#UnCategorized

#MyIndustry "GREEN" is not an industry. Green is not a solution. Green is not even an objective. 

One trouble with "green" right now is that it has either been dismissed as a hoax by those wishing to maintain status quo with respect to fossil based carbon fuels, or has become one of those, "American as apple pie" expressions that everyone (in North America at least) knows but gives little if any thought to as they choose what kind of pie they want to finish their meal. Do you really think about where the crude oil came from that made the gasoline as you fill up your tank?  Does it make a difference to you if the oil came from Alaska, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Louisiana or Irkutsk? Does it even occur to you that your gasoline could be made from corn oil, or rape seed oil, or pond scum? Of course not. Not if you are the average consumer.

For that matter, it doesn't seem that the U.S. Administration (Obama and the Democrats for now, next year, who knows, except that it is unlikely to change on this point anyway) looks at "alternative energy" and tends to see beyond the short term political horizon. I see a lot of bulwark being built behind status quo, including retaining subsidies for oil companies whose record profits drawf whole countries in just their quarterly reports. Support ethanol, that means the votes. Votes from the mid-Western farm states (and Senator Grassley in particular), and even here the EPA is seeking to cut mandatory production according to established law because petroleum distributors are sticking to the "10% blend wall".  Support photovoltaic solar energy, but with high tariffs to protect American jobs. There are more people working on actually producing solar panels in Shanghai than in all of the USA would be my guess right now. You can't prevent manufacturing jobs from going to cheap labor markets.  What you can do is make solar so popular that they job  market is flooded with need for skilled installers, a job that cannot be outsource, especially the gird modernization that we so desperately need. Support "wind power" because the only useful quantities of electricity from wind turbines come from the giant industrial sources like General Electric making giant turbines.  Diversified solar energy sources are not seen as a threat to utility companies since few have had mandatory feed-in-tariffs imposed (i.e. accept and must pay consumers/communities/small utilities to feed small amounts of power to the grid).  

I must apologize here.  I have been taking pot shots through the eye of a needle view because it irks me greatly that Beijing has committed more capital to a jet fuel deal with Boeing based on algae derived fuel than all the government money that has thus far been invested by the US government in developing the same capabilities in the USA.

My original point was that green has come to mean to diverse a field to have formed an overwhelming wave of support for solutions that bypass a myopic view of fossil based fuels for the foreseeable future.  Exxon's pittance of a half billion dollars over 10 years (which, may sound like a lot but amounts to just $50 million per year) is a token amount considering the stakes here.  And make no mistake because fuels (as may be more obvious with jet fuel) are a thoroughly worldwide market with whole earth consequences that are not just economic.  The problem, in my opinion, is not just that we don't have a groundswell of grassroots demand for rapid action on renewable source fuels, it is that the petroleum industry has not embraced renewable fuels as the next frontier. They are still building stockades to ward off encroachments by comparatively flea sized bites into their markets.

Admittedly the RFS (Renewable Fuel Standards) have helped drive the rise of ethanol, and government subsidies keep bio-based fuels just above the life-support stage. As pointed out above, the EPA is, meanwhile, undermining the Renewable Fuels Standards set as law in Congress, all of which leaves us twenty years behind Brazil where ethanol blends and pure ethanol fueled automobiles have been a reality since I visited in 1996.  The government there forced the shift in hopes of controlling air pollution. The air was still pretty thick in 1996 despite the ethanol use (and as I recall it, every fueling station sold ethanol blends). Thus there is ample evidence that petroleum companies can adapt to circumstances if they are forced to do so. In the USA there was no need and little if any incentive for corner gas stations to accommodate an addition pump to supply enthanol or ethanol blends to the public. Once again the major petroleum companies failed to support the initiative all the way from refinery to retail environments.  

One of the things about this situation is that it reminds me so much of the way that major telecommunications companies dragged their feet over faster forms of internet connections for consumers. They dragged their feet so effectively that they virtually killed off any significant competitors with one exception.  Cable companies. Now the telecom companies are trying to claw their way back into the fray for a significant market share of last mile broadband customers. I don't see any existing company becoming a tsunami of renewable fuels that displaces petroleum, but then I cannot see over the horizon any better than anyone else, and have no crystal ball into the future of the regulatory minefield of the hundred and one jurisdictions that may want to get their fingers in this pie.

What surprises me, though, is that petroleum companies are not eagerly trying to co-opt renewable energy producers. There was, in recent years a surge in research on the creation of a fuel which has equal, even slightly more energy density that gasoline (ethanol is far below that level, though it has other advantages) and can be blended all the way up to 100% of the fuel in a gasoline vehicle. The fuel itself has been available for well over a hundred years but the production method (known as ABE) was too expensive to use this liquid as fuel. It was a paint ingredient, or other high end chemical ingredient.  The fuel is called butanol (and many variations on that). Bio-butanol was becoming efficient enough the bio-butanol companies were buying up underutilized ethanol operations which are easily converted to a Bio-butanol process instead.  But they weren't quite there with the efficiency of their bio process to generate bio-butanol as a competitive price, and in the past few weeks, the last major maker of bio-butanol is going down the tubes, as they say. With petroleum industry research backing these effort could almost certainly have reached success. What is more, the energy density in this fuel is, again, equal to or better than jet fuel (kerosene) and because it comes from a bio-sourced chemical (not fossil based carbon) it would be seen as worldwide effort of the individual airlines, and of the airline industry to move toward sustainable technology. Such a move could even be the trigger that creates that global impetus to get moving on renewable, sustainable fuels.

 The good news in the bio-chemical world is that many of the more exotic chemicals used in thousands of processes and products are being produced by bio-source materials. Indeed one of the most valued of these is the Omega-3 oils that are now so popular in nutriceuticals and cosmetics comes from the algae that have not yet proven their viability as cheap motor fuels. But then the by products of algae fuel production is food.  Yes, what is left over is perfectly edible high protein source of food for humans (as well as for animals and fish). The same is true for the by-produce of ethanol production which is known as distillers' grains (or dried distillers' grains, DDGs) a staple in the cattle and pig farming food supplement market for decades now.

In other words, like the cat in the picture who does not fit conveniently into that rectangular box (drawer) it does not mean it is not more valuable than all the contents of the existing drawer, and should be looked upon as an opportunity to explore new products, new alliances and coopetition into a future that addresses global urgent need to turn waste streams into resource streams, and to learn to utilize, to the maximum, potential solutions to problems being seen through a monocular lens. Turn some of those microscopes into telescopes and see the world as a whole, and the opportunities unlimited, as I believe them to be.

Sincerely,

Stafford "Doc" Williamson