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    Spanish company Ferry Group is to invest €42/US$55.2 million in a project for the production of biomass fuel pellets in Bulgaria. The 3-year project consists of establishing plantations of paulownia trees near the city of Tran. Paulownia is a fast-growing tree used for the commercial production of fuel pellets. Dnevnik - Feb. 20, 2007.

    Hungary's BHD Hõerõmû Zrt. is to build a 35 billion Forint (€138/US$182 million) commercial biomass-fired power plant with a maximum output of 49.9 MW in Szerencs (northeast Hungary). Portfolio.hu - Feb. 20, 2007.

    Tonight at 9pm, BBC Two will be showing a program on geo-engineering techniques to 'save' the planet from global warming. Five of the world's top scientists propose five radical scientific inventions which could stop climate change dead in its tracks. The ideas include: a giant sunshade in space to filter out the sun's rays and help cool us down; forests of artificial trees that would breath in carbon dioxide and stop the green house effect and a fleet futuristic yachts that will shoot salt water into the clouds thickening them and cooling the planet. BBC News - Feb. 19, 2007.

    Archer Daniels Midland, the largest U.S. ethanol producer, is planning to open a biodiesel plant in Indonesia with Wilmar International Ltd. this year and a wholly owned biodiesel plant in Brazil before July, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The Brazil plant is expected to be the nation's largest, the paper said. Worldwide, the company projects a fourfold rise in biodiesel production over the next five years. ADM was not immediately available to comment. Reuters - Feb. 16, 2007.

    Finnish engineering firm Pöyry Oyj has been awarded contracts by San Carlos Bioenergy Inc. to provide services for the first bioethanol plant in the Philippines. The aggregate contract value is EUR 10 million. The plant is to be build in the Province of San Carlos on the north-eastern tip of Negros Island. The plant is expected to deliver 120,000 liters/day of bioethanol and 4 MW of excess power to the grid. Kauppalehti Online - Feb. 15, 2007.

    In order to reduce fuel costs, a Mukono-based flower farm which exports to Europe, is building its own biodiesel plant, based on using Jatropha curcas seeds. It estimates the fuel will cut production costs by up to 20%. New Vision (Kampala, Uganda) - Feb. 12, 2007.

    The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has decided to use 10% biodiesel in its fleet of public buses. The world's largest city is served by the Toei Bus System, which is used by some 570,000 people daily. Digital World Tokyo - Feb. 12, 2007.

    Fearing lack of electricity supply in South Africa and a price tag on CO2, WSP Group SA is investing in a biomass power plant that will replace coal in the Letaba Citrus juicing plant which is located in Tzaneen. Mining Weekly - Feb. 8, 2007.

    In what it calls an important addition to its global R&D capabilities, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is to build a new bioenergy research center in Hamburg, Germany. World Grain - Feb. 5, 2007.

    EthaBlog's Henrique Oliveira interviews leading Brazilian biofuels consultant Marcelo Coelho who offers insights into the (foreign) investment dynamics in the sector, the history of Brazilian ethanol and the relationship between oil price trends and biofuels. EthaBlog - Feb. 2, 2007.

    The government of Taiwan has announced its renewable energy target: 12% of all energy should come from renewables by 2020. The plan is expected to revitalise Taiwan's agricultural sector and to boost its nascent biomass industry. China Post - Feb. 2, 2007.

    Production at Cantarell, the world's second biggest oil field, declined by 500,000 barrels or 25% last year. This virtual collapse is unfolding much faster than projections from Mexico's state-run oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos. Wall Street Journal - Jan. 30, 2007.

    Dubai-based and AIM listed Teejori Ltd. has entered into an agreement to invest €6 million to acquire a 16.7% interest in Bekon, which developed two proprietary technologies enabling dry-fermentation of biomass. Both technologies allow it to design, establish and operate biogas plants in a highly efficient way. Dry-Fermentation offers significant advantages to the existing widely used wet fermentation process of converting biomass to biogas. Ame Info - Jan. 22, 2007.

    Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited is to build a biofuel production plant in the tribal belt of Banswara, Rajasthan, India. The petroleum company has acquired 20,000 hectares of low value land in the district, which it plans to commit to growing jatropha and other biofuel crops. The company's chairman said HPCL was also looking for similar wasteland in the state of Chhattisgarh. Zee News - Jan. 15, 2007.

    The Zimbabwean national police begins planting jatropha for a pilot project that must result in a daily production of 1000 liters of biodiesel. The Herald (Harare), Via AllAfrica - Jan. 12, 2007.

    In order to meet its Kyoto obligations and to cut dependence on oil, Japan has started importing biofuels from Brazil and elsewhere. And even though the country has limited local bioenergy potential, its Agriculture Ministry will begin a search for natural resources, including farm products and their residues, that can be used to make biofuels in Japan. To this end, studies will be conducted at 900 locations nationwide over a three-year period. The Japan Times - Jan. 12, 2007.

    Chrysler's chief economist Van Jolissaint has launched an arrogant attack on "quasi-hysterical Europeans" and their attitudes to global warming, calling the Stern Review 'dubious'. The remarks illustrate the yawning gap between opinions on climate change among Europeans and Americans, but they also strengthen the view that announcements by US car makers and legislators about the development of green vehicles are nothing more than window dressing. Today, the EU announced its comprehensive energy policy for the 21st century, with climate change at the center of it. BBC News - Jan. 10, 2007.

    The new Canadian government is investing $840,000 into BioMatera Inc. a biotech company that develops industrial biopolymers (such as PHA) that have wide-scale applications in the plastics, farmaceutical and cosmetics industries. Plant-based biopolymers such as PHA are biodegradable and renewable. Government of Canada - Jan. 9, 2007.


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Monday, February 19, 2007

Going negative: carbon-burial test will monitor leaks

In the future will be covering advances in so-called 'carbon capture and storage' (CCS) technologies and projects under the heading "Going negative". We do so because CCS allows for the creation of a radical carbon negative energy system, namely 'Bio-Energy with Carbon Storage' (BECS). CCS technologies are being developed both by the coal and by the oil & gas industry, as a way of sequestring carbon emissions into geological formations, such as aquifers, salt tables or depleted gas fields. If the technique becomes reliable, it can be coupled to bioenergy production in a system that delivers energy while taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

If implemented as a geo-engineering strategy, scientists think BECS can take us back to pre-industrial CO2 levels in a matter of a few decades (earlier post). Biomass crops would be planted at strategic locations around the globe - preferrably in the (sub)tropics -, where they would suck CO2 out of the atmosphere. The crops would then be used as a feedstock for the production of bio-energy (they can be burned in coal and gas plants), after which CCS techniques inject the emissions from the combustion of the crops into a geological formation underground, making the system carbon negative.

Earlier we reported on a CCS project in the French Pyrénées (earlier post), and on new storage locations and storage media but noted that there are still concerns about leakage risks (earlier post). Before we start using costly CCS on a large scale, we must be certain that the greenhouse gases do not escape the geological formations they are stored in.

The largest carbon burial experiment in the world is contributing precisely to analysing this risk. The project is located in Otway Basin, on the coast of southern Australia, where drilling of a 2100-metre well has begun (see picture, click to enlarge). The experiment promises the most comprehensive monitoring for leaks to date.

If all goes well, researchers from the Canberra-based Cooperative Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Technologies (CO2CRC) will start injecting carbon dioxide into the new well in July. They will start by extracting CO2 from a nearby natural geological reservoir and compressing it into a "supercritical fluid" – a gas-liquid hybrid. This will be injected via the new well into a sandstone reservoir (this animated graphic demonstrates the process).

The reservoir is shaped liked an upside-down saucer that is partially-filled with methane gas, and covered by a series of impermeable rock layers. Over the following six to nine months, 100,000 tonnes of supercritical CO2 will be injected:
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

“We plan to demonstrate that the CO2 will move into the reservoir as predicted,” says Kevin Dodds of CO2CRC and CSIRO Petroleum in Perth. The Otway Basin Pilot Project will also be the most intensely monitored carbon burial project so far in the hopes of demonstrating that CO2 can be safely and securely kept underground.
Green light

“We’re not going to [use carbon burial] unless my Dad and yours believe that it’s going to work," says geologist of Susan Hovorka, at the University of Texas at Austin, US. "We need to lay our cards face up, and let the public know what is going on down there. Otway should be a good opportunity to do this.“ Hovorka leads a team running the Frio Brine carbon burial experiment in Texas, and was a member of the team that reviewed the Otway Basin Project for the International Energy Agency.

Carbon burial – or geosequestration – is one of several techniques being developed to reduce the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere when coal, oil, or gas are burned (see also $25 million prize for greenhouse gas removal). The gas, which causes global warming, would be captured from power plants and then stored underground.

The idea received a significant legal boost on 10 February when an international law came into force allowing the greenhouse gas to be buried beneath the sea floor (see Green light for carbon burial).
Flushing out

Currently, there are several commercial carbon burial projects around the world. The biggest, in the North Sea’s Sleipner gas field, stores one million tons of CO2 each year in an underground sandstone formation.

Sliepner saves Norwegian oil company Statoil carbon taxes, and cuts Norway’s annual output of greenhouse gases. But the aim of most commercial projects is to use CO2 to push out more oil, rather than to find a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and monitoring for leakage is minimal.

In contrast, the Otway Basin experiment involves intensive monitoring of levels of CO2 in soil, water and air. The project includes adding tracers to the injected CO2 to enable researchers to identify whether the detected gas is from vegetation, natural underground sources or from the CO2 store, says David Etheridge, an atmospheric scientist at CSIRO in Aspendale near Melbourne, Australia.
Clean fresh air

The location of the Otway Basin Project is an advantage because air measurements can be made while prevailing winds bring clean air from the Southern Ocean, uncontaminated by industrial or natural sources of CO2.

“There is no CO2 source out there. It’s a lot different to what you have in Texas with CO2 sources all around from off-shore oil and drilling, shipping and cities,” says Hovorka.

Carbon burial is mostly needed for coal-fired power stations, which account for about a quarter of global CO2 emissions, but obstacles beyond remain to be overcome. These include reducing the cost of the technologies that capture CO2 from power stations, and testing a variety of geological sites for their suitability for carbon burial.

Peter Cook, CO2CRC chief executive, adds: “We need a policy and pricing environment that will encourage people to use the technology.”

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