BioFuels forum, Brenneman Article

Last Tuesday our Sierra Club group held its forum on Biofuels. The program can be downloaded here (it includes the speakers' bios and club policy statement on biofuels). The event was a success, both in terms of people appearing to be genuinely grateful for us putting on the event, and in terms of the speakers remaining more or less respectful of eachother. Helen Burke, the person who organized and moderated the forum, did a great job. She has been active in Berkeley (environmental) politics for a long time and was able to pull in some high-powered speakers. Too bad we didn't have more people attending. We sent out an email to about 3,000 Sierra Club members in the Eastbay. About 135 people attended the event.

The most interesting discussion in my opinion focussed on the area of balancing food production vs. energy production. Professor Chapela had some very poignant slides depicting deforestation in Indonesia (as seen from google satellite), which he attributes to the growing of palm oil (I recommend reading the article on palm oil production in Mongabay.com). However, he did not effectively link the Indonesian deforestation problem to the attempts of the Berkeley EBI to develop "better" biofuels in North America from weeds like miscanthum (a relative to sugarcane). This weak argument trying to lump all biofuel production in the same "bad" bucket actually makes me less likely to oppose the EBI, because it is in my opinion not an honest argument. Someone as smart as Chapela (I do think he is smart) cannot really think that the EBI is trying to promote palm oil production in Indonesia. So I would regard that argument as quite sensationalistic.

Then, in the weekend Berkeley Daily Planet, Richard Brenneman has written yet another article looking at the links between some of the lead scientists involved in the UC Berkeley Energy Biosciences Institute and BP (the grant provider). His article appears well-researched and probably is the basis of a stronger argument against the EBI on ethical and conflict-of-interest grounds. Yet I'm still not sure if I can simply dismiss the EBI as a get-rich-quick scheme on the part of the University and people like Kiesling and Somerville. If those guys simply wanted to get rich, why would they bother putting themselves through all the public scrutiny which they surely must have expected when they signed on to the EBI idea?

So I am still unconvinced of arguments by either side that this institute at Berkeley is either "good" or "bad". The two things I am sure of are, (1) I would probably rather have the research occur in a semi-public environment like the EBI at Cal, than completely in the private sector and (2) english, art, history and all other humanities professors and graduates are only going to be feeling more and more marginalized by industry deals like this...

Article on Biofuels Industry

An interesting article came over the AP Newswire today titled "Biofuels Spark Biotech Rally." It talks about the convergence of biotechnology and biofuels, which is apparently becoming somewhat of a trendy industry in the financial markets. Jay Kiesling from UC Berkeley is mentioned in it (he also spoke at the faculty forum on March 8).

Biofuel Forum Part 2, Cool Cities Rally

First : there will be a biofuels forum in Berkeley this Thursday. Our Sierra Club group (that is, Helen B.) is organizing the forum, which is basically going to be similar to the one from last week (see my previous blog post). Our forum will attempt to focus more on environmental issues and less on UC Berkeley politics. At least, we will try. Here is the email that got sent out to 3000 members last week:

"This month: Forum: "Is BP's biofuels project good for the environment?"
Sponsored by the Sierra Club Northern Alameda County Group

Thursday, March 22nd, 7:30 pm
Hillside Club
2286 Cedar St (corner of Spruce)
Berkeley
(suggested donation $5.00)

The Sierra Club will present a moderated forum featuring invited panelists on BP's proposed biofuels project – also known as the “Energy Biosciences Institute” (or EBI). A question and answer period will
follow presentations and discussion by the panelists. Panelists include:

- Prof. Paul Ludden, Dean, UC-Berkeley College of Natural Resources
- Prof. Chris Somerville, Stanford Univ. Biological Sciences Dept. and Director of the Carnegie Institute
- Assoc. Prof. Ignacio Chapela
- Prof. John Harte, Energy Resources Group, Ecosystem Sciences Division, UC-Berkeley.

Please come and support the Sierra Club and learn about an important and controversial research project on the future of energy.

For more information on the UC Berkeley project: http://www.ebiweb.org/
For the BP perspective on its research grant:
http://www.bp.com/genericarticle.do?categoryId=2012968&contentId=7018719
News article on the controversy:
http://www.mercurynews.com/search/ci_5431976

Kent Lewandowski, Chair
No. Alameda Group of the Sierra Club"

Note, this is the first time my name has shown up in about 3000 people's inboxes. I am kind of glad I don't live in my hometown anymore when this happens. I guess I still feel self-conscious about making my name so public. Don't ask me why.

Second : I set up a comment area that does not require you to have a google account. So please, leave your comments!

Third : I am supposed to be composing a response to a big Environmental Impact Review on the Lawrence Berkeley Labs "Long Range Development Plan". The EIR document streches into the 100s of pages. Anyone want to help me??? Please???

Fourth : Sunday (yesterday) I attended kind of an interesting event. I t was a cool cities rally in Redwood City with a friend. This was a Sierra Club -sponsored event featuring speakers on the topic of fighting climate change. Sierra Club executive director Carl Pope gave a talk during the event.

In case you were wondering, "Cool Cities" is a Club campaign to get elected officials to sign onto voluntary greenhouse gas reduction pledges for their city. The campaign is less about specific measures as it is about gathering committments.

In case you don't believe in climate change, please stop reading here.

So, ok, maybe you do believe in global warming. Well here is what the experts are saying : We're all going to die. OK, not quite. We have a 10 year "window of opportunity" in which to act And then we all will die. But I digress from yesterday's event. That is not what Carl Pope said. Or any of the other speakers. Nobody wants to hear environmentalists predict gloom and doom. Which is kind of what it's all about - right?

In any case, I found Carl to be a genuine optimist when it comes to dealing with global warming (which the Club has made its de facto top campaign priority, by focusing on energy and the cool cities campaign). He said during his talk, "I believe we're going to lick global warming". That's great spirit. I guess I have to believe it .... or else what?

On a note of humor: Carl walked out of the rally afterwards, and walked right out of the gate and down the sidewalk ... by himself. I thought, for sure, this busy world-travelling executive director of an organization with about 300,000 members (my best guess), would have at least a note-taker to drive him around. Maybe a chauffeur, too. But no - he takes his own ride! I was impressed. I always did admire that the Club ran on a low budget.

A webcast of yesterday's speeches is available at http://www.medianetcast.com/

Notes on the webcast:
- if you wait for about 3 minutes at the beginning, the show will start.
- there does not appear to be any possibility to speed up the playback (!)
- you need to install a little piece of software, "MediaNetcast", to get the webcast to play through either Windows Media Player, or possibly another media player (if you do not use windows).
- there are a few glitches in playback, but it seemed to be ok generally.
- Carl Pope's excellent speech on energy conservation is after about 30 or 45 minutes.

GMOs and transgenics

Watching the webcast from the Berkeley Energy Bioscience Institute (EBI) got me thinking about the effect of GMO (Genetically modified organisms) on the food system. Wikipedia has a good informational page about GMO plants. Basically, GMOs are plants modified in some slight way to express better qualities for growth, health, and crop production. Generally, a good thing, right? Except when the herbicide these plants are resistant for gets used year after year, on the same land. Then you get the good old evolutionary mutation thing happening ... and the organisms you are defending against (in this case, the corn boring beetle) becomes resistant to the herbicide. This reminds me of the debate over DDT application to combat malaria. Some people argue that using DDT on a widespread basis to control mosquitoes (which carry the malaria virus), will simply result in mosquitoes evolving with the genetic resistance to DDT.

A second little "problem" with GMO crops is that they are usually created so that the next generation of plants arising from the GMO seed has a 50% or lower yield to the originally sold seed. In other words, farmers are dependent on the GMO seed producer to buy new seed every year, if they want to raise a profitable crop.

Interestingly, a lot of the development of GMO seed appears to have happened right here in the Bay Area, where resistance to GMO seed is strongest. There is a long tradition of biotech development here. The companies Chiron, Genentech, and Tularik are all local to the Bay Area. Also, on the other side of the spectrum, the local anti-GMO movement is quite strong, too.

Finally, the movie "Future of Food", a documentary released in 2004, takes a strong stand against GMOs. This film was made by Jerry Garcia's widow, Deborah Koons Garcia. It stars local experts on the topic (including Ignacio Chapela, who speaks in the UC Berkeley faculty forum webcase I posted last week).

UC Berkeley Forum on Energy Bioscience Institute (Webcast)

UC Berkeley has put on its own faculty forum (today, March 8th) on the topic of the Energy Bioscience Institute. The webcast of the forum is available here :

http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=19207&p=1&ipp=15&category=

Very interesting ... if you have an hour or more to listen in.

Speakers - 8-10 minutes each:
Beth Burnside - Prof. of Microbiology (strong "PRO")
Jay Kiesling - Director of Physical Biosciences Division, LBL (strong "PRO")
Ignacio Chapela - Assoc. Professor of ... (Microbiology?) (strong "CONTRA")
Someone from the business school analyzing BP (neutral)
Sean Carstruti, Director of CITRUS, Prof. of Electrical Engineering & BioEngineering (weak "PRO")
Robert Reich, Haas School of Business (neutral)
--
Stephen Chu ("PRO") - 1:00 hrs
Chancellor Birgeneau - 1:03 hrs

Followed by 1 hr of Q&A

(Altieri speaks at 1:14, Chu speaks again at 1:16)

SF Chron articles on new energy research + natural highlights of California

A few days ago, another article appeared in the SF Chronicle that discusses some of the more technical aspects of alternative energy production. I especially liked the graphic on the 37 foot wide "Dish concentrators" for generating solar energy out in the desert near Edwards Air Force Base. Also the discussion of the connection between lignin and cellulosic ethanol.

Here is the link. I reprinted the article in full below.

Also I noticed this article on "the best natural highlights in California" and thought it worth mentioning:

For the greatest of the truly great, stick to California

***
Unlocking clean, cheap energy
California scientists look to ethanol, solar arrays and 1800s engine for answers

California scientists are playing key roles in developing new energy technologies to counteract the effects of global warming.

Nanotech solar cells, the world's largest planned solar-electricity plant and new technologies for breeding biofuels like ethanol are among the brighter prospects on the energy research front in the Bay Area and the Golden State.

The basic technologies already exist. The main problems the scientists say they face are not scientific but rather are figuring out technical ways to refine and cheapen the technologies until they're reliable and cost-competitive with other energy sources.

And getting there, some scientists admit, could take years of research.

In the East Bay, scientists at U.S. Energy Department laboratories are exploring ways to use enzymes, microbes and even termites to generate more commercially appealing forms of biofuel such as ethanol.

At present, ethanol for transportation is produced from the starch in corn. Unfortunately, the ethanol-making process is so energy-intensive that the resulting ethanol yields only slightly more energy than was required to make it.

So scientists are seeking technical ways to produce ethanol more efficiently. They're doing this by investigating how to extract energy from the non-starch parts of plants, especially woody plants that are rich in cellulose, which is rich in the carbon- and hydrogen-based molecules that are useful for clean fuel. The goal is to develop an economically attractive form of auto fuel called cellulosic ethanol.

It won't be easy. Visionaries especially hope to use gene-modifying tricks to degrade cellulose more efficiently -- say, by creating genetically modified plant feedstocks, such as poplar trees, that would decompose more readily. However, Chris Somerville, a prominent Bay Area plant scientist and biofuel entrepreneur, said the history of genetic engineering of organisms indicates it could take at least a decade to invent and license commercially appealing genetic techniques for biofuel production.

"The biggest technical obstacle," said Prof. Charles E. Wyman of the Center for Environmental Research and Technology at UC Riverside, "is to overcome the natural resistance of cellulosic biomass to break down (and) release sugars," from which ethanol can be manufactured.

"The challenge is that no one wants to take the risk of trying to commercialize the (cellulosic ethanol) technology for the first time as the process is capital-intensive," Wyman said. "Yet converting cellulosic biomass to fuels is virtually the only option we have for making sustainable liquid transportation fuels with virtually no greenhouse gas emissions that can make a major impact on oil imports."

Over millions of years of evolution, the tougher parts of plants have developed dense, intertwined layers of molecules that resist being broken down by natural forces -- a phenomenon called "biomass recalcitrance." One of the toughest cellulose components is a substance called lignin, which gives plants their stiffness and ability to stand upright. If scientists can figure out how to break down lignin, they could more easily tap into the plant's energy riches -- just as kids can get at the ice cream if they figure out how to break into an ice cream store.

Scientists at the U.S. Energy Department's Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek and the California Institute of Technology are seeking help from termites, nature's most proficient cellulose eater.

Termites contain hundreds of different types of enzymes that digest cellulose. If researchers can figure out which enzymes are the most efficient cellulose-destroyers, they might be able to extract them from termites and inject them into the ethanol-production process to break down cellulose.

Phil Hugenholtz, a microbial ecologist at the Walnut Creek lab, said some experts suspect the enzymes won't be nearly as effective outside of the termites' bodies, just as a carburetor is useless outside of a car.

"We'll find out in the next couple of years," he said.

Right now, ethanol research is getting the bulk of media coverage, but research persists on longer-established alternate energy technologies.

At Nanosolar Inc. in Palo Alto and at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, scientists are figuring out ways to extract new energy from the sun by developing nanotech and ultra-lightweight solar-electric cells. Existing solar-electric technology relies mainly on cells made of silicon, but they've become the Model Ts of solar power, generating too little energy to be attractive for many of the more energy-intensive uses, such as powering entire cities.

The problem is figuring out how to beat more electricity out of solar-electric cells.

Normally, when a solar cell is hit by a particle of light known as a photon, the cell emits a single electron or negatively charged particle. However, scientists have found that when they fire a photon at an extremely tiny semiconductor called a nanocrystal (just a few millionths of a meter wide), it can emit far more energy -- up to seven electrons at once.

The effect, known as carrier multiplication, has stirred debate among physicists, who disagree on its cause. Some think it can be explained in terms of known physics, while others think new scientific theories will be needed to explain it.

"We have to make (solar) cells much more cheaply and with higher efficiencies than silicon cells," and nanotech cells offer one way to do that, said Victor Klimov, a physical chemist and team leader at the Los Alamos lab. He thinks nanocrystal solar cells made from lead, cadmium, selenium or other substances might eventually generate more than 40 percent more electricity than existing silicon solar cells.

But there's a catch: For now, the electrons can't escape from the nanocrystal that traps them, thus preventing the electricity from being funneled into a power grid. Some researchers are developing microscopic wires that, they hope, will solve the problem.

Meanwhile, Nanosolar is developing new "thin film" solar cells that are one-100th the thickness of ordinary cells, although they can generate about the same amount of electricity.

But there are challenges, said Martin Roscheisen, the company's chief executive officer.

"The amount of capital involved is quite high, (and) it's a matter of getting the details right, (of) getting (production up) to high yield fast," he said. He expects the company's first solar-electric panels to roll off the assembly line at its San Jose plant some time later this year.

Perhaps the most spectacular near-term development in solar power will be the opening of the world's biggest solar-electric plant sometime in 2009 on 4,500 acres of the Mojave Desert near Victorville in San Bernardino County. Approved for construction in 2005 by the California Energy Commission, the plant weds 19th century engine technology and solar power to today's electric grid.

An array of 20,000 37-foot-wide reflective dishes will reflect sunlight onto engines that contain hydrogen gas. The heat will make the gas expand, which, in turn, will drive a piston, crank shaft and drive shaft assembly connected to a generator that produces electricity. It's expected to generate at least 500 megawatts, enough to power 300,000 homes.

It's an example of how sometimes, the oldest is best, for the Stirling engine is an update of an engine technology as ancient as the Industrial Revolution.

"The Stirling engine was invented back in the early 1800s (by) a Scottish minister and inventor," said Bruce Osborn, chief executive officer of a Phoenix company, Stirling Energy Systems, which is building the plant for Southern California Edison. "It's a very simple, very elegant, very efficient system."

E-mail Keay Davidson at kdavidson@sfchronicle.com.
***

Ethanol and "New Fuels"

1. What is the problem with global warming? Well, if you're an Inuit, you might need an air conditioner, for starters. (Reuters, March 4, 2007)

2. Bush Seeks Ethanol Alliance With Brazil (AP News, March 4, 2007):

3. But - Is ethanol really the answer? (USA Today, Feb 1, 2006)

The following 2 paragraphs are interesting to note:

"Ethanol yields roughly 26% more energy than it takes to produce it, according to a just-published study by the University of California at Berkeley. That's because corn grows using free sunlight and because farming has gotten very efficient. Gasoline provides only about 84% of the energy required to produce it, the study says.

In fact, a wholesale switch to E85 and other fuels made largely from plants instead of petroleum is a key, early step in a program that could eliminate U.S. gasoline consumption by 2050, according to Nathanael Greene, senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council."

4. Finally, to answer the same question: Berkeley Daily Planet article on protestors against the Berkeley BioScience Institute $500 million dollar grant from British Petroleum (Berkeley Daily Planet, March 2, 2007)

***** Useful Info *******

Ethanol: Alcohol made from plants, usually corn in the USA. It's used in alcoholic beverages and is blended with gasoline as fuel for cars and trucks.

Gasohol: Common name for fuel that's 10% ethanol, 90% gasoline. It's widely available and can be used by most vehicles.

E85: Fuel that's 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline. It's available mainly in the Midwest. Only specially equipped vehicles - called flexible-fuel vehicles, or FFVs - can use E85.

Where to find E85
For locations of E85 fuel stations: www.e85fuel.com

Welcome

Hi and welcome to my new blog on environmental news in the East Bay. I decided to start this blog because I think several people are tired of me emailing them about the environment. I know what a hassle it is when "friends" take advantage of the fact that they have your email address to send you stuff. I don't really mind it because I'm used to it. But, I suppose some people get annoyed. Also I formerly posted environmental stuff in my personal blog (kentlewan.blogspot.com) and I think this was starting to annoy some of my friends who don't share my concern / enthusiasm for the environment. So, I am starting this blog, with the purpose of having a once-a-week (more or less) update on local environmental news and controversies for any and all to read. Hopefully I get some subscribers.

There seems to be a lot happening in the Eastbay right now, with the Cal BioScience institute, Port of Oakland vs. all its neighbors, and global warming action events all happening simultaneously. I will try to provide a quick and easy-to-read update on the latest trends + events. Thanks for reading-

Kent