Miracle Solution to Biofuel Dilemma

Jul 10th, 2007

The Seashore Mallow, an unassuming plant with a hibiscus-like pink flower might be an unlikely climate change saviour. However, the plant, native to North America may be the future of biofuels.

The flower has two advantages over other potential biofuel crops. It is, first of all, a perennial and so unlike soy will not require replanting every year. Secondly and crucially, it is a halophyte, highly resistant to salt. It is therefore possible to cultivate the Seashore Mallow in saltwater marshland and other areas in which most crops cannot be grown.

Whether or not farmland used for food production should be converted for biofuel use is contentious, with some claiming it is driving up food prices. The Seashore Mallow does not involve the conversion of food production; rather it enlarges the area of land suitable for cultivation.

The plant has further uses. The meal leftover from oil extraction can be used as animal feed, whilst the roots are a source of industrial gum. It is according to John Gallagher of the University of Delaware, "the pig of the vegetable world, you can use everything but the squeal."

Global Resources Touts Plastics-To-Energy Conversion Ratio

Jul 10 2007

Global Resource Corporation says that results from tests prove that the company’s energy conversion process can produce oil and “vast amounts of combustible gas” from recycled plastics.

Energy conversion machines operate at capacities of 5, 10 or 20 tons of material per hour. The process generates energy from plastics or rubber, and can produce up to 18 times the energy that is used to fuel the machine, according to the company. A 10 ton per hour unit operates on 950,000 btu per hour, and the process can generate on average of 17,300,000 btu per hour output.

Global Resource says that by using its technology, scrappers and recyclers can convert plastics and rubber into oil and combustible gas. By doing so, they can reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills by up to 65 percent, generate enough energy to run their own operations, separate and scrap more metal for profit, and generate enough energy to sell to outside interests.

130 MegaWatt Wind Park For Turkey

by Justin Thomas, Virginia on 07. 5.07

Science & Technology (alternative energy)

A new, 130-megawatt wind power project is to be built in southeastern Turkey. It will more than double the country’s installed wind capacity. The wind park will feature 52 wind turbines built by GE, each rated at 2.5 megawatts. This will be the largest wind power project to date in Turkey. The project’s estimated annual electricity production of 500 million kilowatt-hours will be purchased by independent power consumers. Interest in wind-generated electricity has been increasing in Turkey.

According to the European Wind Energy Association, the country had 84 megawatts of installed wind capacity at the beginning of 2007, an increase of 65 megawatts from the start of 2006.

The 2.5xl wind turbines will be manufactured at GE Energy’s facilities in Salzbergen, Germany and Noblejas, Spain and shipped to the project site for installation beginning in March of 2008.

Department of Transportation Tried Blocking California's GHG Cap Legislation

by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 07. 5.07

Business & Politics

If you thought the Bush administration was just going to let California move ahead with its pioneering greenhouse gas emissions capping legislation without a word or sign of obstruction, you had another thing coming. Newly released documents have revealed that the U.S. Department of Transportation was actively trying to squash the state's proposed cap by lobbying key congressmen to vote against it.

The documents, consisting of over 70 pages of e-mails and memos, showed agency officials working in concert with the Auto Alliance - a trade group representing the interests of several big auto firms - to aggressively target legislators Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, Missouri, Delaware and Tennessee most likely to oppose the cap. "Just hit the members/senators with the really big facilities. No need to call those with small distribution centers or anything," Simon Gros, deputy chief of staff to Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, told his staff in a June 7 e-mail.

The documents came to light after Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles), the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chairman, requested them upon suspecting foul play on the part of the DOT. "This initial set of documents reveals that the Bush administration was working hand in glove with the auto industry against state efforts to fight global warming," said Waxman on Monday.

Several other prominent California lawmakers, including Sen. Barbara Boxer and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, have weighed in on the issue, expressing anger and disbelief over the administration's political meddling. D.J. Gribbin, DOT's General Counsel, defended the agency's actions by claiming they didn't violate anti-lobbying restrictions: "DOT's interest in informing the public and their elected representatives about this important issue is consistent with its longstanding and well-known support of a single, national regulatory scheme for motor vehicle fuel economy."

Speaker Nunez best summed up the federal agency's actions with a few pithy words: "Dirty tricks." We couldn't agree more.

Via ::Red Orbit News: Smog Fighters Furious at Bush Administration (news website)

See also: ::Economic Impact Of California Climate Plan In Line With Stern Report, ::California To Pass Emissions Caps: A "Bottom-Up Approach to Global Warming", ::A Bush Administration Policy Adjustment

McDonald’s To Run UK Fleet On Recycled Cooking Oil

Jul 05 2007

McDonald’s will convert its British delivery fleet to run on biodiesel made largely from its own recycled cooking oil, Reuters reports.

The company says it should eventually be able to replace the six million liters of diesel its fleet used last year with cooking oil from its 1,200 restaurants in Britain.

The biodiesel will initially be made up of 85 percent used cooking oil collected from around 900 McDonald’s restaurants and 15 percent from pure rapeseed oil.

Global warming blamed for vanishing lake

By EDUARDO GALLARDO, Associated Press Writer Tue Jul 3, 9:34 PM ET

SANTIAGO, Chile - Scientists on Tuesday blamed global warming for the disappearance of a glacial lake in remote southern Chile that faded away in just two months, leaving just a crater behind.

The disappearance of the lake in Bernardo O'Higgins National Park was discovered in late May by park

rangers, who were stunned to find a 130-foot deep crater where a large lake had been.

After flying over the lake Monday scientists said they were able to draw preliminary conclusions that point to climate change as the leading culprit for the lake's disappearance.

They suggested the melting of nearby glaciers raised the lake's level to the point where the increased water pressure caused part of a glacier acting as a dam to give way. Water in the lake flowed out of the breach, into a nearby fiord and then to the sea, said Andres Rivera, a glaciologist with Chile's Center of Scientific Studies.

Rivera, accompanied by an expert from the Chilean Antarctic Institute, flew over the site in a navy airplane, taking hundreds of photographs.

"On one side of the Bernardo glacier one can see a large hole or gap, and we believe that's where the water flowed through," Rivera said in a navy communique. "This confirms that glaciers in the region are retreating and getting thinner."

He said that the bottom of the vanished lake again has some water, likely from the melting ice.

Similar phenomenon have occurred before in the southern Magallanes region.

As glaciers retreat lakes form behind natural dams of ice or moraine, earth and stones pushed up by a glacier. Those relatively weak dams can be breached suddenly, causing the lake to drain.

The advance and retreat of glaciers is part of the normal dynamics of the Patagonia but climate change was distorting the process, Rivera said.

"This would not be happening if the temperature had not increased," Rivera said.

The navy communique said the missing lake was the smaller of a two-lake system. The larger one remains but at a lower level.

Biofuels: The Five Myths of the Agro-fuels Transition

by Eric Holt-Giménez

Biofuels. The term invokes a life-giving image of renewability and abundance—a clean, green, sustainable assurance in technology and the power of progress. This image allows industry, politicians, the World Bank, the United Nations, and even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to present fuels made from corn, sugarcane, soy and other crops as the next step in a smooth transition from peak oil to a yet-to-be-defined renewable fuel economy. Drawing its power from a cluster of simple cornucopian myths, “biofuels” directs our attention away from the powerful economic interests that benefit from this transition. It avoids discussion of the growing North-South food and energy imbalance. More fundamentally, it obscures the political-economic relationships between land, people, resources and food. By showing us only one side, “biofuels” fails to help us understand the profound consequences of the industrial transformation of our food and fuel systems—The Agro-fuels Transition.

The Agro-fuels Boom

Industrialized countries unleashed an “agro-fuels boom” by mandating ambitious renewable fuel targets. Renewable fuels are scheduled to provide 5.75% of Europe’s transport fuel by 2010, and 10 percent by 2020. The United States aims at 35 billion gallons a year. These targets far exceed the agricultural capacities of the industrial North. Europe would need to plant 70% of its farmland to fuel. The U.S.’s entire corn and soy harvest would need to be processed as ethanol and bio-diesel. Converting the bulk of their arable land to fuel crops would wreak havoc with the North’s food systems. Therefore, OECD countries are looking to the Global South to meet their fuel demands. Southern governments appear eager to oblige. Indonesia and Malaysia are rapidly expanding oil-palm plantations in an effort to supply up to 20 percent of the EU bio-diesel market. In Brazil—where fuel crop acreage already occupies a land area the size of Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Great Britain combined—the government is planning a five-fold increase in sugar cane acreage. Their goal is to replace 10 percent of the world’s gasoline by 2025.

The rapid capitalization and concentration of power within the agro-fuels industry is breathtaking. Over the last three years venture capital investment in agro-fuels has increased eightfold. Private investment is swamping public research institutions, as evidenced by BP’s recent award of half a billion dollars to the University of California. Behind the scenes—and under the noses of most national anti-trust laws—giant oil, grain, auto and genetic engineering corporations are forming powerful partnerships: ADM and Monsanto, Chevron and Volkswagen; BP, DuPont, and Toyota. These corporations are consolidating the research, production, processing, and distribution chains of our food and fuel systems under one colossal, industrial roof.

Agro-fuel champions assure us that because fuel crops are renewable, they are environmentally–friendly, can reduce global warming, and will foster rural development. But the tremendous market power of agro-fuel corporations, coupled with the poor political will on the part of governments to regulate their activities, leads us to doubt these happy scenarios. Before jumping on the bandwagon, the mythic baggage of the agro-fuels transition needs to be publicly unpacked:

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6188