Award Week at POET

They say that accidents sometimes come in threes. Well, in the first half of this week, it was three straight days of awards for POET.

It started on Monday, when POET Chief Executive Officer Jeff Broin was honored by the Minnesota Corn Growers Association (MCGA) with their 2009 Kernel Award at the Minnesota Ag Expo 2010. The annual award is given to individuals who work to promote corn producers in the state of Minnesota. During the award ceremony, Broin, who is pictured here receiving the award, was praised for his work in founding the ethanol trade association Growth Energy.

On Tuesday, POET's landfill gas partnership with the City of Sioux Falls was named project of the year by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP). Read POET's press release here and the City of Sioux Falls here.

Finally, today Broin and POET Chief Financial Officer Dan Loveland were recognized by the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR) with the Patriot Award. The pair was nominated by Gina Watkins, Administrative Assistant to Jeff Broin who is currently serving overseas in the Air Guard. 

Who knows what will happen tomorrow, so stay tuned for more.

Jeff Broin in Copenhagen

Jeff Broin, POET’s CEO, arrived in Copenhagen this morning to talk about ethanol’s role in solving climate problems worldwide.

He’ll be part of a panel discussion on Wednesday titled “The global potential of biofuels,” along with other world leaders in biofuels and agriculture. It’s one of a series of events held by the Danish Climate Consortium in Copenhagen this week.

Expect cellulosic ethanol to be a large part of that discussion. In fact, there are some E85 cars in Copenhagen this week running on cellulosic ethanol from wheat straw, produced by the Inbicon demonstration plant.

In the U.S. alone, there are about a billion tons of biomass that could be used annually to produce cellulosic ethanol. That’s according to a 2005 study by the Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture. Before you ask, that does NOT include protected or inaccessible areas, environmentally sensitive land, etc.  It’s biomass that you could reasonably and responsibly harvest.

Extrapolate that billion tons out to the entire world, and it’s clear we’re talking about game-changing technology.

Jeff and the POET crew have already posted a couple photos to our Flickr site. Check back for more updates throughout the week.

Here’s some coverage of Jeff’s trip from KELO-TV in Sioux Falls:

Technorati Tags: Copenhagen,Broin,POET,Climate Consortium,cellulosic ethanol

POET featured in Accenture study on disruptive technologies in transport fuels

The global management consulting firm Accenture (NYSE: ACN) released a 300 page study titled: Betting on Science: Disruptive Technologies in Transport Fuels. The study identifies "the technologies that [Accenture] predicts are most likely to transform the demand and supply of transport fuels and cut emissions within the next five years."

One of the case studies included in the report is on POET and looks at the progress made in ethanol production over the past 20 years. That progress includes a 20 percent increase in ethanol yield, an 80 percent reduction in water usage and a 33 percent reduction in energy usage. In summarizing that data, the authors state that "POET may have mastered the art of producing ethanol from corn."

To read the four-page POET case study, click here.

To purchase the study or read a summary, click here.

Getting farmers invested in cellulosic ethanol

One challenge to commercializing cellulosic ethanol that is often overlooked is convincing enough people to grow and/or harvest your feedstock of choice.  POET’s work to clear that hurdle will continue this week. 

POET CEO Jeff Broin this Thursday will be at the National Association of Farm Broadcasting’s Trade Talk in Kansas City.  He’ll be packing as many interviews as he can into a time slot of 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

To illustrate the challenge in feedstock logistics, POET’s $80 million award from the Department of Energy (which recently got an additional $20 million boost) comes with the requirement that we process 700 tons of biomass (corn cobs, in our case) per day.  That means we’ll need about 400,000 acres of cobs harvested in the area surrounding our Emmetsburg, Iowa plant.

Cob harvesting is going to be a huge opportunity for farmers to get additional income with zero new acres going into production.  We’ve made a lot of progress in attracting farmer interest in the Emmetsburg area through events such as Project LIBERTY Field Day last week.  But we also realize those efforts must be replicated across the Corn Belt in order to expand the technology to other POET plants as well as other interested ethanol producers.

The more we can get farmers familiar with the coming revolution in agriculture, the easier that process will be.

Farmers watch the latest cob harvesting equipment in action Nov. 3 at Project LIBERTY Field Day in Emmetsburg, Iowa.

Blog Action Day: Making biobased alternatives to petroleum products

If we want to decrease greenhouse gas emissions, the world is going to have to find ways to make renewable alternatives to things that are currently made from fossil fuels. As our largest example, POET annually produces 1.5 billion gallons of ethanol that displaces gasoline from petroleum.

However, fuels are far from the only things in this country that come from petroleum. There is a long list of products that are made from oil. One of the primary areas of research and development from POET is finding renewable ingredients that can replace those that come from oil.

So on Blog Action Day, POET announces a new co-product, Inviz, a protein with little nutritional value that can replace the synthetic petroleum-based ingredients in films, packaging, adhesives, coatings and glazes, as you can read in the release.

Among the first to notice were bloggers Doris de Guzman at Green Chemicals and Cindy Zimmerman at Domestic Fuel. You can listen to interview with POET VP of Commercial Development Scott Weishaar here.

As I said in this morning's post about the scientist behind Inviz, we have many people at POET looking at many products beyond ethanol that can replace those made from fossil fuels. We're working on the biorefinery of the future (see image below). I thought that would be something worth talking about this Blog Action Day.

Moving a mountain of woodchips

After months of construction, the delivery system for POET Biorefining – Chancellor’s solid waste fuel boiler is up and running.

I had the chance to check it out this week during a visit, and it’s impressive.

A large building stores a mountain of wood chips. Each day 150-300 tons of biomass are sent up a conveyor to feed the five-story tall boiler. Although the building is large, it only holds enough biomass for three days of operation.

When you combine the biomass power with methane piped in from the Sioux Falls Regional Sanitary Landfill, enough energy is produced to handle all the plant’s energy needs for steam generation. It offsets 65 percent of the total natural gas use, including that for drying the DDGS. That number will increase as more gas is generated at the landfill.

A peek inside the boiler showed some ferocious flames; my photo doesn’t do it justice. Check out a series of pictures at POET’s Flickr page.

POET VP Testifies to EPA on Renewable Fuel Rulemaking

Dr. Mark Stowers, Vice President of Science and Technology for POET, testified today at an EPA hearing on their Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the Renewable Fuel Standard (POET statement here).

Dr. Stowers' testimony took issue with three pieces of the proposed rule:

1. EPA has not provided sufficient time and information for meaningful review and comment regarding the proposed rule.
2. EPA's proposed rule imposes extensive compliance mechanisms that will be costly and difficult to implement on the expedited schedule proposed by EPA.
3. EPA's proposed scheme for assessment and comparison of lifecycle greenhouse gas emission performance is flawed and has no basis in law or science.

On the third point, Dr. Stowers is primarily referring to indirect land use change, which was summarized in a recent post on this blog. To read his entire testimony click here.

Making sense of indirect land use change

The production of ethanol continues to get more and more efficient, decreasing the carbon footprint of an already low-carbon fuel. Modern dry-grind ethanol plants now produce a fuel with less than half the carbon intensity of gasoline, according to the latest research (pdf) published in Yale's Journal of Industrial Ecology. Some of our ethanol plants, that use alternative energy or cogeneration, fair a little better. Cellulosic ethanol, made from waste such as corn cobs, even better.

So you would think that ethanol would do well in a low carbon fuel standard, right? Well, like anything, the devil is in the details. In this case, it's in the accounting.

The carbon score of fuels is determined through a process called life-cycle analysis (LCA), which is sometimes referred to as "well-to-wheels" because you account for all of carbon released from producing or extracting the feedstock, refining it into transportation fuel, transporting it to market and burning it in vehicles.

Some now want to expand the boundaries of what is accounted for in LCA to include indirect effects. A select few researchers say that the production and use of fuels also cause carbon release indirectly. That much is true and the ethanol industry is supportive of exploring indirect effects.

However, most researchers have only focused on one indirect effect - indirect land use change (ILUC) - and the research is very new with widely varying results. If you want to learn more, I wrote a piece on it for the latest issue of Vital. There's nothing wrong with research, but now many opponents of ethanol want to insert this one indirect effect into regulatory rules in an attempt to disadvantage ethanol in the marketplace. There are at least three big problems with adding ILUC to the existing LCA of biofuels:

1. Because the research is very new, different researchers have come up with widely varying results. Some researchers have found that the land use change can be carbon negative if managed appropriately. Others, like Tim Searchinger who came up with the most dramatic ILUC impacts, have seen their research completely discredited. This give and take and the wide variations in carbon intensity attributed to ILUC has led many to conclude that the theory is not ready for regulatory use. This poin was made most recently by Professors John Matthews and Hao Tan in their appropriately titled paper Biofuels and indirect land use change effects: the debate continues (pdf).
2. The theory of ILUC is directly contradicted by real-world data. The main theory goes something like this: using corn for ethanol takes land out of the food supply and extra land will need to come into production somewhere to meet the need. The data debunking this theory was well presented in a policy paper (pdf) by Growth Energy. Suffice it to say that corn acres this year will be virtually the same as 1976, exports are within their ten-year average and deforestation drastically declined as ethanol production drastically increased.
3. But the biggest problem is that ILUC is being selectively applied by regulatory agencies like EPA and CARB. These agencies appear to be preparing carbon intensity rulings that include ILUC as the only indirect effect and then apply it only to biofuels. Unbelievably, they ignore the indirect effects for all other fuels, including petroleum, despite the fact that researchers have identified those indirect effects (pdf) as well. Other indirect effects include enhanced oil recovery projects like the Canadian Tar Sands. What's especially amazing about the lack of fairness stems from the way they calculate ILUC. It isn't done on the basis of monitoring land (since that conflicts with real-world data; see point #2 above) but rather through economic modeling. It goes somewhat like this: using more corn for ethanol makes corn more valuable, causing more farmers to switch from beans to corn, which makes beans more valuable, which causes soy producers to tear down the Amazon to plant soybeans (again, never mind the data which shows that cattle, not soy, drives Amazon deforestation). But with that model, one could fairly easily see the indirect impacts of other low-carbon means of transportation. Take natural gas. Using more natural gas in our vehicles would make natural gas more expensive, which would cause natural gas to be a less likely source for power production, which would push more power production to coal. In order to be consistent with ILUC, those emissions from the coal plant should be counted as an indirect effect of natural gas-powered vehicles.

Despite these severe problems with the theory of ILUC, many in the news media have largely taken it as gospel. The Newshour with Jim Lehrer recently ran a piece produced by Climate Central discussing the merits of ethanol as a solution to climate change and it mentioned ILUC. You can watch the piece here:

CARB is expected to rule on the inclusion of ILUC in their low carbon fuel standard this week and EPA could soon address ILUC in their LCA of biofuels under the Renewable Fuel Standard. The right thing to do is to hold off on ILUC until science has had a chance to look at all indirect effects of all fuels. To do otherwise is unfair and could increase our country's dependence on foreign oil.

Another POET ethanol plant partnership earns EPA Cogeneration Award

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awarded an ENERGY STAR Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Award to the Missouri Joint Municipal Electric Utility Commission for its combustion turbine-based system located at the POET Biorefining – Laddonia, Mo., ethanol plant. It is the third ENERGY STAR Award given to a CHP system located at a POET ethanol production facility.

Region 7 of the U.S. EPA put out a press release:

In September 2007, the heat recovery steam generation system became fully operational. Electricity is generated by a natural gas-fired turbine, which requires approximately 26 percent less fuel than typical on-site thermal generation and purchased electricity. Based on this comparison, the system reduces carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 31,000 tons per year, which is equivalent to 6,400 acres of pine or fir forests storing carbon for one year or the annual emissions from 5,200 passenger vehicles.

Waste heat is recovered from the turbine exhaust and used to produce up to 63,000 pounds of steam per hour to support ethanol production. The system generates up to 13 megawatts of electricity.

They also produced a video regarding the award that I posted to POET TV and here:

The POET story told to the UN

As I said in a previous post, POET CEO Jeff Broin is at the United Nations for a private sector forum on their Millennium Development Goals. Broin was one of two issue presenters at a roundtable discussion on energy and biofuels. He told other CEOs and UN agency heads the story of POET and why it is applicable to the millennium development goals.

You can download a PDF of his remarks here or read them on the continuation of this post.