Fuel From Waste, Poised at a Milestone

By MATTHEW L. WALD

NY Times

11/13/12

WASHINGTON — For years, scientists and engineers have been juggling various combinations of acids, steam, bacteria, catalysts and the digestive juices of microorganisms to convert agricultural waste and even household garbage into motor fuel.

So far, such alternative fuels have not moved beyond small pilot plants, despite federal incentives to encourage companies to develop them.

But that could be about to change.

Officials at two companies that have built multimillion-dollar factories say they are very close to beginning large-scale, commercial production of these so-called cellulosic biofuels, and others are predicting success in the months to come.

In Columbus, Miss., KiOR has spent more than $200 million on a plant that is supposed to mix shredded wood waste with a patented catalyst, powdered to talcumlike consistency. Its process does in a few seconds what takes nature millions of years: removes the oxygen from the biomass and converts the other main ingredients, hydrogen and carbon, into molecules that can then be processed into gasoline and diesel fuel.

KiOR aims to turn out 13 million gallons of fuel a year and has already lined up three companies to buy its output, including FedEx and a joint venture of Weyerhauser and Chevron. KiOR said on Thursday that it had begun producing what it called “renewable crude” and intended to refine that into gasoline and diesel that it would begin shipping by the end of the month.

And Ineos, a European oil and chemical company, is putting the final touches on a plant in Vero Beach, Fla., that would cook wood and woody garbage until they broke down into tiny molecules of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Those molecules would be pumped into a giant steel tank, where bacteria would eat them and excrete ethanol. The company has spent $130 million on the plant, which is supposed to make eight million gallons a year, about 1 percent of Florida’s ethanol demand. The plant is next to a county landfill, and executives covet the incoming garbage.

Both plants are far smaller than typical oil refineries, but commercial production at either one — or at any of several of the plants that are a step behind them — would be a major milestone in renewable energy.

At such plants, the goal is sometimes to make ethanol and sometimes gasoline or diesel fuel or their ingredients. The pathways to make the biofuels are varied. But the feedstocks have something in common: they are derived from plants and trees, but not from food crops like corn kernels, which are the basis of most of the biofuel currently made in the United States.

Often, the raw ingredients for the cellulosic biofuels are the wastes of farms, paper mills or households, with a value that is low or even negative, meaning people will pay the fuel producers to dispose of them. And the companies developing the new fuels say that their products produce far fewer carbon emissions than petroleum-based gasoline and diesel.

KiOR says that its fuel will release one-sixth the amount of carbon dioxide as an equivalent amount of petroleum fuel. That is mostly because every tree or woody plant fed into its process will eventually be replaced by a new tree or plant, which will suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. And a byproduct of its factory is surplus electricity, which will be exported to the grid, displacing electricity that would otherwise be generated from natural gas or coal.

Ineos goes a step further, saying its production process actually reduces the overall amount of carbon in the atmosphere. “We could make the argument that we’re carbon-negative,” said Peter Williams, the chief executive. The reason, he said, is that electricity produced from its plant averts emissions that would have come from other electricity sources.

Just becoming the first company to produce commercial volumes of these alternative biofuels is no guarantee of commercial success. That depends on further optimizing production processes to get more gallons of fuel per ton of raw materials at lower operating costs.

Industry officials say that profits also depend on continued high prices for oil, the commodity that biofuels would replace, and a continuation of a federal government mandate that requires fuel blenders to mix a certain percentage of biofuels into the gasoline sold at service stations.

“Sustainability requires good economics,” Mr. Williams said.

Many companies have produced biofuel successfully, but only in quantities characteristic of a factory that makes fine whisky or perhaps perfume. The trick is to get reliability up and costs down to a level that allows operation on a large scale.

Government policy has anticipated far more technical progress than the industry has made. Congress set a goal of 250 million gallons of cellulosic biofuel for 2011 and 500 million gallons for this year, but the Environmental Protection Agency cut the requirement to six million gallons for 2012 because of the lack of commercial production.

Six governors, oil refiners and companies hurt by high corn prices have asked the agency to waive its requirements for ethanol and other renewable fuels. Some single out the corn ethanol mandate, but others want the quota for cellulosic fuels waived, too, partly because there is no actual production.

The cellulosic biofuel industry has asked the E.P.A. to keep all the rules intact. Waiving the rule for corn ethanol would discourage investment in advanced biofuels as well, said Brent Erickson, a spokesman for BIO, a trade organization. “You can’t de-link them,” he said.

The agency was expected to rule on Tuesday, but instead said it would rule “shortly.” To grant the waiver, it would have to find severe harm to the economy. Energy experts say that eventually renewable motor fuel could have a much bigger impact on the United States economy than renewable electricity from wind farms or solar cells. Renewable electricity saves coal and natural gas, which are cheap and domestically plentiful. Renewable motor fuel displaces oil, which is much more expensive and often imported, which poses a host of national security and trade issues.

If either Ineos or KiOR began commercial production, it would break a long string of overly optimistic promises made by the industry and the government.

In October 1998, for example, the Energy Department showed off a plant in Jennings, La., that made ethanol from sugar cane wastes; the department said it would reach commercial production within a few years. At the time the plant was owned by a government-subsidized firm called BC International, which was later reorganized and renamed Celunol. Then it was taken over by Verenium, which, with backing from BP, tried another method. BP announced on Oct. 25 that it was dropping plans for a commercial plant based on technology piloted at Jennings, although it still does research there.

Mascoma, based in Cambridge, Mass., and backed by General Motors and Khosla Ventures, among others, is trying to make ethanol from wood waste. Samir Kaul, a board member representing Khosla, confidently predicted in 2006 that it would be in commercial production by 2008, but that goal remains elusive.

Iogen, an established Canadian producer of enzymes, began producing ethanol from wheat straw in 2004, and said in the fall of 2005 that it hoped to announce plans for a commercial plant by the end of that year. Eventually, it announced plans for a plant in southern Manitoba, but in April of this year it dropped that idea, and laid off some workers at its Ottawa headquarters.

But new chemistry technology, like hope, springs eternal.

POET, a major producer of ethanol by conventional means, is building a plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa, that is supposed to digest 700 tons of corn cobs a day and feed the resulting sugars into a conventional ethanol plant next door. The goal of the project, which is supposed to be ready by late 2013, is to produce 20 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol a year.

Abengoa, a Spanish firm, has been running a pilot plant in Salamanca, Spain, and in June 2011, broke ground on a $350 million commercial plant in Hugoton, Kan., that is now 50 percent complete, according to Manuel Sanchez Ortega, the chief executive. It is currently slated to open in the third quarter of next year and is supposed to make 25 million gallons of ethanol a year from agricultural waste, wood waste and nonfood crops.

And a variety of smaller companies are a step behind.

The holy grail is to find a way to profitably make renewable fuels from otherwise wasted biomass, as opposed to valuable food crops.

“If we can do it with biomass, then there is no more discussion of food versus fuel; it’s over,” Mr. Ortega said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/14/business/energy-environment/alternative-fuels-long-delayed-promise-might-be-near-fruition.html?hpw

Boris Johnson should prioritise anaerobic digestion in London

05 Oct 2012, Jenny Jones

BusinessGreen

Questions have to be asked why not a single Anaerobic Digestion (AD) plant is in operation, or currently in construction in London, despite strong backing from both the previous Mayor of London and the current Mayor, whose revised strategy says AD is the optimal treatment method for food waste, after waste reduction.

The emergence of AD in the capital has finally started, with two plants granted planning permission, but this painfully slow progress raises doubts about the effectiveness of the Mayor's Waste and Recycling Board as it enters its second term.

Has it allocated enough resources to advancing this technology, which could end the deplorable practice of sending hundreds of thousands of tonnes of food waste to landfill each year, where it rots producing the potent greenhouse gas methane?

Once operational, these two plants will have a combined capacity to deal with roughly 90,000 tonnes per year of food and green waste. Whilst extremely welcome, they will only be able to deal with one fifth of London's annual 460,000 tonnes of food waste.

According to Mayor of London Boris Johnson, the reasons for AD proposals failing to be realised include project financing, planning, guaranteeing feedstock, and agreeing gate fees.

Another threat that was lurking on the horizon for AD was the Government's proposal to block energy installations smaller than 5MW from the Renewables Obligation Scheme (ROC). Fortunately, the Department of Energy and Climate Change responded to the major concerns raised by the renewable sector and the detrimental impact it was likely to have on the renewables industry and this week announced that ROC's will remain available to new AD projects.

The lack of delivery of AD plants over the past decade, which depends on uncontaminated feedstock, is probably one of the reasons why so few boroughs have to date provided all or most of their residents with food caddies for separate food waste collection schemes. However, landfill tax will rise until at least 2014, when it will be £80 per tonne, putting up London's annual bill for sending municipal waste to landfill from about £265m to roughly £300m.

In the absence of AD capacity, councils with shrinking budgets may just divert food waste from landfill to new 'energy from waste' facilities, circumventing AD, the most beneficial method of dealing with food waste.

But the benefits of AD are numerous. It turns food waste into biogas for generating heat and electricity, or into bio-methane for injection into the national gas grid or conversion into transport fuel, and produces a rich fertilizer for garden and agricultural use.

The benefits don't stop there. Using food waste productively can also create jobs and help exceed composting targets.

Data obtained from WRAP earlier this year showed that nine London councils were not providing separate food waste collection schemes: Barking & Dagenham, Hammersmith & Fulham, Havering, Hillingdon, Kensington & Chelsea, Lewisham, Newham, Redbridge and Wandsworth.

This leaves residents with the choice of either composting food waste in their gardens, if they have one, or putting it into the black waste bag. Although a small proportion of this black bag residual waste may then be segregated, the vast majority is collected by the council and sent to landfill, or incinerated.

In contrast, councils like Bromley, Croydon, Camden and Richmond were providing almost all or nearly all of their households with separate food collection schemes, which they then composted or sent to an AD plant outside London. Some notable recent improvers were Southwark, which rolled out a food collection scheme to around half of their residents, and the City of London, which doubled its food collection scheme to reach all its residents.

The Mayor has stated that his proposals for anaerobic digestion capacity of 260,000 tonnes in London are being progressed, but it is unclear how his target will be achieved, at the rate of progress so far.

I would like to see the Mayor review the resources, and the priority his London Waste and Recycling Board gives to AD, and then draw up measures to help fast track AD and make it the preferred treatment method for large scale food waste.

Unless sufficient AD capacity is delivered, I fear less beneficial waste treatment technologies and facilities will be built in London, and become the council option to ever dwindling and costly landfill, keeping AD small scale and mainly aspiration in mayoral strategies and government press releases. 

http://www.businessgreen.com/bg/opinion/2214288/boris-johnson-should-prioritise-anaerobic-digestion-in-london

Anaergia to deliver London, England’s first large scale anaerobic digestion system that converts food waste to renewable energy

BURLINGTON, ON, Oct. 2, 2012 --/PRNewswire/ - UTS Biogastechnik GmbH (UTSBiogas), a subsidiary of Anaergia Inc., a global leader in the generation of renewable energy from organic waste, today announced the successful commissioning and operation of an anaerobic digestion facility in Glenfarg, Scotland, as well as the award of London's first food waste to renewable energy facility that will be located in Dagenham, UK.

Food waste and other organics typically represent 30%-40% of the waste generated in a given community.  In order to divert this organic waste from landfill and beneficially use, Source Separated Organics (SSO) programs are being implemented across a variety of venues including single family residences, multiple family residential units, commercial businesses, food processors, grocery stores, schools, airports and hospitals.  Anaerobic digestion technology is then used to convert this energy rich organic waste into renewable energy and natural fertilizer.

A partnership agreement between The TEG Group and UTS Biogas, a subsidiary of Anaergia Inc., was established to deliver scalable and adaptable solutions that combine in-vessel-composting and anaerobic digestion under a Design-Build-Own-Operate-Finance (DBOOF) model.  The Dagenham and Glenfarg facilities utilize the DBOOF model and will both operate under 20 year power purchase agreements owned and operated by The TEG Group.

Anaergia provided the anaerobic digestion system to the Glenfarg facility in Perthshire, Scotlandthat is owned and operated by TEG Biogas (Perth).  The newly added biogas facility is currently processing 15,000 tonnes per year of residential and commercial food waste into 700 kW of renewable energy. The renewable electricity is distributed through the national electrical grid and heat produced onsite can be supplied to the new Binn Eco Park development.  The organic residual from the digestion of food waste is converted to soil amendment that is sold to local farmers in order to replace conventional chemical fertilizers.

Anaergia is also under contract to provide a second anaerobic digestion system to the TEG Biogas (London) facility in Dagenham about 35 km outside of London.  The total treatment capacity will be 49,000 tonnes per year, 19,000 tonnes of which will go to the in-vessel-composting plant. The anaerobic digestion facility, will convert the remaining 30,000 tonnes per year of London's food waste into 1,400 kW of renewable energy.  Combined, the two UK based projects will generate nearly 17 million kilowatts of renewable energy each year which is enough to power the equivalent of approximately 3,500 homes.  In addition, these projects will prevent 900,000 tonnes of food waste from entering landfills during the 20 year contracts.

The Mayor of London, Mr. Boris Johnson highlighted his interest to further support renewable energy generation using anaerobic digestion facilities across London.

Mr. Boris Johnson indicated, "We are set to support more facilities of this nature across the capital working with boroughs and the London Waste and Recycling Board." (September 4, 2012 - Waste Management World)

"These projects demonstrate forward thinking and environmental stewardship by selecting anaerobic digestion technology to generate renewable energy while diverting food waste from landfills," said Ludwig Dinkloh, Vice President of UTS Biogastechnik.  "We are proud to be a part of the London Sustainable Industries Park and the Binn Eco Park due to the contribution they make to a sustainable environment as well as their contribution to the local economy through the development of hundreds of new jobs."

"Our first co-located anaerobic digestion and in-vessel-composting plant became operational inPerthshire earlier this year and is testimony to our confidence in the benefits of co-located organic waste technologies," says Mick Fishwick, CEO of TEG. "Combined anaerobic digestion and in-vessel-composting sites offer front-end flexibility on feedstock, enabling us to process a wide variety of waste streams including food waste only, green waste only or co-mingled organic waste.  We have been delighted with the performance of the Anaergia Anaerobic Digestion plant at Glenfarg,which has already exceeded the planned power output, and we look forward to working with UTSagain in delivering the AD plant in Dagenham."

"These projects are a further example of the global trend to divert waste organics from landfills and convert them into renewable energy and natural fertilizer using anaerobic digestion technology.  We are proud of our partnership with TEG and believe that offering anaerobic digestion technology under a power purchase agreement is an emerging service model with strong benefits to communities.  The model provides competitively priced renewable energy, extended landfill life and a smaller carbon footprint without a capital investment by the communities," said Steve Watzeck, CEO of Anaergia.  "With more than 20 years of experience using anaerobic digestion to generate renewable energy from high strength organic waste, Anaergia is well suited to support municipalities reach their sustainability goals and reduce costs."

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/10/02/4873939/anaergia-to-deliver-london-englands.html

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/10/02/4873939/anaergia-to-deliver-london-englands.html#storylink=cpy

Plasma Gasification Raises Hopes of Clean Energy From Garbage

By RANDY LEONARD

NY Times

September 11, 2012

David Robau tours the country promoting a system that sounds too good to be true: It devours municipal garbage, recycles metals, blasts toxic contaminants and produces electricity and usable byproducts — all with drastic reductions in emissions.

Mr. Robau, an environmental scientist for the Air Force, has been promoting a method that was developed with the Air Force to dispose of garbage with neither the harmful byproducts of conventional incineration nor the environmental impact of transporting and burying waste. It is one of several innovative techniques that the United States military has been researching to provide alternatives to the open-pit burns that some veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars say have made them ill.

Already some waste companies and cities like New York have shown an interest in technology similar to what Mr. Robau has been promoting, known as plasma arc gasification. Proponents say the process can break chemical bonds and destroy medical waste, PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), asbestos and hydrocarbons, some of which can be hazardous if disposed of in landfills or traditional mass-burn incinerators.

Still, some environmentalists are leery. They say the ability to fully dispose of waste will discourage recycling and the development of renewable products, and the gasification will still result in toxic substances like dioxins.

Mr. Robau maintains that the process is earth-friendly. “This is not incineration,” he said. “This is gasification, so it’s a lot cleaner, a lot better for the environment.”

Mr. Robau, who also heads a nonprofit organization based in Gulf Breeze, Fla., has overseen testing of the small-scale plasma arc gasification system, which cracks complex molecules into simple elements using energy as intense as the sun’s surface, making fuel for about 350 kilowatts of electricity from about 10 tons of garbage each day, enough to run the system.

The system has been hard at work in a 6,400-square-foot building at Hurlburt Field Air Force base in Florida’s panhandle. A mechanical shredder cuts household garbage into pieces no bigger than two inches. An airtight auger feeds the waste into an oxygen-poor gasification chamber, where temperatures reach more than 9,000 degrees.

In an instant, wood disintegrates, plastics turn to gas. Bits of metal and glass fall into a molten pool.

From two graphite electrodes, an arc of electricity leaps about a foot to the molten slag, producing a cloud of ionized particles known as plasma, which heats the chamber. Most heavier metals settle to the bottom of the pool, below a layer of liquid silica and other oxides. The metals are removed, cooled and used for steel or other products.

“Effectively, 100 percent of all the metals on the base are being recycled,” Mr. Robau said.

The liquid oxides are removed and form a glassy solid when cooled. The slag traps contaminants like errant lead molecules and other heavy metals in a vitreous matrix that takes up 1 percent of the volume of the original waste, Mr. Robau said, a tenth of the volume left over after traditional incineration.

The vitrified component meets standards for disposal and may even be suitable for use as a construction aggregate, according to Mr. Robau and other industry professionals.

In the chamber, organic gases break down into hydrogen and carbon monoxide — the components of a fuel called synthesis gas, or syngas — which exits the furnace.

The gas passes through a plasma torch polisher, which breaks down remaining complex molecules and soot.

Injected water cools the syngas to less than 200 degrees. The extreme temperature of the plasma followed by quick cooling inhibits the formation of dioxins and furans (another organic compound), according to Mr. Robau and other industry experts.

The lack of dioxin creation would be a benefit over traditional incinerators and other types of gasifiers, in which lower temperatures and incomplete burning result in toxic compounds.

Emissions rules forced a 99 percent cut in dioxin and furan emissions and a 96 percent reduction in mercury from traditional incinerators between 1990 and 2005, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. However, companies have to dispose of the toxic ash filtered from mass-burn facilities.

After water quenches the gas in the Hurlburt system, stripping processes produce sodium bisulfate and hydrochloric acid, which can be sold, Mr. Robau said.

The gas passes through three types of filters to catch remaining impurities. The resulting syngas is as clean or cleaner than natural gas, and the system produces less than half the nitrogen oxides and 5 percent of the sulfur oxides and mercury of a traditional incinerator, Mr. Robau said. The Air Force uses the syngas to produce enough electricity to power the system.

Companies have used plasma arc technology in steel refining for more than a century. Some small-scale plasma gasifiers are specialized to process materials like asbestos or medical waste.

In Japan, a plasma facility originally designed to zap residue from automobile shredding now handles up to 150 tons of municipal solid waste each day in the city of Utashinai. And construction on a plant of similar size, designed to process industrial waste and wood chips, wrapped up this summer in Morcenx, in southern France.

Companies have been eying plasma gasification of municipal waste with eager hopes, but until recently financing has lagged. Plasma facilities are expensive, and the energy-hungry arcs and torches can consume half of the generated electricity. On the other hand, the systems can also handle medical and hazardous waste, which can command two to four times the fees associated with municipal waste.

“The problem has been over the years trying to find that economic sweet spot,” said Joe Vaillancourt, who evaluates newer technologies for Waste Management, a $15.4 billion company with headquarters in Texas.

In the past five years, with increased interest in energy independence and sustainability, venture capitalists and companies have financed testing of small-scale systems, including a 25-ton system built and run by InEnTec in Arlington, Ore., Mr. Vaillancourt said. Waste Management now holds an equity stake in InEnTec.

Last month the Agriculture Department announced a conditional $105 million loan guarantee for Fulcrum BioEnergy to build a much larger system outside Reno, Nev. It will use three InEnTec plasma melters to process 400 tons of garbage a day, an unprecedented scale for a plasma municipal waste facility, said Mr. Vaillancourt and others in the industry. Fulcrum plans to create ethanol from the syngas, and expects the Reno plant to be running in 2014.

New York City, too, is looking for innovative technology to deal with some of the city’s waste. In March, the Bloomberg administration requested proposals to build a facility that would use newer techniques like plasma gasification or anaerobic digestion to process as much as 900 tons of garbage a day.

“New Yorkers want their trash to be handled in an environmentally friendly way,” said Caswell F. Holloway, deputy mayor for operations. “Anything would be better than putting it in the ground.” The city is reviewing the proposals.

Still, some environmental groups, like the Sierra Club and the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, lump these techniques in with traditional incinerators, claiming that they still produce dioxin. They also oppose renewable energy credits for these facilities.

Allen Hershkowitz, a scientist with the National Resources Defense Council, said he believed there was a place for waste-to-energy operations, but only after recycling and composting programs had been maximized.

He said he still believed that communities could reach recycling rates of 60 to 70 percent. In his view it is premature for a city like New York, with a recycling rate of about 15 percent, to be considering setting up a new waste facility. “They’re not even at the point where they should be thinking about waste-to-energy,” Mr. Hershkowitz said

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/science/plasma-gasification-raises-hopes-of-clean-energy-from-garbage.html?pagewanted=all

London to benefit from £30 million sustainable industries hub

As London gets on with normal life after its Paralympic and Olympic triumph, Mayor Boris Johnson has announced a £30 million investment in a sustainable industries hub.

The London Sustainable Industries Park in Dagenham aims to be the largest of its kind in the UK and will include a £21 million anaerobic digestion waste recycling facility, which will be built and run by the TEG Group.

The waste plant, which is being part funded by the Mayor’s £100 million Green Fund through the Foresight Environmental Fund, will divert over 49,000 tonnes of food waste from land fill a year to generate renewable heating and power for use on the site.

The Mayor has committed a further £10.3 million for a works programme to transform the brownfield site into a business quarter for environmentally focused enterprises in recycling and renewable energy, including wind and solar power, and biomass.

Closed Loop Recycling is already in occupation on the site, but the Mayor says the Greater London Authority (GLA) is in talks with a major potential tenant, which wants to build one of the UK’s largest industrial gasification plants in the park.

Construction on the 197,000 sq ft building on the 8.3 acre site, which would take municipal and industrial waste to produce energy, could start as soon as January 2013.

“This exciting new project is set to bring hundreds of much needed new jobs into Dagenham,” commented Johnson. “Low carbon industries represent a growth market, which will support a new generation of jobs for Londoners but also bring cleaner, energy efficient businesses that contribute to a better quality of life.”

The Mayor says the Park will create up to 750 long term jobs and 500 construction jobs.

http://www.energyefficiencynews.com/articles/i/5355/?cid=4

TEG wins EPC contract for London’s first anaerobic digester

By Erin Voegele | September 05, 2012

Biomass Magazine

Work to develop London’s first anaerobic digestion (AD) facility is underway. The TEG Group recently announced it has secured funding to construct a £21 million ($33.4 million) organic waste facility at East London’s Dagenham Dock, including an AD plant.

The TEG Group PLC signed an engineering, procurement and construction contract to construct and operate the plant, and was awarded a 15-year operating and maintenance contract. Construction on the facility is set to begin in September. The project is currently scheduled to be operational during the first quarter of 2014.

In addition, gas-to-power producer Alkane Energy plc was selected as a project subcontractor, and will provide the gas-to-power capabilities at the proposed biogas project. Information released by Alkane Energy notes that the capital contract is worth £1.6 million ($2.5 million). In addition, the company has signed a 15-year maintenance contract.

According to information released by The TEG Group, the plant will be capable of processing 49,000 tons of biomass each year, including a 30,000 ton-per-year AD plant and a 19,000 ton-per-year in-vessel composting (IVC) plant. Biogas produced at the plant will be used to generate approximately 1.4 MW of power. The project will also produce more than 36,000 tons of digestate per year, along with 14,000 tons of compost.

Once complete, the project will take in a variety of feedstocks, including separated food waste. It will also process mixed food and green waste produced by local households, commercial and manufacturing operations.

 The plant will be located on a 4.7 acre site within the London Sustainable Industries Park. The Foresight Group has committed £11 million ($17.5 million) in funding to support the project, through the Foresight Environmental Fund and Foresight’s U.K. Waste Resources and Energy Investments Fund. The London Green Fund, which was launched by the London mayor’s office in 2011, was a cornerstone in the development of the FEF. The London Waste and Recycling Board and Investec Bank plc also provided the project with £7.9 million ($12.6 million) in senior debt financing. 

http://biomassmagazine.com/articles/8043/teg-wins-epc-contract-for-londonundefineds-first-anaerobic-digester

BEYOND FOSSIL FUELS

Using Waste, Swedish City Cuts Its Fossil Fuel Use

Johan Spanner for The New York Times

As part of its citywide system, Kristianstad burns wood waste like tree prunings and scraps from flooring factories to power an underground district heating grid. 

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

Published: December 10, 2010

KRISTIANSTAD, Sweden — When this city vowed a decade ago to wean itself from fossil fuels, it was a lofty aspiration, like zero deaths from traffic accidents or the elimination of childhood obesity.

But Kristianstad has already crossed a crucial threshold: the city and surrounding county, with a population of 80,000, essentially use no oil, natural gas or coal to heat homes and businesses, even during the long frigid winters. It is a complete reversal from 20 years ago, when all of their heat came from fossil fuels.

But this area in southern Sweden, best known as the home of Absolut vodka, has not generally substituted solar panels or wind turbines for the traditional fuels it has forsaken. Instead, as befits a region that is an epicenter of farming and food processing, it generates energy from a motley assortment of ingredients like potato peels, manure, used cooking oil, stale cookies and pig intestines.

A hulking 10-year-old plant on the outskirts of Kristianstad uses a biological process to transform the detritus into biogas, a form of methane. That gas is burned to create heat and electricity, or is refined as a fuel for cars.

Once the city fathers got into the habit of harnessing power locally, they saw fuel everywhere: Kristianstad also burns gas emanating from an old landfill and sewage ponds, as well as wood waste from flooring factories and tree prunings.

Over the last five years, many European countries have increased their reliance on renewable energy, from wind farms to hydroelectric dams, because fossil fuels are expensive on the Continent and their overuse is, effectively, taxed by the European Union’s emissions trading system.

But for many agricultural regions, a crucial component of the renewable energy mix has become gas extracted from biomass like farm and food waste. In Germany alone, about 5,000 biogas systems generate power, in many cases on individual farms.

Kristianstad has gone further, harnessing biogas for an across-the-board regional energy makeover that has halved its fossil fuel use and reduced the city’s carbon dioxide emissions by one-quarter in the last decade.

“It’s a much more secure energy supply — we didn’t want to buy oil anymore from the Middle East or Norway,” said Lennart Erfors, the engineer who is overseeing the transition in this colorful city of 18th-century row houses. “And it has created jobs in the energy sector.”

In the United States, biogas systems are rare. There are now 151 biomass digesters in the country, most of them small and using only manure, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The E.P.A. estimated that installing such plants would be feasible at about 8,000 farms.

So far in the United States, such projects have been limited by high initial costs, scant government financing and the lack of a business model. There is no supply network for moving manure to a centralized plant and no outlet to sell the biogas generated.

Still, a number of states and companies are considering new investment.

Last month, two California utilities, Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric, filed for permission with the state’s Public Utilities Commission to build plants in California to turn organic waste from farms and gas from water treatment plants into biogas that would feed into the state’s natural-gas pipelines after purification.

Using biogas would help the utilities meet requirements in California and many other states to generate a portion of their power using renewable energy within the coming decade.

Both natural gas and biogas create emissions when burned, but far less than coal and oil do. And unlike natural gas, which is pumped from deep underground, biogas counts as a renewable energy source: it is made from biological waste that in many cases would otherwise decompose in farm fields or landfills and yield no benefit at all, releasing heat-trapping methane into the atmosphere and contributing to global warming.

This fall, emissaries from Wisconsin’s Bioenergy Initiative toured German biogas programs to help formulate a plan to develop the industry. “Biogas is Wisconsin’s opportunity fuel,” said Gary Radloff, the initiative’s Midwest policy director.

Like Kristianstad, California and Wisconsin produce a bounty of waste from food processing and dairy farms but an inadequate supply of fossil fuel to meet their needs. Another plus is that biogas plants can devour vast quantities of manure that would otherwise pollute the air and could affect water supplies.

In Kristianstad, old fossil fuel technologies coexist awkwardly alongside their biomass replacements. The type of tanker truck that used to deliver heating oil now delivers wood pellets, the major heating fuel in the city’s more remote areas. Across from a bustling Statoil gas station is a modest new commercial biogas pumping station owned by the renewables company Eon Energy.

The start-up costs, covered by the city and through Swedish government grants, have been considerable: the centralized biomass heating system cost $144 million, including constructing a new incineration plant, laying networks of pipes, replacing furnaces and installing generators.

But officials say the payback has already been significant: Kristianstad now spends about $3.2 million each year to heat its municipal buildings rather than the $7 million it would spend if it still relied on oil and electricity. It fuels its municipal cars, buses and trucks with biogas fuel, avoiding the need to purchase nearly half a million gallons of diesel or gas each year.

The operations at the biogas and heating plants bring in cash, because farms and factories pay fees to dispose of their waste and the plants sell the heat, electricity and car fuel they generate.

Kristianstad’s energy makeover is rooted in oil price shocks of the 1980s, when the city could barely afford to heat its schools and hospitals. To save on fuel consumption, the city began laying heating pipes to form an underground heating grid — so-called district heating.

Such systems use one or more central furnaces to heat water or produce steam that is fed into the network. It is far more efficient to pump heat into a system that can warm an entire city than to heat buildings individually with boilers.

District heating systems can generate heat from any fuel source, and like New York City’s, Kristianstad’s initially relied on fossil fuel. But after Sweden became the first country to impose a tax on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels, in 1991, Kristianstad started looking for substitutes.

By 1993, it was taking in and burning local wood wastes, and in 1999, it began relying on heat generated from the new biogas plant. Some buildings that are too remote to be connected to the district heating system have been fitted with individual furnaces that use tiny pellets that are also made from wood waste.

Burning wood in this form is more efficient and produces less carbon dioxide than burning logs does; such heating has given birth to a booming pellet industry in northern Europe. Government subsidies underwrite purchases of pellet furnaces by homeowners and businesses; pellet-fueled heat costs half as much as oil, said Mr. Erfors, the engineer.

Having dispensed with fossil fuels for heating, Kristianstad is moving on to other challenges. City planners hope that by 2020 total local emissions will be 40 percent lower than they were in 1990, and that running the city will require no fossil fuel and produce no emissions at all.

Transportation now accounts for 60 percent of fossil fuel use, so city planners want drivers to use cars that run on local biogas, which municipal vehicles already do. That will require increasing production of the fuel.

Kristianstad is looking into building satellite biogas plants for outlying areas and expanding its network of underground biogas pipes to allow the construction of more filling stations. At the moment, this is something of a chicken-and-egg problem: even though biogas fuel costs about 20 percent less than gasoline, consumers are reluctant to spend $32,000 (about $4,000 more than for a conventional car) on a biogas or dual-fuel car until they are certain that the network will keep growing.

“A tank is enough to get you around the region for the day, but do you have to plan ahead,” Martin Risberg, a county engineer, said as he filled a biogas Volvo.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/11/science/earth/11fossil.html?hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1292090416-CsOulNJUS2daJ/WxJPt%20Rg&pagewanted=all

A version of this article appeared in print on December 11, 2010, on page A1 of the New York edition.

Waste wood to heat downtown Seattle buildings

The Seattle Steam Company broke ground Tuesday on a hybrid waste-wood and natural gas heating plant that will cut carbon emissions while helping heat the local business district.

By Will Mari

Seattle Times staff reporter

Starting next year, about half of downtown Seattle might be partially heated by ... wood.

Waste wood, to be exact.  The Seattle Steam Company broke ground Tuesday on a hybrid waste-wood and natural-gas heating plant on Western Avenue near Pike Place Market.

Seattle Steam has been heating the Central Business District — first with coal, then natural gas — since 1894. Roughly 9 million square feet, or half of downtown's buildings, including Swedish Medical Center, Seattle University, Benaroya Hall and the Central Branch of the Seattle Public Library, are served by its piped-steam system.

Combusting waste wood closes the "carbon loop," said Patrick Mazza, research director for Climate Solutions, a Seattle-based research and advocacy group.  "You're contrasting a fuel source that has been notably volatile in terms of price with a local, renewable fuel source," he said. "It's one of those things that we know to do well, but that we've kind of forgot during the age of cheap energy."

Using wood that would be otherwise rot in a landfill is a way of reducing Seattle Steam's consumption of natural gas.  The $25 million facility, slated to open by July, is not a prototype. It's a heating plant that will supplement the existing natural-gas boilers at the existing steam-generating plant. About 60 percent of the new boiler's energy will be supplied by wood recycled from urban construction sites, sawmills, factory crates and pallets, and other products.

The remaining 40 percent will still be supplied by natural gas; the boiler is designed to use both. The wood will be delivered by a contractor that removes nails and other metal and trims the waste down to 3-inch chips; once the waste is burned, the ash is collected in a silo and sold to concrete companies.

The boiler will produce about 85,000 pounds of steam per hour, and will run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, said Randy Erickson, a Seattle Steam senior engineering technician and one of the project's managers.  "If this thing isn't running, somebody will be asking why," he said.

It's one of the big-ticket items in the city's attempt to reduce its total carbon-dioxide emissions and meet or exceed the standards set by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The biomass boiler's use of wood waste will prevent 50,000 metric tons of carbon from being released each year, a 6 to 8 percent reduction and a key part of the goal set by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels for 600,000 fewer tons per year, said Mike Mann, acting director of the city's Office of Sustainability and Environment

"The innovation is that it has not been done on this type of scale in many American cities, replacing a fossil fuel with a renewable resource," Mann said.

Once natural gas becomes expensive enough to warrant alternative fuels, cities and large institutions, such as public universities, become more willing to investigate.  A similar facility is operational in Vancouver, B.C., and in cities in Europe, including in Denmark and Finland, said Rick Gustafson, a professor of forest resources at the University of Washington.  "Economics drive these things," he said.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008238613_biomass08m.html

Seattle Steam Co. to Break Ground for Renewable Energy Facility

Project will reduce customers' carbon footprints by 50 percent

Last update: 5:58 p.m. EDT Sept. 30, 2008

SEATTLE, Sep 30, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The Seattle Steam Co. today announced that it will hold a groundbreaking ceremony for its new renewable energy storage facility Tues., Oct. 7, at 11:30 a.m. on Western Avenue mid-block between University and Union streets.

Mayor Greg Nickels is scheduled to headline the program. The program also will include King County Council Member Larry Phillips and Patrick Mazza, research director at Climate Solutions, an organization committed to accelerating practical and profitable solutions to global warming.

The groundbreaking will mark the official start of construction on a facility that will introduce "urban waste wood" (biomass) into Seattle Steam's fuel mix. The biomass will be used to help produce steam for the company's extensive downtown district heating system, which serves 175 customers and has been a vital thermal energy provider to downtown Seattle since 1893.

The new renewable energy storage facility will be located directly across the street from the new biomass boiler facility, which is already under construction next to the company's Western Avenue Plant. Trucks will deliver waste wood to the renewable energy facility, where the biomass will be stored in a special silo. The biomass then will be transferred from the silo through an existing tunnel underneath Western Ave. and used to fuel the new boiler. The boiler will burn natural gas until the wood storage facility is ready in late spring 2009. The entire project is scheduled for completion summer 2009. University Mechanical Contractors Inc. is serving as the general contractor.

Seattle Steam operates two plants: the Western Avenue Plant and the Post Street Station, both of which now burn natural gas and oil. Use of biomass at its main Western Ave. plant will add to the system's fuel flexibility and help its customers reduce their carbon footprints by more than 50 percent. In addition, use of urban waste wood will help reduce clean waste headed to landfills and provide a cost-effective alternative to natural gas and oil. The U.S. Green Buildings Council recognizes this product as a renewable fuel source in its newest version of LEED(R) (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System(TM), offering building owners credits for connection to a biomass facility.

"Seattle Steam is concerned about climate change and is well aware of its role as an energy provider, especially in finding ways to reduce its customer's carbon footprints," says Stan Gent, president of Seattle Steam. "It is in a unique position locally to take the lead in this global effort to reduce carbon and to serve as the energy manager for customers, who gain advantages not normally experienced by buildings that operate their own on-site boilers. Generally, a building with its own on-site boiler does not have the same fuel flexibility that a district heating system can offer. An individual building isn't likely to be able to use biomass and obtain the associated carbon reduction credits on its own. In addition, all of the steam delivered to a district-heated building is 100 percent efficient. Every pound of steam can be put to use for space heating, domestic hot water heating or process use. No efficiency rate needs to be factored in."

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/seattle-steam-co-break-ground/story.aspx?guid=%7B0D64EDE7-486D-4554-A671-3DFBCD8B6D8A%7D&dist=hppr

Critics say wood-energy plan is barking up the wrong tree

Scottish government calls for return to timber-powered energy

By Peter John Meiklem

IT MAY sound like a throwback to the smog-filled Victorian era, but the Scottish government wants wood-powered energy to provide heating for around a quarter of a million homes and businesses by 2020.

According to targets in the Scottish Government's forthcoming renewable energy framework document, boilers powered by pellets made from compressed wood should provide around 10% of all Scotland's heating needs in a little over a decade.

But critics have pointed out that biomass fuels - the technical name for using wood-burning to generate energy - have environmental drawbacks, such as smog and deforestation, as well as a sting in the tail for the consumer who will have to find thousands of pounds to fit out their homes with the equipment needed to turn wood energy into heat.

There are also questions over whether or not the biomass industry has the ability to fulfill the government's ambitious plans. The industry in Scotland is tiny and experts claim rapid growth could be hamstrung by installation costs, wood supply, and the effect widespread use of the boilers will have on air quality in urban areas.

Experts estimate the annual turnover of the entire biomass industry in Scotland today is well under £3 million per year. Industry body Scottish Renewables has 260 members, only 15 of whom are directly active in the biomass sector.

The Scottish government has commissioned research into the effect the boilers will have on air quality.

There are also serious concerns around cost. A domestic biomass boiler costs between £4000 and £10,000 to install with a industrial boiler costing much more. A Westminster Government consultation on the best way to support people who want to install boilers closed last week.

There are further worries about the forestry industry's readiness to supply enough fuel to meet the government's biomass targets. In January, a wood fuel task force estimated the industry would need one million green tonnes - timber freshly felled - per year by 2020. That is a seventh of all the wood produced in Scotland last year.

The report concluded there would soon be "increasing competition" for the wood or timber waste material that goes into making biomass boiler fuel.

Jason Ormiston, chief executive of the Scottish Renewables Forum, said the new targets would mean a sharp increase in the current rate of boiler installation from around 1500 per year to 25,000 per year by 2020.

Ormiston, who predicted the industry could have a turnover of £275 million by 2020, said: "It's a massive jump and the real question is whether Scotland will be able to deliver that in time. We have to be confident about it. Other countries make far better use of renewables."

However, Ormiston also said there were considerable challenges facing the SNP government in pulling off the project. He pointed to pollution from wood-burning, the pressure on forestry, the cost to consumers and the huge growth needed to meet the demands.

John MacLennan, manager of the Nevis centre in Aviemore, said the community centre and sports building was about to install a biomass boiler that would cost £180,000 and is expected to save about £20,000 a year.

Alistair McGlynn, a manger for biomass fuel manufacturers Balcas, called for better incentives for customers and boiler installation companies.

Balcas is building a wood pellet production factory in Invergordon. The plant will produce 100,000 tons of pellets a year when it opens next year.

He said he had no concerns about finding enough wood to fuel his factory and "the new targets are a fantastic opportunity for the whole industry".

The Scottish government said the report would be published shortly.

http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.2453801.0.critics_say_woodenergy_plan_is_barking_up_the_wrong_tree.php

San Francisco Gets Greasy

The city will consider a proposal to build what could be the first biodiesel plant in San Francisco – and possibly buy the fuels from the plant for its fleet.

by: Ucilia Wang

 September 5, 2008

A newly proposed biodiesel plant in San Francisco could supply fuels for the city fleet, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said Friday. 

Darling International will seek approval from the San Francisco Port Commission to build the biodiesel plant at Pier 92. The plant would produce up to 10 million gallons a year by converting cooking oils from local restaurants and other fats and greases into biodiesel.

If it's approved, it will be the second planned biodiesel plant in the city. In May, the San Francisco's Public Utilities Commission received a $1 million grant from the California Energy Commission to build a pilot plant. The plant would make use of the more than 2.5 million gallons of brown grease – pan scrapings and oil residues in restaurant sinks - produced annually in the city.

San Francisco, which doesn't have any biodiesel plants in operation, is keen on establishing local fuel supplies for its fleet of 1,500 biodiesel vehicles.

"We want to buy locally produced biodiesel and cut out the thousands of miles it takes to have it transported to the city," city spokesman Brian Purchia said. The city currently buys biodiesel from suppliers in the Midwest, he said.

Darling already operates a rendering facility for animal fat and cooking oils at the pier. The company, which hasn't disclosed the project's cost, plans to expand its current operation to include biodiesel production. The company is the largest maritime exporter at the port and has operated the rendering plant since 1966.

The proposed plant is small compared to typical commercial biodiesel facilities.  But it might be able to count on the city as its chief customer. Newsom said in a statement that Darling's plant could serve " as a model for cities throughout the world who aim to reduce their carbon footprint and transform their grease waste into useable, sustainable energy."

The city hasn't signed any contracts to buy fuels from Darling, however, Purchia said.

The port commission is scheduled to consider the project next Tuesday. 

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/san-francisco-gets-greasy-1366.html