn researchers about the gasifier prototype, he said.

"They will take that and expand upon it," he said. "They will find out how to make it better, how to generate more hydrogen. My involvement is really education with respect to how it functions and how it operates and the various ways we had set it up for different testing."

The donation has been in the works for nearly a year; the final seal of approval is still pending. Several members of the WPCA Board of Directors remember voting to donate the equipment to UConn at a meeting sometime between April and June of 2011, but the official vote is not reflected in the board's minutes.

In August, former WPCA Chairman Lou Casale wrote a letter to Maric confirming the donation and suggesting she contact WPCA Administration Manager Rhudean Bull to arrange the transfer. Officials at the Government Center, however, wanted to make sure the donation was approved by the federal Department of Energy, which provided grant money to Stamford for the waste-to-energy project.

In February, Mayor Michael Pavia received a letter from the energy department, which said the gasifier could be donated because it was valued at less than $5,000. Stamford still is in possession of two pieces of analytical instrumentation, which are leftover from the waste-to-energy project and worth roughly $100,000. WPCA Laboratory Director Marie Sabo said she is working with the city's grants office to determine what to do with the equipment.

Pavia said this week he supports the transfer of Stamford's gasification equipment to UConn.

"The only thing I can say about a donation of a piece of equipment, no matter what it is, is if it can be reused in one way or another that provides some productivity then I think there is some redemption to the overall expenditure," Pavia said. "I support its productive use so the money spent isn't a total waste."

WPCA Board Chairman Ernie Orgera said he supported the donation. The Board of Representatives Operations Committee approved the transfer at its March 21 meeting.

"I think we should partner with an educational system like the University of Connecticut for educational projects," Orgera said. "But it's up to the Board of Representatives if they want to continue with the donation or not."

The donation is in line with Stamford's asset disposal policies, but will not be finalized until the Board of Representatives votes to approve the transfer at its April 3 meeting, Interim Director of Administration Pete Privitera said. The equipment is "on loan" to the university until the April vote, he said.

Stamford's waste-to-energy project was the brainchild of Brown, who had envisioned a groundbreaking renewable energy facility designed to power the sewage treatment plant through gasification of dried wastewater sludge.

Former Stamford Mayor Dannel P. Malloy, who is now governor, championed the plan.

The public balked at the project's $40 million price tag, and the WPCA board voted to kill the venture in early 2010 after losing faith in its technical and economic feasibility.
Stamford WPCA one step closer to waste-to-energy plant
Stamford ADVOCATE
By Devon Lash, STAFF WRITER
Posted: 08/05/2009 09:35:09 PM EDT
Updated: 08/05/2009 09:35:09 PM EDT

STAMFORD -- The Water Pollution Control Authority has hired a Canadian biomass energy company to develop a plan for the facility's long-awaited waste-to-energy plant.

The WPCA's board voted, with one abstention, Monday night to hire Vancouver-based Nexterra for $45,000 to detail the logistics, process design, engineering, construction, cost and time line for the first phase of the project, which ultimately aims to power the city's water treatment facility through the gasification of dried wastewater sludge.

Half this cost will be funded through a federal Department of Energy grant, Ben Barnes, the city's director of operations and the WPCA board chairman, said.

A loosely organized group of Stamford residents believing the WPCA's waste-to-energy goal is not feasible or economically solvent, expressed concern that the agreement with Nexterra was approved before an independent financial and technical audit the board voted for in April was completed.

The nine voting WPCA board members voted to pursue the audit after a public uproar condemned the $40 million allocation. The board also withdrew the two-year funding request.

"What happened to the outside feasibility study?" resident Louis Basel asked. "This is a complete waste of taxpayers' money."

Barnes stressed the city was not entering into a contract with the company to execute the entire plan, rather availing itself to a detailed blueprint.

"Before we pull the trigger and enter into a deal to implement the system, we will have a detailed, fully formed transaction to review," Barnes said.

In May, the city shipped dried sludgewater pellets to Nexterra and testing showed the company produced a higher quality gas from incinerating the dried pellets than two other companies in the running -- Kopf, a German company, or Prime Energy of Oklahoma, WPCA Executive Director Jeanette Brown wrote in a board memo.

Two aspects made Nexterra stand out to the WPCA -- its use of wood fuel to power the gasification system and its partnership with General Electric and the company's Jenbacher engine, which is made to run on non-traditional fuel, Barnes said. Nexterra did not return calls for comment.

The city now pays about $43 per ton to get rid of wood now, Barnes said, which costs about $258,000 annually. Stamford could recycle some of this wood through the treatment plant, he said.

Basel, however, said the Nexterra gasifier is designed to run on 3-inch pieces of wood without chemicals, paints, nails, other metals, rot and leafy greens. In other words, he said, not what the city hauls away after a storm or receives from demolition waste.

But Barnes said even with the processing costs, wood fuel -- a "tried and true technology" -- would be fairly cost effective and the fuel can contain up to 10 percent contamination.

The unusually lengthy two-and-a-half hour meeting answered many concerns, board member Louis Casale said.

Initially worried about the delay in choosing an auditor, board member Alan Barnett said it has turned out to be beneficial, because now auditors will have access to Nexterra's test data.

The audit is proceeding, albeit slowly, Barnett said. The board's selection committee will meet Tuesday to vet the first round of companies, which, if selected, will then have about three months to complete a report.

Barnett said board members were also initially troubled that Brown "only presented what she had determined as the best choice."

"What she didn't do -- and which during the course of the meeting she explained -- is the process she went through to get to that one choice," he said, adding the board asked Brown to send a list of the other 18 companies in running and the reasons she discounted them.

Yet, the group of residents is far from pacified and haven't changed their stance of the usefulness of the project.

Test data from a shipment of Stamford's dried wastewater pellets to Nexterra still show the project will need additional energy to power the plant, resident George Stadel said.

"We all agree the plant should be disassembled and sold," Stadel's colleague Bruno Valenzisi said.

The city had previously anticipated the energy produced by incinerating pellets could power the process to dry the next round of wastewater and possibly even take the water treatment plant off the electrical grid.

Barnes said the city believes it can amass the necessary energy by supplementing with inexpensive wood waste or natural gas.

"The Nexterra folks are not satisfied they had an opportunity to maximize control of gasification process, and they believe they can, with more time, further optimize that," he said.

Big trash-to-energy plant proposed in Valley
CT POST
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Updated: 05/06/2009 08:40:00 AM EDT

WATERBURY -- A Massachusetts company wants to build a plant here to process garbage into electricity.

Chestnut Hill BioEnergy has signed an agreement to buy the site of a former factory in Waterbury and convert it into what it says would be the nation's largest food-waste-to-energy plant.

The company says the plant would be able to produce electricity for 10,000 homes.

Chestnut Hill representative toured the site Tuesday and say they are awaiting approvals from state and local officials.

The plant would accept 625 tons of garbage a day and generate 12 megawatts of electricity, which it would sell to Connecticut Light & Power.

The company says the plant would also create 40 to 50 jobs.
Alaskans learn how to make their own fuel
BIODIESEL: It's not easy, but the result is a $2 a gallon alternative.
Anchorage Daily News
By RINDI WHITE, rwhite@adn.com
Published: June 22nd, 2008 12:22 AM
Last Modified: June 22nd, 2008 04:34 AM

PALMER -- Two bucks a gallon to make your own biodiesel sounds like a bargain compared to $5 to pump a gallon of gas or heating oil. But operating a processing plant in your garage might be more of a hobby than you're willing to take on.

Sandi Wilson heats her Knik-Goose Bay home with heating oil. At about $5 a gallon for a 500-gallon tank, a full tank runs $2,500. Ouch. What's not to like about cutting that to $1,000?

So with that idea in mind, Wilson joined 18 other students for Will Taygan's Backyard Biodiesel class June 14 at the Spring Creek Farm north of Palmer.

Taygan has taught the benefits of biodiesel for three years.

"This is almost like a chemistry class. It sounds a little more complicated than I was thinking," Wilson said after class started.

CHEMISTRY 101

Lined up on the table she shared with two others were one-liter soda bottles, graduated cylinders, syringes, chemicals, safety goggles and gloves. Class members prepared first to calculate how much lye or potash they would need to convert the warmed vegetable oil in front of them into fuel. Lye and potash act as a catalyst for the required chemical reaction.

Taygan explained that vegetable oil, salmon oil and other oils used to make biodiesel are triglyceride molecules, a chain of three fatty acids attached to a glycerin molecule. The chemical reaction involves separating the fatty acid chains from the glycerin.

"It's a big, heavy molecule. It makes the oil sticky and thick. We want to replace it with a lighter molecule, methanol," Taygan said.

Taygan explained how to use methanol to split the glycerin molecules off each molecule of vegetable oil, using lye or potash as a catalyst. Following the reaction the liquids separate into a glycerin layer and so-called "fatty acid methyl esters," the chemical name for biodiesel, which floats on top of the glycerin.

A clear two-liter bottle of biodiesel that Taygan obtained from salmon oil showed about one-fifth of the bottle filled with a dark liquid that looked like cola, topped by what looked like orange soda. The dark stuff was glycerin, the light stuff biodiesel. Burn it and it smells like cooked salmon, Taygan said.

But getting to that point involves several steps that determine just how much catalyst is needed to separate the glycerin from the biodiesel. Too much and the fuel turns to sludge, too little and the conversion is incomplete.

"I don't think people knew this was going to be a chemistry class," Taygan said while the students pored over their calculations a second time.

RECOVER, REUSE

Over four hours, the students made a few liters of purposefully bad batches so they could tell the difference between good fuel and bad.

After waiting an hour for the reaction to occur, the students poured off the glycerin and added water to wash the remaining impurities out of their fuel. After drying, the biodiesel is ready to be poured directly into a fuel tank.

Although glycerin is a waste product in Taygan's class, some people refine it through a still to separate the methanol. The most costly ingredient in the refining process, the recovered methanol can be used for another batch of fuel. The glycerin can be sold or used as degreaser or homemade soap.

After the class, Wilson said she didn't foresee making the fuel on her own, although she might buy fuel made by other class members if they have extra. She planned to keep the biodiesel portion of her heating oil to 20 percent. Anything higher and the fuel tends to gel in low temperature.

"If you use it in a vehicle it's great, but to use it as heating fuel, it's a lot of work," she said.

GARAGE REFINERY

The Backyard Biodiesel class was the largest of its kind held in Alaska, Taygan said. He's gearing up to teach salmon fishermen later this year how to turn salmon oil into fuel for their boats. He'll give a biodiesel overview Aug. 9 at the Alaska Renewable Energy Fair at Delaney Park Strip in Anchorage and plans to offer another hands-on tutorial in November.

Tim Smith, a Navy recruiter who took the Saturday class, said he was glad to learn hands-on a process he has been reading about online for months.

Smith is eager to start using biodiesel and already has what's called an appleseed processor set up in his garage. It's a unit he crafted out of a used water heater, a few recycled barrels, some hoses, fittings and pumps to make things flow smoothly from one process to another. He figured he has about $200 into the setup.

"It's all about being an Alaskan and scavenging parts," Smith said.

He said he plans to perfect his brewing process and, eventually, process enough to drive his 1998 Dodge pickup to visit family in Wisconsin entirely on biodiesel.

Making biodiesel is a lot more work than pulling up to a gas tank and swiping a credit card, but Smith said he's committed to the effort on a moral level. It's a meaningful way to buy local and supporting American farmers, he said.

"If it costs me 50 cents more a gallon to make biodiesel, I would because I could do it locally. It's not just about money, it's about people standing up and paying for something made in the U.S. again," he said.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Find Daily News reporter Rindi White online at www.adn.com/contact/rwhite or call her in Wasilla at 907-352-6709.

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JOIN THE CLASS: Will Taygan will teach Backyard Biodiesel to small groups for $40 per person. Call him at 688-5288 or e-mail him at will@alaskabiodiesel.org.

NATIONAL BIODIESEL BOARD:

www.biodiesel.org

WILL TAGYAN's site:

vegwerks.wordpress.com

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Biodiesel Q&A

Q. What is biodiesel?

A. The National Biodiesel Board defines biodiesel as a "domestic, renewable fuel for diesel engines derived from natural oils like soybean oil, and which meets the specifications" of the federal biodiesel standard. It can be used in compression-ignition, or diesel, engines "with little or no modifications" and is biodegradeable, nontoxic and "essentially free of sulfur and aromatics."

Q. Can I dump a jug of canola oil in my fuel tank?

A. Biodiesel and so-called SVO or straight vegetable oil are different liquids. Biodiesel is vegetable oil that has been refined to remove the glycerin molecules. SVO users must convert their engine with heat exchangers, filters, insulated fuel lines and other parts to burn the thicker oil.

Q. Does it have to be mixed with diesel fuel?

A. It can be blended or used straight. Biodiesel promoter and instructor Will Taygan powers his Volkswagen Jetta with 100 percent recycled and processed vegetable oil. The federal government calls any fuel with at least 20 percent biodiesel an alternative fuel.

Q. Does it provide as much power to the engine as diesel fuel?

A. More, Taygan says, because biodiesel has more oxygen than diesel and provides a cleaner burn. Biodiesel made from virgin soybean oil provides 3.2 units of energy for every single unit of fossil fuel. Using restaurant waste oil, Taygan said, more than doubles that energy balance. Ethanol, comparatively, is one unit of energy to one unit of fossil fuel.

Q. Will burning biodiesel void my vehicle warranty?

A. According to the National Biodiesel Board, "most major engine companies have stated formally that the use of blends up to 20 percent will not void parts and workmanship warranties."

-- Source: National Biodiesel Board and Will Taygan


Concerned about these issues, the herd faces upwind of E.P.A.

Biodiesel Makers Lash Out at E.P.A. Rule
Bloomberg News
By Kate Galbraith
May 7, 2009, 2:10 pm 

A proposed emissions standard from the E.P.A. would “cause a significant failure in the biodiesel industry,” said Joe Jobe, the chief executive of the National Biodiesel Board.Like their ethanol counterparts, biodiesel producers are chafing at the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed methods of calculating their fuel’s greenhouse gas emissions.

The E.P.A.’s proposed rule, released on Tuesday, finds that biodiesel made from soybeans (the predominant feedstock in this country) produces, under one scenario, 22 percent fewer emissions than petroleum.

That is well short of requirements in 2007 energy legislation, which states that biodiesel must produce 50 percent fewer emissions than petroleum (though the rule proposed on Tuesday could nudge that requirement, which allows for some flexibility, down to 40 percent).

“It is just inaccurate to call what the E.P.A. is using here as science,” said Joe Jobe, the chief executive of the National Biodiesel Board, an industry body (click here for a related press release).

“It’s a guess, and it’s a bad guess at that because it absolutely defies common sense,” Mr. Jobe added.

Biodiesel producers led by Mr. Jobe are particularly incensed about how the E.P.A. accounted for “indirect land use changes,” a subject that has generated controversy in the ethanol industry as well.

The idea is that growing soybeans in the United States to make biodiesel could displace cropland for growing food. Crops for food would then theoretically relocate to places like Indonesia, where clearing the land to make way for the crops might involve cutting down the carbon-digesting forests.

The E.P.A. proposal calls for including emissions associated with such potential land-use shifts when measuring the overall emissions profile of biofuels and ethanol.

“We clearly disagree with first of all their hugely broad interpretation of this indirect emissions,” said Mr. Jobe. “We also disagree with their assumptions and we disagree with their methodology.”

Mr. Jobe said that, without the indirect emissions taken into account, his industry accounted for 80 percent fewer emissions than conventional diesel in the United States.

Like the ethanol industry, he argued that petroleum producers ought also to be held to account for their indirect emissions, in a spirit of fairness. The accounting for future international land-use changes resulting from biodiesel production, he said, is simply “hypothetical.”

Should the E.P.A.’s proposed rule go through, Mr. Jobe warned, “It would cause a significant failure in the biodiesel industry.”

The E.P.A. proposal is the latest in a wave of troubles battering the biodiesel industry. Europe has slapped a tariff on American biodiesel exports; the price of regular diesel has fallen below that of biodiesel; the credit crisis has harmed new plants; and a tax credit set to expire in December has not (yet) been extended.

Major refiners like Imperium Renewables in Washington State have suspended production, and the National Biodiesel Board has estimated that production could fall by half this year compared with last.

“It’s been blow after blow,” said Mr. Jobe.



Ethanol Surplus May Lift Gas Prices
NYTIMES
By MATTHEW L. WALD
March 15, 2013

WASHINGTON — A glut of ethanol in the gasoline supply is threatening to push up prices at the pump and may have exacerbated the growing cost gap between regular gasoline and premium, some oil experts say.

Refiners have been trading so-called ethanol credits furiously in an effort to meet federal environmental mandates, helping to significantly push up the cost of those credits — a jump to more than $1 from a few pennies in the last several days, and drivers are feeling the effects, experts say.

Prices for premium gas are now about 30.2 cents over the price of regular, according to Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg Survey. That is up from 24.1 cents in 2010 and 18.2 cents in 2000. Any increases could affect about a third of this year’s car models, because premium fuel is required or recommended for them, according to Edmunds.com.

Experts disagree on the reasons for a widening gap between the costs of regular and premium gas. Reasons for the ethanol surplus are even more broadly in dispute, between producers and the oil companies. Gas companies are required under federal law to blend a certain number of gallons of ethanol into the fuel. But refiners argue that some cannot reach that requirement because they are nearing or at the so-called blend wall, the maximum percentage of ethanol in gasoline that most gas stations can handle, 10 percent. They also note that is the maximum level recommended by auto manufacturers for most cars.

Refiners blame Congress, arguing that the ethanol quota was set at a time when gasoline demand was expected to rise steadily. Instead, demand has declined, and refiners, obligated to blend more ethanol than they can actually use, have resorted to buying a lot of ethanol credits, known as renewable identification numbers (or RINs), to meet the mandated levels.

Ms. Lundberg described this as “buying forgiveness from the government.” The credits’ popularity has driven up the price nearly tenfold since January.

On the other side of the debate are the ethanol producers, who say prices are pushed lower because their product is cheaper than gasoline. This is true on a gallon-per-gallon basis, although ethanol provides less energy per gallon.

The argument over ethanol and gas prices highlights the politics of the Renewable Fuel Standard, set by a 2007 law. The ethanol lobby accuses the oil companies of ratcheting up the demand for fuel credits as a way of applying pressure on lawmakers to reduce the alternative fuel mandates. Congress could change the rules, or the Environmental Protection Agency, which set up the electronic marketplace where ethanol credits are traded, could adjust them.

The ethanol credits, like some other kinds of environmental credits, can be banked as well as bought and sold. Some companies have a surplus. But those without them have rushed into a market that is thinly traded, driving the spike in prices, according to the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, a trade association.

“The market’s broken, because the Renewable Fuel Standard has been broken since the day it was enacted,” said Charles T. Drevna, president of the group. The refiners rely on a certain amount of ethanol as a way to increase octane, but they have been fighting the standard since it was created, partly because it requires them to use advanced biofuels that are not actually in commercial production.

Oil refiners also warn that higher prices for the credits will encourage fraud, something the ethanol trading system has encountered in the past.

There are two ways the ethanol credit issue could drive gas prices higher. Mr. Drevna said that refiners would probably seek to recover the cost of the credits, which were a mere seven cents or so at the beginning of this year, in the prices they charge. And Eric G. Lee, an analyst at Citi Research, said that some refiners might seek to avoid the ethanol requirement by exporting their gas, which could tighten supplies in the United States.

According to Mr. Lee, large refiners spent $100 million to $300 million each for credits in 2012, when prices were about 4 cents. “At $1 a gallon levels, the numbers become astronomical very quickly,” he said Wednesday.

But at the Renewable Fuels Association, Bob Dinneen, the president, said that the refiners were the sellers of the credits as well as the buyers, so that it was a flow of money among the oil companies. Ethanol companies make the fuel, he said, and sell it to refiners, who either use it themselves to meet their obligations, or use it but spin off the credit for sale to someone else.

“When I see volatility like that in any market, it’s not market fundamentals at work, it’s probably something else all together,” he said. “It’s more like the oil companies trying to create a little hysteria to support the notion that the Renewable Fuel Standard is broken, but I think it’s working just fine.”

He said oil companies should be investing in stations so that they can sell e85, the blend that is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gas, which millions of “flex fuel” cars can use, or e15, the 15 percent blend. The E.P.A. has approved e15 for most cars but the manufacturers advise against using it, and most service stations would need substantial investments in new equipment to sell it.

Using ethanol once was a cheap way to increase octane to make premium fuel, said an oil expert, Lawrence J. Goldstein, of the Energy Policy Research Foundation, because it has an octane of 113. But refiners have reached the limit of the amount they can blend, he said.

In addition, he said, an increase in American oil production, mostly from shale, allows refiners to use domestic crude instead of imported crude, but some of the new domestic supply has fewer high-octane ingredients than the African crudes it is replacing. And some refiners may increase their exports of gas in response to high credit prices, experts said. If the gasoline is exported, it does not have to meet the American ethanol requirement.

The long-term outlook for premium fuel is uncertain. Auto companies can build cars that get more miles per gallon if they use high-octane fuel, and the auto companies have agreed to double the average fuel economy of their cars and light trucks by 2025.

At Edmunds.com, analyst Bill Visnic said the demand for premium would be higher except that carmakers had learned to use an alternate technology, direct injection of fuel, combined with turbocharging, to get higher mileage.

But the number of cars that use high-octane fuel is substantial.

Michael Webber, of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at the University of Texas at Austin, said he asked his students how many of them drove cars that needed premium fuel. “Out of 100 people, 10 hands went up,” he said. These were probably not mostly luxury cars, he said. “Grad students normally aren’t rich,” he said.
Ethanol Industry’s 15% Solution Raises Concerns
NYTIMES
By CHRISTOPHER JENSEN
May 10, 2009

The Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to make an important and far-reaching decision this year that will affect more than 500 million gasoline engines powering everything from large pickups to family cars to lawn mowers: whether to grant the ethanol industry’s request to raise the maximum amount of ethanol that can be added to gasoline.

That request has engine manufacturers and consumer advocates worried about possible damage, service station owners in a tizzy over the financial and legal implications and a leading petroleum industry group saying the move is unwise and premature.

Specifically, ethanol producers are asking that the maximum ethanol content in the most common blend of gasoline be increased from 10 percent — a limit set about three decades ago — to as much as 15 percent. The blend the industry hopes will become common is known as E15, but the E.P.A. could approve a blend between E10 and E15.

Last year, nearly three-quarters of the gasoline sold in the United States contained some ethanol, according to the American Petroleum Institute. E10, which is 10 percent ethanol, is by far the most common fuel, though the E.P.A. has approved the use of ethanol blends up to 85 percent — but only for the limited number of new and late-model cars and trucks certified by manufacturers as “flexible fuel vehicles.” The ethanol industry wants E15 to replace E10 as the standard fuel found at most stations.

The issue came before the E.P.A. in early March when Growth Energy, an ethanol lobbying group, and 54 ethanol manufacturers asked the agency for a waiver of the Clean Air Act so that more ethanol could be added to gasoline.

Although the request went largely unnoticed by the public, it got the attention of anyone who makes or sells gasoline engines, as well as some environmentalists and consumer advocates.

Approving E15 would have a huge impact on consumers, said Clarence Ditlow, executive director of the Center for Auto Safety, and could cause problems including the voiding of car warranties. “There’s a lot to worry about,” he said. “All a consumer has to do is look at the fuels section of the owner’s manual, which says that the use of fuel above 10 percent ethanol may result in denial of warranty claims.”

Nearly 250 million cars and light trucks are registered in the United States, according to Experian Automotive. But the impact would be even broader. Kris Kiser, executive vice president of the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, a trade group, estimates that a change would affect 300 million engines in everything from chainsaws to weed trimmers.

The National Marine Manufacturers Association says 12 million boat engines would also be affected.

Growth Energy, whose co-chairman is Wesley K. Clark, the retired Army general and former Democratic presidential candidate, has told the E.P.A. that it has proof from several studies that E15 will not damage engines and will result in cleaner air while reducing the nation’s reliance on oil.

The studies were done by groups including the federal Energy Department, the State of Minnesota, the Renewable Fuels Association, the Rochester Institute of Technology, the Minnesota Center for Automotive Research and Stockholm University in Sweden.

Michael Harrigan, a former Ford Motor Company fuel-system engineer who is now a consultant to Growth Energy, said automakers had been doing enough testing that there should be no problems using E15.

And Tom Buis, the chief executive of Growth Energy, said, “We are confident in the science we prepared.”

•

But confident or not, Growth Energy has plenty of opposition from groups that say some of the studies it cites are inconclusive. The critics also say its assertions are unproved and in some cases misleading.

While automakers generally favor wider use of biofuels, Charles Territo, a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing 11 automakers, said Growth Energy had failed to prove that E15 would not damage vehicles engineered to run on a maximum of 10 percent ethanol. More testing is needed, he said.

“We are not asking for this to be delayed forever,” Mr. Territo said. “We are asking for this to be delayed until the testing is complete.”

Mr. Kiser, of the outdoor power equipment group, said some initial tests already indicated that E15 could cause serious problems — including safety issues — with some small engines.

At Honda, which makes a wide range of engines for products from minivans to power generators, the concern is that the effects of a big increase in an additive like ethanol are unknown, said Edward B. Cohen, vice president for government and industry relations at American Honda. “The impact can be on the emissions system, like the catalytic converter,” he said. “It can be on the various tubes or couplings that are part of the fuel system, and it could affect the performance of the vehicle, particularly cold starting.”

Honda can design engines to run well on new gasoline blends, Mr. Cohen said. The issue is the legacy fleet, whose engines were designed over two decades for varying requirements. There is no single answer, Mr. Cohen said, to the question of how E15 would affect them.The American Petroleum Institute is also concerned, said Robert Greco, the group director of downstream and industry operations. He said more research was needed — probably several years’ worth — before the institute would be convinced that E15 was safe for so many different kinds of engines.

“We think that the current waiver request is premature,” Mr. Greco said. “The science isn’t in yet.”

And Jeremy Martin, a senior scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental advocacy group based in Cambridge, Mass., said there was simply not enough solid information on which to make a decision that would have such a broad impact.

“We shouldn’t just look at a little data and extrapolate,” he said. “There are rules here, and there are procedures. And there is a proper engineering way to come to this determination. One can guess about the most likely outcomes, but that is not sufficient to put all the fleet at risk.”

Wendy Clark, group manager and principal researcher in the fuels performance group at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, said a lot of credible organizations were studying E15. But she said it was too early to know for sure how engines would be affected. One question is how many of the studies will be done before Dec. 1, the date by which the E.P.A. is required by law to make its decision.

Mr. Ditlow of the Center for Auto Safety said: “What the ethanol people are asking the consumer to do is bear the risk. If only 1 percent of the vehicles on the road today had E15-related problems, that would be about 2.5 million vehicles.”

Among those concerned about the proposed change are service station owners, many of whom fear that their pumps and fiberglass storage tanks would need to be replaced. They also fear legal problems including lawsuits from customers claiming their vehicles were damaged by the fuel.

“It is a horrible thing for our members,” said Carl Boyett, president of the Society of Independent Gas Marketers of America.In their March request to the E.P.A., proponents of the waiver said E15 would provide “increased energy security, enhanced economic development, creation of American jobs, reduced transportation costs and environmental benefits.” The ethanol manufacturers contend that the increase is necessary because of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. That act includes a renewable fuels standard that requires a steady increase in the use of biofuels in the United States — to 36 billion gallons in 2022 from 11 billion gallons this year. To meet the goals, refiners must add biofuels to gasoline.

The industry has been meeting the requirements. In 2007 , it was required to use 4.7 billion gallons of ethanol and it actually used 6.85 billion, according to the petroleum institute. Last year, when the requirement was 9 billion gallons, the industry used 9.6 billion.

But Americans are now buying far less gasoline than was expected when the law passed. That decline has the industry worried that as early as 2011 or 2012 it will be impossible to meet the renewable fuels standard with a 10 percent limit, Mr. Greco said.

Mr. Buis of Growth Energy said: “We are up against a blend wall. That cap needs to be raised.”

While adding more ethanol would help refiners meet the law, it would not improve fuel economy. An October 2008 study for the Energy Department tested 16 late-model cars and found, on average, that mileage dropped 5 percent with E15 compared with gasoline that contained no ethanol.

In deciding whether to raise the cap, the E.P.A. says it must consider not just emissions, but also vehicles’ durability and drivability “over their useful lives.” The agency has acknowledged that E15 is a complex issue, given that engines vary widely in their age and sophistication. Some might run fine on E15 while others might be susceptible to problems.

The E.P.A. says one possibility is that it could approve the use of E15 for some vehicles or engines but not for others.

Mr. Martin of the Union of Concerned Scientists says tests may show that vehicles produced starting with 2004 models could run safely on E15. That year, more sophisticated engine controls were required, making it more likely their systems could detect and compensate for fuel variations. About 79 million cars and light trucks have been produced since the 2004 model year, Experian Automotive says.

Mr. Buis of Growth Energy said that the advantages and safety of E15 were clear and that allowing higher ethanol content would help to make the nation less dependent on petroleum. He said there was no reason to delay.

“You know, some people don’t want to do anything — they just want to test, test, test or study, study, study,” Mr. Buis said. “You know, this nation has been stalling for 30-some years from becoming energy independent.”
Don’t Single Out Ethanol on Land-Use Changes, Says Trade Group Chief
GREEN NYTIMES
By Kate Galbraith
May 7, 2009, 7:45 am
 
Bob Dinneen, the president of the Renewable Fuels Association, said ethanol is uniquely saddled with measuring the indirect land use changes associated with its production. Bob Dinneen, the president of the Renewable Fuels Association, an ethanol trade group, stopped by our New York offices today to discuss recent moves by the Obama administration that offer both good and bad news for the industry.

On Tuesday, the administration moved to provide loan guarantees and other financial help to struggling ethanol producers. At the same time, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a more comprehensive way of measuring the carbon impact of ethanol that that puts the industry in a lesser light.

According to Lisa Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, the ethanol industry currently produces 16 percent fewer emissions than gasoline — short of a requirement of 20 percent. This 16 percent tally factors in “indirect land use,” in accordance with the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.

That means that in addition to weighing the carbon emissions from fertilizer and tractor fuel, the E.P.A. accounted for the idea that corn grown for ethanol in this country displaces food crops, driving the expansion of agriculture — and the loss of precious, carbon-capturing forest land — elsewhere on the planet to compensate for the lost food and feed supply.

Mr. Dinneen emphasized that his group was perfectly willing to factor in such indirect land-use changes. But he expressed concern that biofuels are the only industry for which this calculation is made. Petroleum, for example, does not factor in land-use changes — and besides, he said, “Where’s the carbon impact associated with development in suburbia?”

“They can’t just do it to us and not to everyone else,” he argued.

Mr. Dinneen welcomed the comment period that will follow the E.P.A.’s proposals, and said that the ethanol industry believed that adjustments on the land-use front are needed.

“Right now, I think the model is too uncertain, the assumptions are out of whack and it needs to be promulgated more fairly,” he said.

On the subject of cellulosic ethanol — a fledgling but more climate-friendly type of ethanol made from non-food sources like stalks or switchgrass — Mr. Dinneen expressed doubts that federal requirements for the country to use 100 million gallons of the fuel next year would be met. No commercial-scale plants are currently in operation in this country, though a few are being built, with a Range Fuels plant in Georgia being perhaps the furthest along.

“One hundred million gallons in 2010 is going to be a challenge,” Mr. Dinneen conceded. The 2011 target of 250 million gallons, he said, is “probably also going to be hard to meet.”