HemperFi

API's (American Petroleum Institute) somewhat troubling policy statement on transporting ethanol in pipelines should not be missed. The statement's not-so-subtle message to pipeline operators is: "be wary of transporting ethanol in your pipelines". There's a slightly more balanced view provided by In the Pipe. Both of these pieces do not address the management tools pipeline operators have at their disposal to monitor and mitigate pipeline corrosion.

Tagging ethanol and other biofuels as a risk to pipeline operators will present transportation challenges for ethanol producers trying to get their product to filling stations. Without at doubt, limiting ethanol to truck or rail tanker transport will change the profitability of biofuel economics. At the same time, just about everything going through today's pipelines (e.g. the sulfur-rich heavy oil and sour gas) is more corrosive compared to the "sweeter" alternatives of years past.

On a different note...

The amount of press coverage ethanol and other biofuel alternatives have captured recetnly leads me to suspect that North America and Europe are on the cusp of a broad "biofuel awakening." I should add that even CSPAN has given ethanol substantial airtime (although I'm disappinted to report that no-one metntioned industrial hemp in the segment I watched)

NPR's story on Peak Oil. formally titled: "Experts Ponder Peak of Global Oil Production" provides a balanced view. In the piece, NPR cites the (optimistic) views of Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA). Given that CERA's track record is highly regarded in the industry, their perspective should not be readily discounted.

Posted by M at 10:18 PM | Permalink

Ms. Woertz:

Congratulations on your new post as CEO of Archer Daniels Midland. It's a notable switch for ADM to bring on a female from the Oil & Gas industry, and I was pleased to hear the news that ADM is serious about becoming a leader in the carbohydrate economy.

That said, HemperFi has not exactly praised ADM in previous posts. Given ADM's unmitigated pursuit for profit maximization with disregard towards the small-scale famer, it's unlikely that favorable entries will suddenly appear.

However, I'm hopeful that ADM sits at a historic crossroads. Here's a wonderful opportunity to fix a less-than-perfect (and I'm being gracious here) company history. Your noted advocacy against MTBE in the 1990s and your clear commitment to biofuels leads me to believe that perhaps we can look forward to more grounded, fairer, better governed, ADM.

And lastly, a favor. We need your help in the misguided, non-fact-based, anti industrial hemp campaign the current administration has brought to bear on the American public. It's not right for farmers and other would-be entrepreneurs, not to mention the environment and the public.

Thank You,
HemperFi

Posted by M at 12:00 AM | Permalink

CoolFuel is a new TV series that features an Australian adventurer by the name of Shaun Murphy (and Sparky, his Jack Russell sidekick) in some 18 episodes as he and crew traverse the United States using various vehicles all exclusively operated with biofuels.

As reported in the Toronto Star: "In eight months, they cover 25,750 kilometres and 30 states using bio-diesel, pure vegetable oil, corn whiskey, hot rocks (thermal energy), and, yes, cow dung and Froot Loops. Just about anything but gasoline."

Supposedly the show has received quite a bit of press. Along the way CoolFuel received help from Daryl Hannah who hosts Murphy during one episode at her fully sustainable ranch. In Episode 8, the team takes a Chevy S10 pickup truck running on hempoline (supplied by a Canadian company) across the Southern United States...as the CoolFuel web site recounts:

George Washington farmed it. Henry Ford built a car out of it. Levi Strauss made their original jeans from it. So why not fuel up with it? The COOLFUEL crew use hemp oil to make Hempoline, but their first batch is a disaster. It looks like horse manure. They manage to get moving, taking a journey through Montgomery and Selma, Alabama. Shaun sings with George Jackson (Ol’ Time Rock ‘n Roll) and the crew gets their hands on an $80,000 jet turbine engine truck. Refusing to use fossil fuel, the COOLFUEL Crew tries to run the truck on hempoline. Heading to Mississippi, the locals can’t believe the fuel; the crew can’t believe they’ve made it to the Deep South.

CoolFuel may just catch on in a big way...helping raise industrial hemp and biofuel awareness.

Posted by M at 12:50 AM | Permalink

Every industrial hemp discussion touches on ethanol. Every ethanol discussion touches on processing/refining capacity. Unfortunately, not every processing/refining discussion touches on farmer-owned facilities. The fact is that famers have been getting screwed out of the value--added processing that occurs after harvest. Capital intensive processing and refining facilities attract big business' deep pockets, and that means profit maximization. As HemperFi has already reported, farmer-owned processing plants are good, when executed properly, but as per recent experience in Manitoba, such plans can also lead astray.

Although it's a lengthy read, I've recently stumbled upon David Morris' excellent article Ownership Matters: Three Steps to Ensure a Biofuels Industry That Truly Benefits Rural America. In Ownership Matters, Morris lays out three governing principles to ensure an ethanol economy with the rural farmer as an active participant. Quoted directly from his work, the three principles are:

-- First, create an aggressive and broad national and even international educational effort focused on the importance of and benefits of farmer and local ownership.
-- Second, establish mechanisms to allow farmer-owners of ethanol facilities to get their equity out of the biorefinery while enabling continued local ownership.
--Third, change the federal ethanol incentive into a producer payment that favors local and farmer ownership.

According to Morris, John F. Kennedy once described Farming as " the only business where you buy everything retail and sell everything wholesale." Profitable rural farming hinges on equitable participation in profit margins enjoyed at the retail-end of agricultural output, not at the wholesale end.

As Morris states in The Carbohydrate Economy, Biofuels and the Net Energy Debate:

For farmers and rural areas to truly reap the rewards of a carbohydrate economy they must gain some of the value created by processing the agricultural raw materials into finished products. That can occur only if the farmer and rural residents own a share in the processing or manufacturing facility.

Posted by M at 10:31 AM | Permalink

Pennsylvania's Department of Environmental Protecion leader, Kathleen McGinty, has announced that Pennsylvania may host the largest ethanol processing plant in North America. An announcement is expected within July 15th and McGinty claims the plant could be online within 1 year.

Pennsylvania's roots in oil and coal run deep...very deep. In fact, two of the state's nicknames --"the Oil State" and "the Coal State" serve as a constant reminder of Pennsylvania's ties to hydrcarbon economy. In 1859, the birth of the modern oil industry occurred in Titusville, Pennsylvania when Colonel Edwin Drake successfully drilled on the banks of Oil Creek.

Given it's history and industrial base, I think it's profound that Pennsylvania has positioned itself as the leader of America's alternative fuels race.

It's unclear if Pennsylvania will allow one of the Big Ag guys come in and rule the roost or if incentives for distributing shares to farmers will be put into place to encourage equitable development. According the Associated Press: "The central Pennsylvania plant would start by fermenting ethanol from corn, McGinty said. But plans for the plant involve eventually using crop waste or dead forest timber to produce cellulosic ethanol, which is far more energy-efficient to produce."

Pennsylvania does not rank highly in crop production...the wheat and "feed grains" are the top agricultural exports, but the state's output for these two crops ranks 17th and 16th, respectively. Pennsylvania's agricultural output centers on dairy and cattle, not corn, soybean or other ethanol feedstocks.

So what gives? Why build an ethanol plant in a state whose farmers don't rely on offloading corn, soybean or other cellulosic content. I'm not sure, but my guess is that Pennsylvania sees itself as strategically located between the grain producing states East of the Mississippi River and the ethanol consuming markets on the United States East Coast.

The logistics challenge of transporting hemp fibre to Pennsylvania from pro-hemp states like Kentucky would probably make the Pennsylvania ethanol facility economically unviable for hemp producers in Kentucky and other nearby states.

Posted by M at 12:44 AM | Permalink

1945 saw the peak of ethanol production in the United States at a whopping 600,000,000 gallons of ethanol production. Many people do not realize that back then plant matter served as the primary feedstock for all sorts of chemical products, including paint, ink, solvents and fuel. The Once and Future Carbohydrate Economy published by the Institute for Local Self Reliance brings the point home: In the 1820s, Americans used two tons of vegetables for every ton of minerals. Over the next 100 years, that balance would effectively reverse itself.

Not known to many, the American nation has a deep roots in ethanol and biofuel production. By the mid 1930s, common household tems, such as Rayon (made from wood pulp), telelphones, silk stockings, dentures (made from cotton), and a broad range of other bio-plastic consumer items were widely used by Americans. Quoted from the The Once and Future Carbohydrate Economy:

At the end of the 19th century the names of chemical companies and products often contained a form of the word cellulose, a living chemical consisting of a long string of carbon and hydrogen and oxygen molecules (thus the word carbohydrate). The name of one of the country's largest chemical manufacturers, Celanese Corporation, was a contraction of "cellulose" and "the easy feeling" of wearing acetate apparel.

Ultimately what killed the carbohydrate economy was the incredibly weak prices of oil. In the 1940s, oil sunk under 1 dollar a barrel and effectively wiped the carbohydrate economy off the map.

The The Once and Future Carbohydrate Economy is some of the best reading on ethanol that I've come across...I highly recommend it. In case you don't have the time to read the whole piece, I've clipped one more section on the history of gasoline and ethanol that's a must read (in fact, read on).

Continue reading "600 million gallons of ethanol" »

Posted by M at 10:26 AM | Permalink

James Woolsey, former U.S. CIA Director from 1993 to 1995, recently praised the virtues of hemp at an energy security conference where he fielded a question from the audience on industrial hemp. Reportedly, event organizers tried to sweep the "embarassing" question aside, but Woosley insisted on answering.

What came next surprised many, as Woolsey went into a lengthy commentary on hemp benefits and the folly of current U.S. anti-hemp policy. Woolsey, who often speaks on energy security, hilighted the potential of producing cellulolsic ethanol from hemp and drew attention to the potential disruptive nature legal hemp would have on illegal marijuana plots:

"If you wanted to hide marijuana in a field of industrial hemp, you'd have to be very high," Woolsey said. He explained that industrial hemp has a very low THC level compared to marijuana for recreational and medical use. (THC is the psychoactive component of marijuana.) So low is that level that placing the two plants together causes the recreational marijuana to lose its potency because of cross-pollination with the industrial version (check out the full post written by Kurt Kobb of Resource Insights)

Posted by M at 06:00 AM | Permalink

I was surprised to learn that there are a number of kits available on the market that allow hobbyists or oil independence diehards to distill their own ethanol from corn or other cellulitic material such as industrial hemp (for example, Robert Warren's still, the "Charles 803"). For less than 2000 dollars you can buy your own 20 liter-an-hour, 180 proof ethanol still. If you ache to create your own, they will sell you the plans for 39 dollars.

Farmers who may have an large volume and assortment of feedstock available, may want to consider commercial stills and be the envy of the neighborhood!

Posted by M at 04:53 PM | Permalink

Corn, switchgrass, and hemp's high cellulose content make them ideal candidates for liquid bio fuel creation. Or at least that's what midwestern corn growers, ADM, George Bush, would like you to think. I was surprised to learn that ethanol's actual net energy ratio is hotly disputed. In a much publicized study released by professors David Pimentel (Cornell) and Tad Patzek (Berkeley) in 2005, concluded that: "Turning plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflowers into fuel uses much more energy than the resulting ethanol or biodiesel generates."

Realize that there's big, big money vested on the perception that ethanol production is a good thing. Between a massive annual subsidy (some $1.4 Billion in 2005) to corn growers, oodles of ethanol processing dollars spent with Archer Daniels Midland and the like, a desire for energy independence since the 1970s, have all contributed to an artifcially buoyed market for ethanol.

Along those lines, it's funny how many web-based resources claim industrial hemp (as a feedstock for ethanol) as an environmentally friendly and economically viable alternative to imported oil. If you're looking for a balanced perspective on the web to form your own opinion, forget it. Even the Wikipedia entry for ethanol has been flagged as "biased". The meta discussion of the "ethanol" Wikipedia entry is a fantastic microcosm of the debate as a whole.

There's also a bit of tension between the biofuels and the ethanol camps (read on)...

Continue reading "Corn (and Hemp) Biofuel...Eco Friend or Foe?" »

Posted by M at 07:51 AM | Permalink