“Maker’s Mark’s new facility will anaerobically treat the liquid portion of the whole stillage and process waters produced during bourbon-making, generating methane-rich biogas, a renewable energy source, that will offset 165 MMBtu, or 15 - 30%, of the facility’s natural gas consumption.”

Ecovation is also working with Simi Winery in Sonoma County, to help lighten the burden on publicly-owned treatment facilities by using an ecologically sound method of pre-treating wastewater. The company won a 2007 Environmental Excellence Award from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for its dairy waste stream management solution for Breyers Yogurt Co.

Image Credit: Maker’s Mark

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Sure, it’s easy enough for one person to attempt energy self-sufficiency: put a solar panel on your roof, run your car on biodiesel, and you’re halfway there. But how easy is it for an entire town to become self-sufficient?

That’s the question that Reynolds, Indiana has been trying to answer for the past 3 years. In 2005, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels declared the town to be BioTown, USA—a model of energy self-sufficiency for the state.

The town was chosen mainly because of its small size (pop. 547), excellent rail and road access, and proximity to organic waste (within 15 miles of more than 150,000 hogs). According to the BioTown website, the finished project will showcase efficient methods of converting biomass into energy, use bioenergy to fuel homes and businesses throughout the town, promote alternative energies across the United States, and show that agricultural energy is safe, reliable, and consistent.

These are certainly some lofty goals for such a tiny town, and progress on the project has been slow. In fact, external signs of energy independence in Reynolds have been few and far between. So where does the project stand now?

As of June 9th, the White County Area Planning Commission voted to recommend approval of a re-zoning to allow construction of a methane gas-producing digester. This would use animal and human waste to create methane, which would power local homes and businesses.

However, there are still many hoops for the town to jump through before achieving energy independence. While the proposed methane digester will be useful, it may not be enough. And even if it is, the White County Commissioners still need to ultimately decide whether to approve the re-zoning request.

Reynolds is a prime example of why communities need to prepare for energy crises far in advance. If it takes a prominent project such as BioTown, USA nearly 5 years to achieve their goal—with a population of 547—how long will it take grassroots initiatives in larger towns and cities?

More Posts on Energy and Sustainability:

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• How Peak Oil-Ready Is Your City?
• Nebraska Aims Move from 19th to 6th in Wind Power

Via: It’s Getting Hot in Here

For a more in depth post on the anti-farting vaccine, please visit Planetsave.

Aw, c’mon, pull my finger!

You’ve probably had that one pulled (pardon the pun) on you at least once in your life, and the old guy got a good laugh out of your response. It’s ok, old guys do strange things, I know.

Well, this isn’t about old guys, but sheep, cattle, deer and goats, the premier emitters of methane gas in the world. In this case, nature is “pulling the finger.”

For New Zealand, according to the Telegraph, its 45 million sheep and 10 million cattle are responsible for more than half of that nation’s methane emissions. That’s a lot of burping and farting, but the country is trying to meet the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

Don’t laugh, to New Zealand’s government this is serious stuff, so serious that an animal “flatulence tax” may be imposed on farmers. They’ve reportedly shown their disapproval by sending parcels of manure to members of parliament.

Estonians, meanwhile, have just lifted a tax on cattle methane emissions. Farms housing more than 300 cows or 2000 pigs would have been assessed an annual tax of about $5000 each. Protests have halted that action, at least for the time being. It’s said that cattle account for 18% of that country’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

Science To The Rescue!

According to Phil Goff, New Zealand’s trade minister, scientists in that country have mapped the genome that causes methane in ruminant animals. That, he says, can lead to a vaccine that would turn off the fart switch and reduce greenhouse gasses.

It may be a while, but Goff told an Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development meeting in Paris that a solution to the problem was in sight.

Scientists in Australia have reportedly developed a burp vaccine that acts against the archaean microbes that produce methane in sheep rumens. It was apparently somewhat successful.

Is There a Future for a Flatulence Shot?

In the U.S., it’s reported that about 2 percent of this country’s methane emissions come from livestock. Research is continuing on altering an animals diet, and changing the way fertilizers are used where livestock graze. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) outlines methane emissions from all sources on their website.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says scientists estimate livestock are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

Shots of the kind proposed by New Zealand scientists could make a big impact on greenhouse gasses, especially in smaller countries with large amounts of domestic and wild ruminants.

Do Humans Add to Greenhouse Emissions?

Of course you know, as long as we depend on livestock for the major portion of our protein and other nutritional needs, we add to greenhouse gas numbers by merely sitting down to a steak, or some bacon and eggs. I suspect, however, the steak will win out, after all we’re paying record amounts for gasoline and we’re still driving our gas guzzlers every day, adding even more pollutants to the air we breathe.

And then, maybe we might look at insects as a possibility. If you haven’t read my recent post, take a look.

Well, just thought you’d like to know that help may be on the way for those countries awash in livestock-emitted methane, and maybe, someday, for humans too. No, our “gas” emissions are small in comparison, and only a minor irritant if you happen to be downwind of someone with a problem.

Mother earth has her own way of belching methane, something that’s caused some severe changes in the planet’s weather. Read Joshua S Hill’s blog; Methane Could Kick-Start Increased Warming“.

Image Credit: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y231/graceville/rms_livestock2.jpg

This facility at Waste Management’s (WMI: NYSE) Altamont Landfill in Livermore, California will begin operation in 2009. It comes with a price tag of $15.5 million, with grants providing $1.4 million.

Cleaner Fuel

Waste Management is the largest waste management company in North America and operates the largest US fleet of heavy-duty collection trucks. The company has a goal to reduce fleet emissions by 15% by 2020.

The new facility will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 30,000 tons per year, according to Linde North America. LNG is a cleaner burning transportation fuel that emits less nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and particulates than diesel-fueled vehicles.

Duane Woods, senior vice president, Western group of Waste Management, said, “This will be the largest plant of its kind and we hope to break new ground by producing commercial quantities. Natural gas is already the cleanest burning fuel available for our collection trucks, and the opportunity to use recovered landfill gas offers enormous environmental benefits to the communities we serve.”

Demand for Low-carbon Fuels

California passed a law to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2020 and other states may follow. Demand for low-carbon fuels is expected to increase significantly in California as the state starts requiring a decrease in carbon emissions. Waste Management will be ahead of the curve by having plants like this in operation, creating lucrative business opportunities.

Related Posts on Alternative Fuels:

• Landfill Gas Heats and Powers School
• The Cleanest Cars on Earth: Honda Civic GX and Other Natural Gas Vehicles (NGV’s)
• Natural Gas Cars: CNG Fuel Almost Free in Some Parts of the Country

Photo Credit: Waste Management

While the national average price of gasoline is now $3.60, some residents of Utah are happily filling up on compressed natural gas (CNG) at $0.63 per gallon. That’s the country’s lowest price for CNG, which has understandably caused a surge in demand for vehicles running on a fuel that one man described as “practically free.”

So far, CNG vehicles haven’t made a blip on my radar screen, even though the group Natural Gas Vehicles for America (NGVA) estimates there are 150,000 NGVs on U.S. roads today and over 5 million worldwide. It took a phone call from sunny Southern Utah to clue me in to recent developments, which include a local refueling station overflowing with CNG-hungry vehicles.

There are about 1500 CNG refueling stations in the US, which is about the same number of commercial stations offering E85 ethanol blends. Utah has a total of 91 CNG filling stations, most of which are reserved for commercial fleet use, but there are 20 open to the public. According to an article by the Associated Press, you could drive Utah from top to bottom and hit 22 different stations offering compressed natural gas.

The NGVA also says there are 50 different manufacturers producing 150 models of light, medium and heavy-duty vehicles and engines that run on compressed natural gas. Unfortunately, there’s only one for sale to individuals, Honda’s Civic GX, and it’s only offered in California and New York (although Utah could be next on the list). California ranks highest in number of CNG refueling stations, but fuel prices are also higher—more like $2.50 per gallon.

There’s so much demand now in Utah for CNG-ready vehicles that Honda can’t make them fast enough. Savvy customers are buying the vehicles from other states and shipping them back for sale. But waiting for a new Honda Civic GX to role off the assembly line isn’t the only option. It’s also possible to convert a used vehicle to run on natural gas, like Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who converted his state-owned Chevy Suburban. And for either used or new vehicles, the tax incentives are substantial. Combining state and federal tax credits in Utah can almost completely offset the approximately $7,000 difference in price between regular and CNG-ready vehicles.

One of the major benefits of using compressed natural gas is a significant reduction in emissions when compared to gasoline. Compressed natural gas is touted as the “cleanest burning” alternative fuel available, since the simplicity of the methane molecule reduces tailpipe emissions of different pollutants by 35-97%. Not quite as dramatic is the reduction in net greenhouse-gas emissions, which is about the same as corn-grain ethanol at about a 20% reduction over gasoline.

The big question in Utah is whether or not the infrastructure can keep up with the amount of new CNG cars on the road. Utah already has 5,000 CNG vehicles, up from none a few years ago, essentially overwhelming the refueling network.

Then, of course, there’s the question of natural gas supply. According to the NGVA, worldwide supply of natural gas is almost infinite, assuming we can tap into methane hydrate ice formations at the bottom of the arctic oceans. If we can’t figure that out, we can just drill more (please note the sarcastic tone):

…there are huge natural gas resources on public lands in the U.S. that currently are off-limits to drilling. These include areas a hundred miles or more off the coast of Florida and America’s east and west coast as well as the Rocky Mountain area. The current run-up in natural gas prices is increasing political pressure to allow gas exploration and production in these areas.

More promising is the potential of bio-methane, or the production of methane from the natural breakdown of plant material, something already captured by landfills in the US. The NGVA says that waste biomass could supply enough natural gas for about 11 million natural gas vehicles, which is approximately 5% of the nation’s automotive fleet.

This is certainly something to watch out for, and maybe even participate in if you live in Utah. Now that it’s got my attention, I’ll be taking a closer look at the Honda Civic GX this week, a car that has been called the cleanest burning vehicle on the planet.

More on Compressed Natural Gas Vehicles:

The Cleanest Cars on Earth: Honda Civic GX and Other Natural Gas Vehicles (NGVs)

For more on this story, see Natural-gas vehicles hot in Utah, where the fuel is cheap. Also see How Natural Gas Vehicles Work for more background.

Photo Credit

Excess heat can be used for dehumidification, heating water, and process heat. In an ideal world, the electricity and heating loads for the given application are similar. Hospitals, prisons, paper mills, oil refineries, waste water treatment centers, and even large towns can be good candidates for this technology. Your car can even be an example, with waste heat from the engine being used to warm the interior.
Case study: Antioch Community High School

Twelve micro-turbines are powered by landfill gas (LFG), producing .36 megawatt hours of electricity and heat for the 250,000 square foot school. This was the first high school in the country to utilize LFG for this purpose and savings are an estimated $100,000 annually in energy costs.

LFG is pumped from an adjacent landfill, which was previously a superfund site. The annual greenhouse gas reduction is equal to removing 3,000 cars from the road.

Case study: Chicago Museum of Science and Industry

Since 1933, the museum has been one of the largest tourist attractions for the city and now has another noteworthy feature. A 1.75 megawatt cogeneration system was recently installed that produces electricity, heat, and dehumidifies the museum.

The dehumidifiers can treat an impressive 10,000 cubic feet per minute and operate approximately 3,380 hours a year. Because the heating season in Chicago is about 7 months of the year, this function provides value to the museum during the cooling months as well.

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Illustration Credit: Graham Murdoch

The Swedish University for Agricultural Sciences has just received $590,000 to support research into how diet affects a cow’s methane emissions. Livestock are blamed for 28 percent of the world’s human-caused emissions of methane, a much more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

Photo courtesy of Man vyi at Wikimedia Commons

Chicken poop ain’t pretty, but it’s potential as an energy source has a number of large-scale poultry operations taking a second look at the smelly stuff. The price tags on such projects can climb pretty high, though: Georgia’s Green Power EMC project, for instance, was projected to cost $20 million when announced in early 2006. These costs may make such projects prohibitive in the developing world, where they could raise living standards of impoverished people while helping them “leapfrog” over Western development patterns based on fossil fuels. South African farmer Shelby Tyne (shown above) believes he’s hit upon the cost-benefit sweet spot for this technology: for $37,000 dollars, Tyne and partner Derrick Hilton have built a biogas plant that powers the entire farm… without even pushing maximum capacity.

Tyne tells the story of the biogas plant in this Facebook video (note: you do have to be a member of Facebook to watch it). His and Hilton’s Greenways Farm had taken chicken poop off of a neighboring farmer’s hands for a number of years to use as fertilizer, but stockpiling the litter created pollution problems. Tyne’s solution: put the poop into methane digesters, and use the resulting gas as fuel for both cooking stoves and a generator. He quickly figured out that with the amount of chicken litter they normally used, the farm could create 11,000 kW h of electricity per month: more than three times what it normally consumed. On paper, the project looked like a no-brainer.

When Shelby contacted me last week, he didn’t spend a lot of time explaining the technical details of the plant: he let the video do that (and so will I). Rather, he made the case that his model could provide an affordable power generation option for developing areas of the world, or even for farmers in the developed world struggling to make ends meet. Given the overall simplicity of the design, it’s hard to see how that’s not a safe assumption. One thing he did ask me (and I’ll pass on to you): would his design meet minimal environmental standards in places like the US? I couldn’t say one way or the other, so I’m interested to hear what you think.

I do think that the Greenways Farm biogas plant has real potential as a model for other parts of the world. Tyne used common materials (i.e., the digesters themselves are made from tarpaulins), and the engineering looks pretty basic. And, of course, chicken poop isn’t requirement: almost any kind of animals waste (including carcasses) could feed the digesters. I remember that Jeff Goodell, in Big Coal, told the story of a remote Chinese farmer using a small methane digester to create gas for cooking. Is this technology, when developed on an appropriate scale, a potential world-changer for the poor?

According to EcoMall, "Breastfeeding is probably the most overlooked means of contributing to the health of our planet" and parentingweb states, "Breastmilk is actually the most ecological food available to humans." Wow, those are pretty strong statements. Mother's milk is completely natural (minus the toxins present from environmental contaminants), is produced without using resources (except for the resources used to produce the food the mother eats), and it creates no pollution. Breast milk comes from the mother's body and bottles are not required, unless a mother is pumping because of work schedules, etc. There is never any waste with breast milk, as healthy mothers produce the right amount of milk a child needs based on the principle of supply and demand.

In contrast, the production and packaging of infant formulas uses natural resources and takes up landfill space, all of which contribute to climate change. According to Dia Michels, author of Mother Nature Loves Breastmilk, "If every child in America were bottle-fed, almost 86,000 tons of tin would be needed to produce 550 million cans for one year's worth of formula." Furthermore, these tin cans can leach BPA into the formula. The Environmental Working Group tested infant formula and found, "For 1 in 10 cans of all food tested, and 1 in 3 cans of infant formula, a single serving contained enough BPA to expose a woman or infant to BPA levels more than 200 times the government's traditional safe level of exposure for industrial chemicals."