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Alan Doering of AURI says agricultural residues and co-products aren’t waste, they’re potential new revenue streams to power the future.

AURI, or Agricultural Utilization Research Institute of Waseca, Minnesota, is a nonprofit organization that develops new uses for agricultural products and ag-processing co-products.

Alan Doering, an Associate Scientist with AURI, filled me in on steps being taken to utilize every bit of what used to be considered products of the waste stream.

Turkey droppings are fueling a power plant that serves 40,000 homes. Syrup derived from the making of ethanol is being used to power the plant that makes the ethanol. And there’s more on this amazing work in my interview with Alan.

doering-final.mp3

The next revolution in agriculture and greenhouse gas reduction may be a 3000-year old farming practice of adding biomass charcoal to the soil. The practice was re-discovered by archeologists who were studying a site in the central-Amazon basin. Some 1500 years earlier the indigenous tribes had enriched the soil using charcoal from animal bone and tree bark. The soil remains today some of the richest and most fertile soil yet found.

Scientists from the American Chemical Society have begun a five-year study of the use of biomass charcoal for soil enrichment in order to understand its impact on fertilization, soil carbon changes, crop productivity and any impact on the microorganisms in the soil.

The practice holds promise for several reasons:

1. Soil need only be fertilized once with this method and the effect lasts for hundreds to thousands of years.
2. The resulting agricultural method is carbon-negative since the enriched soil traps and holds carbon in the soil, which may offer significant benefits to decreasing global warming from agriculture and reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

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Last month, the Federal Trade Commission conducted hearings and convened a workshop for scientists, economists, environmental activists and representatives of the leading American retailers of ‘carbon offsets’ and ‘renewable energy credits’ (RECs) to learn more about the rather opaque business models and practices of some companies.

Though the hearings were only exploratory in nature, the FTC was able to address some of the concerns and misgivings the public has about unregulated voluntary carbon markets. The FTC also raised their concern about the validity of some companies’ advertising claims (for an excellent analysis of the carbon-offset hearings, read the piece by Jeremy Elton Jacquot for TreeHugger). In short, people want to see what they get and get what they pay for - and in the world of renewable energy credits and carbon offsets, this can be a tricky prospect.

In response to these hearings, and in an effort to legitimize the fledgling offset and REC industries, carbon offset retailer TerraPass has decided to democratize. By opening up a comment period for seven particular carbon-offset projects, TerraPass has decided to build-in an added layer of transparency to make their enterprise a little less hazy. I applaud TerraPass for this move forward. And I am totally fine if it is purely profit driven.

As companies strive to stay in the black of their ‘triple bottom line’ I hope we will be seeing more of these democratic experiments in the private sector. You don’t have to be a ’stockholder’ to make a comment, just a stakeholder. And when we’re talking climate change, it seems that everyone is a stakeholder. According to the company:

“We welcome comments from our customers, from anyone familiar with the projects themselves, from policy experts, and from the general public.

If you have any feedback for us regarding these projects – their environmental records, the importance of TerraPass support to project success, or anything else, please provide it via email.”

Photo Credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency

(Author’s Note: As I write this, the current weather conditions in Nantucket Sound [Wed Feb 13 16:41 EDST] are ideal for wind power generation. With wind speeds of 38 knots and gusts of up to 45 knots at the location of the proposed offshore wind energy installation, Cape Wind would have produced 422 megawatts of clean, renewable energy local in the last hour).

1. Do you have an opinion about offshore wind energy development?

2. Are you an American citizen?

3. Do you give a s#!t about this planet?

If you answered yes to all of the above, then you might be interested to know that the comment period for the Cape Wind project, the proposed offshore windfarm near Cape Cod, MA, is open to the general public until March 20th. This project is proposed for development in Federal waters, so it is open to all American citizens. You can submit an e-comment via the Department of Interior’s Minerals Management Service Public Connect system. Since the release of the draft EIS last month, most seem to think the report is generally favorable on the Cape Wind proposal. But the process is far from over. The anti-Cape Wind effort is still well-funded and persistent. The public commenting period can have a significant impact on the final determination in an EIS, so go ahead and speak your mind.

Post E-Comment via MMS Public Connect

From the MMS Website:

The 60-day comment period for the Draft Environmental Impact Statement is about half way through, assesses the physical, biological and social/human impacts of the proposed project and all reasonable alternatives, including action not taken (i.e., the project is not built), in an objective fashion in order to determine if the proposal is environmentally sound. A final decision will be made, which will account for the regional, state and local benefits and impacts as well as for the overall public interest of the United States. A final approval will be granted only if, after consideration of both environmental and non-environmental issues, the MMS finds that the proposed action is in the public interest.

Post E-Comment via MMS Public Connect

Photo: dpicker via flickr

If you’ve recently been looking for a reason to increase your hatred of bureaucratic red tape, then look no further than the regulatory insanity available at the Midwest Independent Transmission System (Midwest ISO).

Renewable energy is obviously a new business, and thus sadly the regulations that once worked now do not. When looking to construct a power station in the past, you were looking at powering it with fossil fuels like coal, or more recently from nuclear energy. Thus it wasn’t necessarily a problem to wait two years for a planning permit to be provided.

However the fact that this system has not been overhauled with the advent of the smaller and faster developed wind stations is ludicrous.

The Star Tribune, in Minneapolis – St. Paul, Minnesota, points to Ryan Wolf, who has been waiting two years for the go-ahead to build 27 wind turbines in the southwest of Minnesota. But considering that each proposal has to – and I emphasize has to – take 2 years to be inspected, who knows how long it could be.

In fact, with 306 proposals, yes, the current last one should legally take 612 years to be approved.

This is made worse by the fact that by law they must look at one proposal at a time. The Midwest ISO’s laws force their employees to locate any point along the grid where it is already maxed out, and another source of power could overload.

Thankfully the men and women on the ground are taking matters in to their own hands, sort of. Against the law – though in an attempt to shed a mite of common sense on the issue – Midwest ISO is now bundling similar proposals together so that they can look at them together. This will bring the total waiting time down from 612 years to 50 years.

But there we strike another problem with each year driving the cost of the projects through the roof. Worse, for the state of Minnesota, is their pledge to provide 25% of its energy from renewable sources by 2025; “You simply can’t get there on time,” said Clair Moeller, a vice president at Midwest ISO.

Midwest ISO is definitely going to be feeling the pressure soon, if they themselves do not change their way of doing things. This is especially true considering that down in Texas they’ve negated the need to do spot checks on the entire grid. Instead of that, they just make those with the proposals pay for the “driveways” – the new power lines that run from the new station to the grid.

According to Rob Gramlich, policy director at the American Wind Energy Association, a Washington-based industry group, this has helped Texas connect three times as many wind energy plants than any other state in the US this past year.

Photo Courtesy of cjohnson7 via Flickr

It comes as no great surprise to many of us that there will always be a roadblock to a good step forward; especially if it’s a green step. People often do not like new technology. They’re scared of it, or fearful of the jobs it will take away/create. This is very much the case for wind-power, and wind-farms in particular. People are upset because they feel that their lovely views are worth more than the environment itself.

Does someone really need to point out that, if we continue down the road we are on, their views will be spoilt regardless?

A report by the Minerals Management Service in the US gave preliminary environmental approval to a proposed wind-farm off Cape Cod. Plans by developer Cape Wind Associates describe a wind-farm encompassing 25 miles of federal waters in Nantucket Sound, with 130 windmills generating power for thousands of households.

The findings showed that the plans would pose no significant threat to the environment, despite claims to the contrary by locals and politicians.

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