“There is broad scientific consensus,” the report’s authors say, “that biomass crops and residues can replace fossil fuels, which should decrease the need to import petroleum and also decrease greenhouse gas emissions. To accomplish this, however, it is necessary to develop new methods and systems to routinely and reliably harvest, handle, store, and transport large quantities of bulky materials of varying characteristics.

GDownload the full report

“These needs contrast with the well-developed logistics, grading, and marketing systems for grain biofuel feedstocks and fossil fuels. There have been a number of research activities aimed at providing solutions to specific unit processes within the feedstock provision value chain. The case studies show that substantial efforts have been made toward the development of machines for harvesting and collecting agricultural biomass.”

Nick Grant , co-author of ‘The Green Electricity Illusion said, “There is a lot of confusion around, with people mixing up the terms renewable, sustainable and low carbon. We need to take a step back from the seemingly endless arguments about the definition of zero carbon, and ask ourselves – what are we really trying to do here? I believe when you do this, it is clear that we need to go back to the simple principle of using less energy, in whatever form.”

Download the complete report.

Exemplifying the trend, in Virginia Enviva announced the signing of a long-term wood pellet supply contract with Electrabel, a subsidiary of GDF SUEZ Group, one of the largest utilities in the world.

Under the contract, Enviva, a subsidiary of Intrinergy Holdings LP, will supply 480,000 metric tons of wood pellets annually to Electrabel’s biomass power generating facilities in Belgium. Intrinergy is a portfolio company of Riverstone Holdings LLC’s most recent renewable and alternative energy fund. That’s enough to supply more than 150,000 homes with biomass-based power.

The economics on biomass are interesting. At 4000 KWh per tonne and $105 per ton for oven-dry wood chips, the raw cost for power (excluding capital costs, overhead and profit) are in the 3-cent range per KWh, far worse than coal but far better than most solar and wind options for the Europeans. Of course, biofuels processors who can realize up to 135 gallons per ton from selected woods can generate even higher yields, but the capital costs for biofuels can be daunting compared to the relatively well-understood art of co-firing biomass with coal. Outlook for biomass: bullish.

“With demand for renewable fuel increasing worldwide, the U.S. biomass market is poised for tremendous growth.  Enviva is excited to be at the nexus of this growth by matching U.S.-based resources with major power producers around the world,” said Enviva Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Keppler.  “We are pleased that Electrabel has joined Enviva’s growing base of utility customers committed to reducing CO2 emissions over the coming years.”
Enviva will supply the wood pellets from its expanding manufacturing base of production facilities in the Southeastern U.S., home to some of the world’s most abundant and most sustainably managed wood baskets. Enviva’s environmental, safety, and forestry staff are at the forefront of best practices in sustainable harvesting, and they ensure that all of the company’s biomass resources are procured according to internationally recognized third party certification standards. http://www.envivapellets.com

Combustion of fuels produced by pyrolysis at Mississippi State University

Biochar could solve a significant piece of the climate problem – 12 percent of CO2 emissions – according to a study published last week in Nature Communications.

The study estimated CO2 mitigation potential from sustainably-produced biochar that would not endanger – and could actually enhance – food security, habitat and soil conservation.

The authors conclude that turning biomass waste into biochar could be more effective in mitigating climate change than using it to produce biofuels, which could mitigate 10 percent of CO2 emissions compared to biochar’s 12 percent, although they note that the climate benefits of biofuel vs biochar can vary by region. It is also significant that the biochar production process allows the choice of diverting some of the syngas biomass carbon to biofuels, while sequestering the rest.

Biochar is produced through a process called pyrolysis: heating waste biomass at low temperatures with very little oxygen to produce a char. The biochar is a stable form of carbon that sequesters the CO2 that plant biomass would normally release when decomposing.

Besides helping fight climate change, biochar can also be used a soil amendment in programs to enrich soils lacking in nutrients for food production.

“Biochar is a winning climate strategy that policymakers need to start supporting now to start drawing down excess CO2 that is on the verge of pushing the climate system past the tipping point for irreversible climate changes,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development.

CO2, unlike other well mixed greenhouse gases, does not break down in the atmosphere. Its natural removal depends upon the absorption and eventual sequestration in the oceans or land as part of the natural carbon cycle. Approximately 65% of emitted CO2 is removed from the atmosphere within a hundred years through fast equalization with the oceans and biosphere.

The remainder stays trapped until drawn down through much slower processes with an additional 15-30% being removed over the next 5,000 years, and the remaining ~10% after 400,000 to a million years. This very long lifetime makes it essential to develop and deploy “climate negative” technologies, starting with biochar, to draw down CO2 on a timescale of decades to a century or less, to prevent irreversible and catastrophic climate impacts.

“Time is short – unfortunately, even with aggressive cuts in CO2 emissions, we will not see significant cooling for a very long time, likely centuries. To avoid rising temperatures pushing us beyond the tipping points for irreversible impacts, we need biochar and other carbon-negative strategies,” added Zaelke.

More on the story.

Environmental groups says biomass energy will boost demand for wood by 30 million tonnes by 2015, all of which will need to be imported from Canada, Brazil and the Far East.

More on the story.

Here’s background for 2010/2011.

1. Scoring. The rankings will be published on Wednesday, December 1st, and are based on weighted scores. 40 percent of the score will be based on subscriber polling, and 60 percent will be based on polling of more than 100+ international selectors drawn from academia, policy analysts, journalists, and industry leaders.

2. Eligibility. Eligible companies include bioenergy producers and their suppliers in business as of November 1, 2010, in all countries of the world. Producers are required to be at least at bench-scale in their development, with pilot-scale or higher preferred. Companies that have activities outside of bioenergy will be considered on the merits of their bioenergy business units.

3. Criteria. The criteria are: potential impact of the company and its technology, credibility and visibility.

4. Voter eligibility. Only registered subscribers to the Biofuels Digest e-newsletter are eligible to participate. Web-based Digest readers may continue to participate in voting for “the Biofuels Personality of the Year”.

5. Invited international selectors. The Digest will finalize its list of international selectors on Monday August 23rd. If you would like to serve as a selector, please download the selector nomination form here. Non-US selectors are especially encouraged to nominate, as we are significantly expanding our non-US panel this year.

6. Registration and nomination. Companies should register for the rankings process, though registration is not a requirement to be ranked. All registered companies will be included in the Selectors Data Book for 2010/11, and for selected companies, may be profiled in Biofuels Digest or its affiliated publications during the nominations and voting period. To register, download the registration form here, and return it to Biofuels Digest.

7. Commencing Monday, August 9, 2010, the Digest will profile and analyze candidates for the Hot 50 in the daily newsletter.

8. Voting Period. The nominations period will be open from today through October 31, 2010, and voting will commence for the panel of international selectors on Monday, November 1st. Subscriber voting will open up on November 3rd, and will continue through Monday November 22nd.

The 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy for 2009-10 are:

1. Solazyme
2. POET
3. Amyris Biotechnologies
4. BP Biofuels
5. Sapphire Energy
6. Coskata
7. DuPont Danisco
8. LS9
9. Verenium
10. Mascoma

11. Novozymes
12. UOP Honeywell
13. Gevo
14. Range Fuels
15. Abengoa Bioenergy
16. PetroAlgae
17. Synthetic Genomics
18. Petrobras
19. Bluefire Ethanol
20. ZeaChem

21. Virent
22. Qteros
23. Iogen
24. Algenol
25. Enerkem
26. Genencor
27. Shell
28. Ceres
29. ExxonMobil
30. Cobalt Biofuels

31. Aurora Biofuels
32. Joule Biotechnologies
33. Syngenta
34. KL Energy
35. Codexis
36. IneosBio
37. Renewable Energy Group
38. Rentech
39. Praj Industries
40. Neste Oil

41. LanzaTech
42. OriginOil
43. Choren
44. Solix
45. Chemrec
46. Dynamotive
47. Terrabon
48. Fulcrum Bioenergy
49. SG Biofuels
50. Inbicon

At issue: is burning biomass carbon-neutral, and are there other emissions associated with it that make biomass an unappealing alternative to the burning of fossil fuels.

“Biomass incinerators, wrongfully promoted as clean and green under various proposed energy and climate bills, will make Americans sick, destroy our forests, dry up our rivers, and pollute the air,” writes Patricia Charles, who also acts as a public relations consultant to biofuel companies such as Qteros.

According to the Campaign, “Recent science has destroyed the myth that biomass burning is “carbon neutral” – the erroneous assumption that lets biomass get the same subsidies as clean energy sources that don’t have smokestacks belching pollution 24/7/365.”

At issue: carbon debt

The problem of carbon neutrality, and the theory of carbon debt are simply explained: when harvesting biomass, the biomass process releases stored carbon in the form of direct emissions (through burning), and also releases emissions in the form of energy applied to grow and harvest biomass. Though re-growth will eventually re-absorb the direct emissions in the form of new growth, there is a time lag, and that lag is presented as a “carbon debt”.

And, how is carbon counted?

For example, if we count carbon storage first and carbon release afterwards, then direct emissions are simply returning carbon to the atmosphere that have already been sequestered. By this method, we have a carbon surplus during the period that biomass is growing, and the balance returns to zero when the biomass is burned.

Here’s the other way to count.

We can count the biomass emissions first, and then consider that the biomass re-growth is restoring the stored carbon that was emitted when it was burned. By this method, we have a carbon debt during the period when the biomass is growing, and the balance returns to zero when the biomass is fully grown.

It’s a semantic point, and feels like a wonky debate. But this distinction has been used by the green left-wing to derail biomass legislation in Massachusetts. According to the Campaign, “Massachusetts is changing its laws, and the activists urged Congress to use Massachusetts law as a template and require proper accounting of the massive CO2 emissions generated from biomass incineration.”

So it’s a material issue. Broadly, there would be agreement that first growth forest or prairie would represent a stored carbon resource where emissions would be counted first, regrowth second, and a carbon debt would be incurred.

But, with second growth forest or cultivated land, which comes first, the chicken or the egg. On the green right-wing, the argument is that biomass growth should be counted first, and emissions second – so that the burning of biomass is working down a cyclical surplus, not creating a debt.

Crisis in the Evergreen State

Ironically, the front lines appeared to be manned in Washington state, the “Evergreen state”, and at Evergreen State College, one of the most liberal colleges in the country. A president of the institution, back in the 1970s, Dan Evans, was the founder (when Washington state governor) of the first state-level Department of Ecology, and that Department served as a blueprint for the original design of the Environmental Protection Agency. Ironies abound.

On the green left, the No Biomass Burn group, led by Seattle environmental activist and occasional gubernatorial candidate, Duff Badgley, who in recent years has been often spotted protesting against biodiesel at Propel Biofuels stations around the city. According to a report in the Seattle Times, the group contends that “the college biomass project would emit twice as much carbon dioxide as the gas-fired plant, and 20 percent more of other pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, particulate matter and carbon monoxide.

On the green right, professor Rob Cole told the Times that “As long as the wood waste used by Evergreen is replenished in the forest, the net effect is that carbon released in the atmosphere is equal to the carbon stored in the trees.” College facilitiess director Paul Smith also told the Times that the No Biomass Group had not waited for the feasibility report to come out before protesting against the project, and predicted that the scientific assessment would show that biomass non-carbon emissions would be less harmful than those from natural gas.

What is a material carbon debt?

No matter in which order the various critics and proponents of biomass incineration count the emissions, there is the problem of defining what a material carbon debt, in fact, is, and how to model long term carbon-storing strategies.

As the Digest reported in “Fuzzy Math: 6th Most Overlooked Biofuels Story of 2010“: “The lesson for policymakers,” we quoted an Iowa State research team in Chicken Little, Corn Little, Jatropha Little: Is the Sky Really Falling? , “is that results from economic models depend heavily on assumptions, and because we are trying to predict long-run human behavior, there can be legitimate differences in these assumptions.” In its February article, the Digest revealed that simply assuming a one percent increase in corn yields per decade, reduced a projected carbon debt by 80 percent, and increasing yields by one percent per year (as they are currently increasing now), the carbon debt is virtually wiped out.

Meanwhile, the National Anti-Biomass Incineration and Forest Protection Campaign contends that “that the Senate and House energy and farm bills, and proposed federal Renewable Electricity Standards, include dirty energy made from incinerators that burn trees and garbage for falsely labeled “clean energy.” They also told Congress that Senator Wyden’s forest bill and others promoting more logging of our nation’s forests for fuel for these incinerators will destroy our carbon-absorbing forests, leading to more global warming.”

One potato, two potato

Who’s right? The central issue is the counting order of emissions and re-growth. As any child or grow-up veteran of schoolyard counting games like “one potato, two potato” will tell you, it all comes down to a question of where the counts starts.

If the count starts where you like it, you’re in. If it starts where you don’t, you’re out. Though biomass producers often busy themselves with the business of renewables, it may be time to not only stand up and be counted, but to ensure that the counting is done in an appropriate order.

Readers: I am delighted to announce Biofuels Digest’s Advanced Biofuels Markets on November 9-10, 2010 in San Francisco, which will feature the largest assemblage of CEOs of the “50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy” since our Washington DC conference in April.

The full agenda and registration information is here.

Sponsorship and exhibition information is here.

Our goal in San Francisco: to address the near-term, immediate steps towards commercialization of bioenergy, including a special series of presentations and dialogue on renewable chemicals, plastics, organic acids and other bio-based materials.

True innovators in bioenergy, from production to finance

We’ll host the true innovators in the financing of bioenergy – such as the Stern Brothers/Mintz Levin proposed bond financing of commercial-scale plants, and a visit from Tom Baruch and Alan Shaw, who as chairman and CEO of Codexis led the first successful IPO in the field this year for some time. Plus, we will have strategic investors on hand to present their vision of how they are driving value for their companies through their investment portfolios.

In short, we want to analyze what is working, outline the conditions moving forward, and maximize opportunities to develop relationships for the taking of next steps towards commercialization.

Making high-level networking and partnership happen

I also plan to work hard, as in Washington, to make sure that every attendee has a full diary of side-meetings and briefing opportunities. The presentations will be excellent, but even more important are the side-meetings that turn into commercialization opportunities.

We’ll also have Administration officials on hand from USDA and DOE to update us on the policy front – those of you who know the central role that Bill Hagy plays at USDA will want to hear his latest views. We’ve also just received word that Mike McAdams, president of the Advanced Biofuels Association, will join us for a special presentation.

The conference agenda is here – but there is much more to the ABLC than just the formal agenda. The Biofuels Digest team has attended a lot of conferences over the past two years – we intend to emulate those features that work well at other conferences, and improve others, and offer a few new features. In particular, we wanted to improve the quality and quantity of networking opportunities, informal dialogue, and side events.

The conference will be held at the beautiful Stanford Court Hotel, and the Bay Area location is excellent for those who have partnership opportunities, are raising a new round of finance, or are located in the Golden State or elsewhere in the West.

30 Transformative Technologies Awards reception and 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy finalist announcements

For companies recently recognized among the “30 Transformative Technologies,” we will have an awards event on the first evening, and will also be announcing the finalists in the 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy for 2010-11, as we enter the final weeks of voting.

Our partner: Greenpower Conferences, producer of World Biofuels Markets

Our partner in this endeavor: Greenpower Conferences, which presents World Biofuels Markets each year in Europe, the most prestigious global event in bioenergy which this year attracted 1400 delegates.  The Digest has had a very successful association with Greenpower over the past year, and we are delighted to have a partner with global vision and impact. We believe that Advanced Biofuels Markets will reflect the very best of what World Biofuels Markets has come to mean for the industry as well as having a unique strength in offering networking opportunities, a focus on dialogue, and a US-based venue.

Private briefing on US elections impact

In addition, I will be conducting a private briefing on the impact of the US November elections, and you’ll have an opportunity to meet with the Digest’s writers and editors about your plans, and making sure we shine a light on your achievements.

As with our April event, since we are emphasizing networking, dialogue, and the exchange of ideas, there are some limitations imposed by room size. I encourage you to register promptly, as we are expecting a sellout. As you may recall, our April event sold out in February – so I encourage you to register early and take advantage of the reduced “early bird” rates.

A list of speakers is included here. We should have an additional announcement on some exciting keynote speakers within 30 days.

The conference agenda and full event information is here.

We are also formally opening the process today for conference sponsorships that will help those of you with special visibility and commercial goals. More information on Sponsorship & exhibition opportunities can be found here.

Registration for the conference, as well as details on the Stanford Court Hotel, including special conference rates, are here.

On behalf of the entire Digest team, we look forward to seeing you in San Francisco and making it a very successful week for you in terms of knowledge gained, relationships established, and missions accomplished.

US states with existing Renewable Power Standards are marked in organge

For a long time there has been discussion of 20 percent renewable power standards in a wide assortment of countries. There’s squabbling about the exact percentages, and the merits of solar, wind, biomass, geo and hydro — but it’s a conversation that hasn’t gone away, and won’t.

Why? To meet the 2050 global carbon goals and provide power for a world population growing in numbers and affluence, a 20 percent RPS is a minimal standard, no more or less than a material first step.

With carbon legislation under consideration this month in the United States Senate, its worth looking at the impact of such a transition on the economics of power generation. These have been studied in depth many times, and industry conferences and the halls of academia and government could be effectively wallpapered with all the pages of impact analysis that have been generated.

But studies do not always equate to readership, and the reason is often that the very sophistication and depth that is the hallmark of a study, is the kiss of death in terms of achieving a broad readership. There are many members of the green-conscious society who would rather spend the evening with an insurance salesman than wade through an academic journal.

Getting a member of Congress to master the fine points of economic analysis is even harder. Congress is a world of five-minute meetings, and the most effective impact analyses are those which can be communicated in the 140-character world of a Twitter post.

So, without limiting ourselves to 140 characters, let’s go through some of the numbers and impact, with simplicity. We’ll look at the US, but the math will be a fair proxy for other countries.

Renewables by the numbers

The United States generates about 4000 terawatts of power per year – never mind exactly what a terawatt is. We produce about 10 percent of our needs today from renewables. In a 20 percent scenario, we’ll need 10 more – or 400 terawatts.

Hydro and geothermal have development limits, solar is a beautiful infant, nuclear takes forever, and there’s only so much wind that can be built at one time without toppling the credit markets and overloading the grid. In a five-year, near term scenario, we’d be darn lucky to add 11 terawatts from all those sources.

Even so, we’d be doubling the capacity of that entire sector – the 50 year history of that buildout reduplicated in just five years.

What’s left? Biomass. Whether you think of it as the “friendly fuel” or the “scourge of mankind”, its infrastructure and capital light. Co-firing or conversion, its the near-term technology that’s available.

Usually, we burn wood when we burn biomass, but wood takes quite a while to grow, and the near-term play is in energy grasses.

Since you get about 1000 kilowatt hours per ton of switchgrass, you need 250 million tons to produce the extra 250 terawatts of power from new generation.

That uses up about 30 million acres, at 8 tons an acre (if you can get those yields, planting in such a darn hurry). Sure, wood will take up some of that, and energy canes where they grow well, but this is the Twitter version of an impact analysis, so we’ll keep it simple.

Someone is going to have to pay for all that biomass. Switchgrass will cost 10 cents per KWh on a good day with that kind of need for added production – that’s around $100 per ton, and the price for biomass is already at those levels in some markets without the full-court press of a national price on carbon.

Coal costs around 5 cents per Kwh.

Doesn’t sound like much, but it adds up quickly. The differential is around $15 billion. That can be absorbed in the form of tax, or rate increases. Throw in a few pennies for the impact of other new renewables generation, and we look at $20 billion per year in added cost, excluding the capital cost of new generation from wind, solar and geo.

The bottom line

That’s about $200 per household per year, $4 per week, or about 60 cents per day. That’s the kind of metric that can really cheese off an annoyed electorate, fed up with government spending.

But look at it another way. Hurricane Katrina caused $125 billion in total damages. And anyone who thinks that global warming will cause less economic impact than Katrina hasn’t been looking at the numbers.

Global warming believer? Renewables are a must, with a superior ROI to “do-nothingism”.

Global warming skeptic. Still sounds like an affordable hedge, with a pay-off in lower rates down the line, should all the carbon chat turn to nothing and tons more fossil fuel resources be uncovered.

Capacity builds can be tough asks for investors and financiers, but they always, always pay off for the end-user.

Ah, no reasons to worry. As in, Hakuna matata. She’ll be apples, matey.

But we get a slightly less rosy picture from those in the business of financing biomass. Paul Battelle, Deutsche Bank director of renewable energy financing: “Historically, power and energy projects that have undertaken unhedged commodity risk such as electricity price risk and biofuel related price risks have performed poorly for banks. We like green certificates, but especially feed-in tariffs, as they have historically offered good certainty.”

So, perhaps there’s a little too much hakuna in our previous matata. Both Batelle and Hodson share an interest in the “sure thing” – one in the post-carbon society, the other in the making of money. Nothing wrong in that – just doing their respective jobs – one looking after the future of the planet, one looking after the money to pay for it. It’s self-interest at work.

But there are more actors than policy makers and bankers in the world of biomass and power. For example, there are the farmers. Where are they?

Bette Jean Crews, Ontario Federation of Agriculture president, articulates: “Until Ontario Power Generation says they are actually going to buy it, and what they are going to pay for it, farmers need that information before they can do the math and see whether they can afford to grow it.”

Ah, chicken and the egg. “We’ll plan to grow it if you buy it, and you’ll plan to buy it if we agree to grow it.” It’s more than self-interest at work, of course – its the survival instinct. Absent a market maker, buyers and sellers struggle to make transactions, become nervous, and stall.

Even amongst those who have vision to pioneer, there are challenges and reasons for hesitation.

In the UK, the country’s largest power station Drax ahas announced plans that it will convert one of its boilers to biomass. Though the coal-based plant has been co-fired with biomass for the past seven years, converting a single boiler to completely biomass could reduce the carbon dioxide from the plant by 4.4 million metric tons a year, the equivalent to taking 1.2 million cars off the road.

If the experiment goes well, Drax may look at converting its other five boilers to biomass as well. The company says the government’s lack of subsidies for biomass power is hindering the industry’s transition to greener fuels.

The lesson? Biomass is a value-chain of many actors, and renewable energy as a whole involves far more than a mandate. What is required is the catalyst that certainty brings, and certainty flows from solid partnerships and certainty begins with policy stability. That stimulates the utility, who in terms gives the certainty to the feedstock provider and the technology vendor.

Those who have the broadest capital or social base have the obligation to create the rules of engagement by which any new technology is adopted. Let us not forget that the government did more than subsidize the internet, it picked up every dime of the tab for development and deployment for a quarter century. Having been initially funded in 1966, it was commercialized in 1991, and gained traction within just a few years after that.

Where would we be without the internet? Better to ask where would we be without the policy stability that created it? Nowhere, that’s where, despite any well expressed thoughts on the internet’s inevitability from any quarter, EU or otherwise, or any other technology platform, like renewables, that has the power to transform society.

It takes a village to raise a child, and policy writ in 20-year increments to raise a platform. One that is in place, well may we say Hakuna Matata, and not before.