Gas 2.0

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As if there isn’t enough bio-diesel controversy over the food for fuel debate now we have a little skirmish arising here in San Francisco. When we walk by any San Francisco restaurant (particularly the ones that have that delish yet oh so bad for you fried cuisine) we can smell where this fuss originated – the fryers. Yes, it’s that oh so wonderful french fry grease that companies like Blue Sky Bio-fuels and Got Grease work with to create biofuel. To us this method makes much more sense to reuse old oil and grease than to the create fuel directly from real food.

In this case the grease skirmish remains between the City of San Francisco and the private sector. Both Got Grease and Blue Sky pick up grease (usually for free) from small restaurants, but now the City jumped into the fryer and collects it as well. The fact that the City collects the oil isn’t a problem but the fact that the City has been using health inspectors to secure oil from the restaurants smells like burnt oil to us. Apparently a letter from the City exists that says something to the effect of “The City has been so busy collecting restaurant oil that we haven’t had time to write up violations.” Should we call this mess “Greasefellas”? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to believe that one of America’s greenest cities lacks a true biodiesel station. Yes, San Francisco has an Olympic station on Third Street however is only supplies commercially licensed diesel vehicles with “B20” which even in the controversial biodiesel world isn’t that green. If the building and fire departments sign off, then Dogpatch Biofuels will open in the near future. Yes, we can wait to smell all the great restaurant cooking oil waste from SF’s top level eateries filled into the hungry car engines. Read the rest of this entry »

AutoblogGreen reported today that the cellulosic ethanol company Mascoma has received another $10 million for research and development from Marathon Oil. This comes after GM’s undisclosed equity share in the same company was announced last week, and puts the grand total raised in this round of financing at $100 million. Read the rest of this entry »

General Motors announced today it would be entering into a strategic relationship with Mascoma Corp., a second-generation biofuel company with the technology to produce cellulosic ethanol from non-food sources via a single-step biochemical conversion.

The undisclosed equity share aims to contribute to joint research and development along with technology exchange, plant siting, and rapid commercialization of cellulosic ethanol technology and infrastructure. This is GM’s second investment in a cellulosic ethanol company, after announcing partnership with Coskata back in January. Read the rest of this entry »

Range Fuels Inc. announced yesterday it has secured over $100 million in Series B funding, an investment that could make it the first company to seriously commercialize cellulosic ethanol. The first phase of construction will produce 20 million gallons of mixed alcohols per year by 2009, and has the potential to expand to up to 120 million gallons.

Range Fuels says their facility will break down any type of plant material (eg agricultural waste or wood chips) by a two-step thermochemical process. This differs from competing methods of producing cellulosic ethanol, which involve breakdown of plant material with heat and/or acid, and treating it with costly ($0.50/gallon) enzymes.

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After one year of collaborative research, Shell and Virent Energy Systems announced they will be trying to produce a biogasoline directly from plant sugars—as opposed to producing ethanol—with the intention of offering a fuel that can be used at high ratios in standard gasoline engines.

Instead of processing sugars into ethanol via fermentation, Virent’s trademarked “BioForming” technology uses catalysts to convert the sugars into a biogasoline. Virent claims their fuel has the same hydrocarbon content as gasoline, and has a higher energy content than both ethanol and biobutanol, which gives it a greater fuel efficiency. Virent says they can also use non-food feedstocks, such as corn stover and switchgrass, to produce the fuel.

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Is it going to come down to a choice between eating or driving? Is that what are future holds? If it does, it looks like the driving contingent may win (or in other words many others will lose…or starve). That’s a distorted overview of last night’s EcoNow presentation that highlighted the current and future state of biofuel. Actually I like the term that one of the speakers Eric Holt-Giménez used - “agrofuels” rather than “biofuels” because “bio” means “life” which certainly doesn’t represent these alt fuels.

The event held in Berkeley (where else?) gave Tad Patzek, Professor of Geoengineering at UC Berkeley, Miguel Altieri, Professor of Agroecology at UC Berkeley, Eric Holt-Giménez, Executive Director of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, and Judith Mayer, Project Coordinator of the Borneo Project a chance to educate or frighten the audience into what’s happening with agrofuels, whether it’s ethanol, B20, or something else that makes our cars go.

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Yesterday the New York Times’ Dot Earth blog put up an excited post about a Los Alamos National Laboratory plan to convert CO₂ into truly greenhouse-neutral synthetic gasoline and ethanol via “an electrochemical process.” Two hours later the blog had to temper its enthusiasm, having noticed that it would take huge amounts of energy, probably from nuclear power, to make it work.

This sort of thoughtless enthusiasm is way too common. At least no investors lost money this time, or, rather, yet.

I don’t want to insult anyone, but I think the real problem is that people don’t understand the chemistry — not even at a freshman level — that’s involved in thinking about what it would take to turn CO₂ into fuel on an industrial scale.

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With all the writing we’ve done recently about the Coskata partnership with GM, and the unique process the company’s created to make ethanol from almost any material containing carbon, you might think we’re getting paid to cover this. That’s not the case, of course; rather, this news points to some really exciting new directions in ethanol development. We’ve got some more posts up on Coskata… but not here at Gas 2.0…

Today, we rolled out the newest member of the Green Options Media blog network, CleanTechnica. Both lead writer Sarah Lozanova, and our publisher, David Anderson, “baptized” our new clean technology blog by sharing what they learned on a tour of Coskata’s facility in the Chicago suburbs. Team member Michelle Bennett also dug into a topic we’ll cover frequently there: solar panels (specifically, cheap and free ones).

While there may be a little bit of topical overlap between these two blogs, we’ll tend to keep alternative fuels developments here at Gas 2.0, while other clean tech stories will appear at CleanTechnica. We hope you’ll make both blogs a part of your daily reading, and that you’ll let us know how we’re doing on both.

Coskata, the ethanol technology company who made a major announcement about their biofuel technology at the North American International Auto Show earlier this year, has announced that they have established an alliance with ICM, Inc., a major producer of ethanol, to design and construct the first plant that will produce ethanol using Coskata’s bio-process. The plant is expected to open late in 2010, reflecting Coskata’s intentions to bring their technology rapidly to market. No location was announced for the site where this plant will be built.

Previous Coskata news on Gas 2.0:
GM Announces Biofuel Partnership: Cheap Green Ethanol
More About the Coskata Process