The Wrong Fire

The Wrong Fire

BY DIANA FURCHTGOTT-ROTH
July 13, 2007
URL: http://www.nysun.com/article/58374


It is astounding that with all the expensive proposals to combat global warming no one is discussing reducing global carbon emissions by putting out mine fires. Although putting out fires in America would not have a significant effect, putting out fires in China and India would.
So as the former vice president, Al Gore, organizes Live Earth concerts, as Congress ponders raising fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, and as Michigan's John Dingell, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, proposes America's first carbon tax, uncontrolled Chinese coal mine fires are sending millions of tons of carbon into the air.
China loses between 100 and 200 million tons of coal a year — a significant fraction of its production of 2.26 billion tons — to mine fires, according to Holland's International Institute for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation. This results in carbon dioxide emissions in a range of between 560 and 1,120 million metric tons, equaling 50% to 100% of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from gasoline.
It may well be less costly for us to put out the Chinese mine fires than to cut emissions at home.
Second to China is India, where mine fires burn between 3 and 10 million tons of coal annually, with emissions of 15 to 51 million metric tons. Emissions will only grow in the future as China and India expand production of coal to fuel their thriving economies.
As well as the harm done to the environment, mine fires impair access to useable coal in nearby mine seams. That loss of access exceeds in value the loss of the burned coal.
America has smaller mine fires in the coal regions of Kentucky, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Colorado. Precise national estimates of wasted coal are unavailable, but experts agree that U.S. emissions are a fraction of those in China and India.
China and India are aware of the harm these fires are causing, not only globally, but also locally. The fires pollute air and water, and make vast swathes of land uninhabitable. They would welcome international assistance in putting them out.
Instead, Congress wants to impose billions of dollars of costs on consumers and American industries in order to reduce global warming. The energy bill making its way through Congress would substantially raise the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards for cars and trucks, decimating the American automobile industry and increasing the unemployment rate in Michigan.
Another idea is cap-and-trade programs. Under these schemes, the government grants credits to favored industries, which then sell them to those who need to produce emissions. This system requires the correct allocation of credits and level of caps to be successful. In Europe, caps were set so high that emissions were not reduced significantly.
A carbon tax, proposed on July 8 by Mr. Dingell, is a more neutral way to reduce emissions. The tax would encourage Americans to reduce consumption of all fossil fuels — petroleum products, natural gas, coal and shale oil. Yet raising taxes is never popular, and few voters trust politicians to offset carbon taxes with reductions in income taxes.
Further, gases other than carbon contribute to global warming — so why stop at a carbon tax? Congress could copy New Zealand's new flatulence tax on sheep and cows, designed to reduce emissions of methane, another greenhouse gas. New Zealand's Treasury will collect $5 million a year.
Carbon offsets, often "feel-good" measures such as planting trees or cleaning the ocean, are an increasingly trendy way of reducing global carbon emissions. Vice President Gore, defending the size of his residence, said that he purchased carbon offsets, and Senator Clinton supports funding for new carbon sequestration technologies.
But the most efficient offset would be extinguishing international mine fires, and neither Mr. Gore nor Mrs. Clinton are proposing research for this. A Utah expert in mine fires, Steven Feldman, notes that most of the research in extinguishing mine fires is taking place not in America but in Holland and Germany.
For many years, workable technologies to put out long-burning mine fires were not available. Flooding, excavating, and flushing with wet sand and gravel were all ineffective. However, new techniques are being developed.
One technology was highlighted by the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health in a paper on using nitrogen enhanced foam to put out fires. The foam successfully extinguished a fire at Pinnacle Mine near Pineville, W. Va.
The method was developed by entrepreneurs, Mark Cummins and Lisa La-Fosse. Their firm, CAFSCO, hopes to use the technique to put out other fires, both in America and abroad.
Ms. LaFosse reports that the merit of nitrogen foam is that it contains no oxygen.
"Everything that has been tried before has failed to reach the critical areas of combustion near the irregular roof and into the cracks and crevices leading into nearby coal seams. Other types of foam that have been injected into the combustion area include large amounts of oxygen in the bubbles of the foam, which feed the fire and increase intensity."
We don't yet know definitively, despite much assertion, whether global warming is a man-made phenomenon or simply the product of lengthy climate cycles. But if we're going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, let's tackle the biggest culprits first — the mines burning out of control in China and India.

Ms. Furchtgott-Roth, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Prof may hold key to solve fuel crisis

David Antonelli has partnered with Chrysler to research and develop a cheap way of storing hydrogen as fuel for vehicles. Antonelli is the first scientist in the Windsor area to embark on such a project. CREDIT: Ian Williams/Windsor Star


Prof may hold key to solve fuel crisis
Chrysler invests in hydrogen research

Sonja Puzic
Windsor Star
Saturday, July 07, 2007


David Antonelli has partnered with Chrysler to research and develop a cheap way of storing hydrogen as fuel for vehicles. Antonelli is the first scientist in the Windsor area to embark on such a project.
A University of Windsor chemistry professor may be holding the keys to hydrogen-powered vehicles of the future.
David Antonelli's breakthrough in hydrogen storage research is attracting worldwide attention -- and investment from Chrysler.
Antonelli recently signed a deal with the automaker that will give him $100,000 over two years to "optimize" a cheap way of storing hydrogen in fuel tanks at room temperature.
It's the first time Chrysler's fuel cell and hydrogen technologies branch has collaborated with a Windsor-area researcher.
The development of the so-called "hydrogen economy" has long been considered a promising answer to the world's energy shortages and environmental problems.
Many experts have argued that a global energy crisis is inevitable with the rising demand for oil. An alternative energy source must be abundant, cost-effective and renewable. Hydrogen power simply burns water and does not pollute.
Until recently, advanced fuel engineers have only been able to store hydrogen as a gas in massive tanks or as a liquid in high-pressure tubes at temperatures as low as -273 C. Both methods are expensive and impractical.
Antonelli has discovered a way of storing hydrogen cheaply and safely in low-pressure tanks by using a mixture of non-perishable titanium oxide powder and silica, a main component in most types of glass.
The material he's created can store large quantities of hydrogen fuel within its porous structure. Antonelli's first breakthrough was the use of titanium oxide powder and he's since discovered a way to bind hydrogen to the surface of the titanium and silica mixture.
"We found that there is a strong connection of hydrogen at room temperatures," Antonelli said. "It's a huge breakthrough."
Antonelli's work caught the attention of Tarek Abdel-Baset, a Chrysler project engineer who has been working on fuel cell and hydrogen technologies for the past four years.
"Three or four years ago, I set out on an all-Canadian mission to find out who is working on hydrogen storage," he said. "I found (Antonelli) just by doing an Internet search."
Abdel-Baset said he was immediately intrigued by Antonelli's progress.
"Right off the bat, I liked his approach because it was the kind of chemistry that hasn't been done before. He's got some encouraging results," he said.
"There is no material out there that's cheap enough and reliable enough that fits into a regular size gas tank. We don't have anything out there that gets us enough hydrogen on board. So we're looking for that magic material ... and we think that Dave's on to something."
American-born Antonelli, who was educated in Edmonton and did his post-doctoral work at Oxford and MIT, said his research is unique and has already made "a big splash" in the U.S., where he presented his findings at a few major conferences.
He's also been invited to speak to researchers in China about hydrogen storage and has submitted a paper to the prestigious Nature magazine.
"A lot of people work with hydrogen, but they don't have the connection with the auto industry," Abdel-Baset said. "That gives (Antonelli) a bit of a distinct advantage."
U.S. buyout firm Cerberus Capital Management's recent purchase of Chrysler from German-based DaimlerChrysler has not affected Antonelli's contract with the automaker.
"I think it makes (the deal) better," said Antonelli, who also did some research with General Motors.
"I think Chrysler will have more freedom now."
Mass production of viable hydrogen vehicles is considered anywhere between five and 20 years away.
In the meantime, the Canadian government has committed to spending $1.5 billion on green energy. Canadian producers of ethanol and other renewable fuels have said they expect a new federal strategy will put them on a level playing field with foreign competitors.

spuzic@thestar.canwest.com
© The Windsor Star 2007

Box makes biofuel from car fumes

Box makes biofuel from car fumes
Michael Szabo
Reuters

Thursday, July 19, 2007

The world's richest corporations and finest minds spend billions trying to solve the problem of carbon emissions, but three fishing buddies in North Wales believe they have cracked it. REUTERS/Graphic
CREDIT:
The world's richest corporations and finest minds spend billions trying to solve the problem of carbon emissions, but three fishing buddies in North Wales believe they have cracked it. REUTERS/Graphic

QUEENSFERRY - The world's richest corporations and finest minds spend billions trying to solve the problem of carbon emissions, but three fishing buddies in North Wales believe they have cracked it.
They have developed a box which they say can be fixed underneath a car in place of the exhaust to trap the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming -- including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide -- and emit mostly water vapor.
The captured gases can be processed to create a biofuel using genetically modified algae.
Dubbed "Greenbox," the technology developed by organic chemist Derek Palmer and engineers Ian Houston and John Jones could, they say, be used for cars, buses, lorries and eventually buildings and heavy industry, including power plants.
"We've managed to develop a way to successfully capture a majority of the emissions from the dirtiest motor we could find," Palmer, who has consulted for organizations including the World Health Organisation and GlaxoSmithKline, told Reuters.
The three, who stumbled across the idea while experimenting with carbon dioxide to help boost algae growth for fish farming, have set up a company called Maes Anturio Limited, which translates from Welsh as Field Adventure.
With the backing of their local member of parliament they are now seeking extra risk capital either from government or industry: the only emissions they are not sure their box can handle are those from aviation.
CAPTURE RATE
Although the box the men currently use for demonstration is about the size of a bar stool, they say they can build one small enough to replace a car exhaust that will last for a full tank of petrol.
The crucial aspect of the technology is that the carbon dioxide is captured and held in a secure state, said Houston. Other carbon capture technologies are much more cumbersome or energy-intensive, for example using miles of pipeline to transport the gas.
"The carbon dioxide, held in its safe, inert state, can be handled, transported and released into a controlled environment with ease and a minimal amount of energy required," Houston said at a demonstration using a diesel-powered generator at a certified UK Ministry of Transportation emissions test centre.
More than 130 tests carried out over two years at several testing centers have, the three say, yielded a capture rate between 85 and 95 percent. They showed the box to David Hansen, a Labour MP for Delyn, North Wales, who is now helping them.
"Based on the information, there is a clear reduction in emissions," Hansen told Reuters.
"As a result, I'm facilitating meetings with the appropriate UK government agencies, as we want to ensure that British ownership and manufacturing is maintained."
The men are also in contact with car-makers Toyota Motor Corp of Japan and General Motors Corp. of the United States. Houston said they have also received substantial offers from two unnamed Asian companies.
Both Toyota and General Motors declined to comment.
SECRETS
If the system takes off, drivers with a Greenbox would replace it when they fill up their cars and it would go to a bioreactor to be emptied.
Through a chemical reaction, the captured gases from the box would be fed to algae, which would then be crushed to produce a bio-oil. This extract can be converted to produce a biodiesel almost identical to normal diesel.
This biodiesel can be fed back into a diesel engine, the emptied Greenbox can be affixed to the car and the cycle can begin again.
The process also yields methane gas and fertilizer, both of which can be captured separately. The algae required to capture all of Britain's auto emissions would take up around 1,000 acres
The three estimate that 10 facilities could be built across the UK to handle the carbon dioxide from the nearly 30 million cars on British roads.
The inventors say they have spent nearly 170,000 pounds ($348,500) over two years developing the "three distinct technologies" involved and are hoping to secure more funding for health and safety testing.
Not surprisingly, the trio won't show anyone -- not even their wives -- what's inside the box.
After every demonstration they hide its individual components in various locations across North Wales and the technology is divided into three parts, with each inventor being custodian of one section.
"Our three minds hold the three keys and we can only unlock it together," said Houston.


© Reuters 2007

Skyscraper Farms

Dickson Despommier plans to grow crops inside city buildings.


Skyscraper Farms

Amy Feldman

Al Gore urges everyone to plant trees in An Inconvenient Truth. But where, asks Dickson Despommier, a 67-year-old microbiologist at Columbia University, can we plant them if, as scientists suggest, more and more of the world's forests will soon become farmland to support our explosive population growth? Nearly 41 percent of Earth's land is now used for agriculture, yet we're on the brink of vast population growth, from 6.7 billion people today to an estimated 9.2 billion by 2050, with the majority living in cities. The only way to make room for enough carbon-sequestering trees to reverse global warming, Despommier argues, is to change the way we farm. Radically. Despommier envisions blocks of vertical farms in the world's biggest cities, each structure 30 stories high, providing enough food and water for 50,000 people a year, with no waste. He is in discussions with potential investors to build the first prototype. Despommier also sits on the board of New York Sun Works, an eco-friendly engineering firm in Manhattan that in May demonstrated a similar—if much smaller—urban-farm concept on a floating barge.

Q: How did you come to the idea of putting a farm in a skyscraper? A: About eight years ago, I asked my students to come up with ideas on urban sustainability, and they proposed 13 acres of farmable land on the commercial rooftops of Manhattan. We figured out that it would feed just 2 percent of the city, so I said, "Let's take the 1,723 abandoned buildings in Manhattan, retrofit them and do hydroponics." Then I said, "OK, forget about money, space and time, and design a building that will feed and hydrate 50,000 people a year." I wanted individuals to eat 2,000 calories a day and drink water created by evapotranspiration.

Q: Meaning water from plants? A: Right. The condensation comes from the leaves, even though you put the water into the roots. If you had a vertical farm the size of a city block, the plants inside could produce enough water for roughly 50,000 people.

Q: Where would irrigation come from? A: The sewage. First you'd desludge it. Then you'd filter it through nonedible barrier plants and again through a tower of zebra mussels, the best filtering organism out there. After that, the water would be pristine.

Q: How many different kinds of fruits and vegetables would you grow inside the building? A: More than 100—strawberries, blueberries, even miniature banana plants. We got a list from NASA of produce that can be grown indoors. It turns out that NASA has a big hydroponics program, because there's no takeout on Mars—you can't send out for a pizza. Genetic engineering and artificial selection will also play an important role in vertical farming because there are a lot of plants, such as traditional corn, that we don't yet know how to grow indoors.

Q: How will this fight global warming? A: All the governmental reports say the same thing: The biggest polluter is agriculture. I love the look of a wheat field, but it's a huge trade-off to grow food outside the city—40.5 percent of the earth is used for agriculture. As the population grows, the demand for food goes up and more land is cleared for farming. Come up with an alternative to traditional agriculture, and you already have the strategy for sequestering carbon dioxide: planting trees.

Q: How much will all this cost? A: The first vertical farm could run into the billions of dollars. I envision state-of-the-art stuff: The plants will be placed in automated conveyer belts that move past stationary grow lights and automated nutrient-delivery systems. The first buildings would have to be subsidized, with energy incentives and tax incentives. We're talking about the equivalent of engineering a Saturn rocket.

Q: When could we see the first farm? A: With funding, there could be a prototype in 5 to 10 years. I hope I live to be 106 and see the skyline dotted with them.

Copyright © 2005 Popular Science

Greed is still better than 'green'

Greed is still better than 'green'

People, people. By all means, care about the earth, but invest in the real world and make money. Here are 15 great stocks in dirty businesses like coal and mining that make the world run.

By Jon Markman

Now that we've got all the pious Earth Day documentaries, photo essays and public service announcements out of the way, it's time to get back to business.

And that means we need to talk about investing for the real world as it exists today, not as it might on some far-off date when all our modern conveniences are powered by love beads, sunshine and sugar beets rather than good old-fashioned oil, gas and coal.

My colleague Jim "Moonbeam" Jubak provided a fluffy-clouds-and-rainbows portfolio for environmental dreamers last week, which was great if you have a "Gore 2008" bumper sticker on your Prius. For everyone else, I'd like to return attention to the companies that provide the motive force behind the electronics, vehicles and water heaters that have lifted us above the darkness and despair of the Middle Ages -- and I don't just mean the '70s.

Call it a portfolio for Unearth Day.
A coal fix for electricity addicts
Right now, right here, just for starters, you just have to have some coal mining companies in your portfolio. Yeah, OK: Coal is stripped out of gorgeous Appalachian and Rocky mountains, it's filthy to handle, and its emissions blacken the sky. But look on the bright side: Nature, not man, made it a nearly perfect and highly economic fuel for power plants -- and it is plentiful in the United States. Natural gas is slowly gaining on coal as fuel for electricity utilities, but it's way behind and will remain so for decades.

If this disturbs you, perhaps you should try living without your espresso machine, Pilates DVDs or broadband connection for a few weeks. U.S. electricity demand is rising at the rate of 1.5% annually due to all our new plasma-screen TVs, corporate and personal Internet use, iPod chargers and cell-phone towers. Think of all the incremental extra demands you put on the power grid today versus 15 years ago, including your three home computers that are on day and night, and you realize the extent to which we have become electricity addicts.

Electricity doesn't come from the sky; it comes from coal, plain and simple, although hydroelectric dams, natural gas and nuclear fission lend a hand. Coal prices weakened last year as rising production and ample utility stockpiles provided too much supply in the market. But the supply-demand balance is improving for coal miners this year due to production declines of as much as 3.5%, according to federal regulators. The reason: Central Appalachia coal miners have closed a lot of high-cost mines while Wyoming-area coal miners slowed production to better meet railroads' capacity to move the rocks south to distribution networks. All the while, a worldwide boost in natural gas prices has made that cleaner fuel less economical.

So which coal miners should you buy? That's pretty easy to answer, as there are far fewer miners than there are oil and gas drillers. The low-cost leader in the United States is Peabody Energy (BTU, news, msgs), and it's also considered the best managed, with highly profitable operations in Australia that feed China directly. But smaller miners Westmoreland Coal (WLB, news, msgs), Arch Coal (ACI, news, msgs) and Foundation Coal (FCL, news, msgs) are also good choices, as is the Canadian trust Fording (FDG, news, msgs), which pays a juicy 9% dividend to boot. More diversified miners with major coal subsidiaries that I can strongly recommend are BHP Billiton (BHP, news, msgs) of Australia and Teck Cominco (TCK, news, msgs) of Canada. Pick one or two from the first group and one overseas, and you're covered.

Grab a shovel

Coal can't be dug out of the earth without a lot of big equipment, so in our Unearth Day portfolio we just have to have some major earthmoving machinery makers. The two most important U.S. supershovel makers are Joy Global (JOYG, news, msgs), which sports a $5 billion market capitalization, and Bucyrus International (BUCY, news, msgs), which is a fifth the size at $1 billion. They are both cheap, face expanding market opportunities overseas in China and Russia -- where equipment is hopelessly outdated and in need of updating -- and are run by experienced managers in Milwaukee. Buy either with a goal of at least a 20% profit over the next year.

For a foreign accent on the same idea, consider Finnish mining-equipment maker Metso Oyj (MX, news, msgs), which I first recommended a year ago in this column, "China's reality is both boom and gloom." It's up 50% since, but with earnings growing and global growth prospect intact, its valuation supports at least another 50% move higher.

To transport all that coal, you definitely need a railroad or two. My favorites -- Union Pacific (UNP, news, msgs) and CSX Corp. (CSX, news, msgs) -- are both up a ton this year, but since valuations are still in line and prospects are good, you can buy them on pullbacks to $107 and $43, respectively. And if you reflexively feel guilty about all the pollution you may be responsible for causing, then take a stake in ADA-ES (ADES, news, msgs), too. It provides specialty chemicals and systems to coal-fired power plants to help reduce emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and mercury. It's a very cheap, low-volume stock that can get to $25 to $31 over the next year or two, which would yield as much as 60%.

Build and bury

To build all the infrastructure for the power plants, coal distribution and pipelines, governments and utilities worldwide rely on heavy construction companies. Some of the largest and most experienced are Fluor (FLR, news, msgs) and Jacobs Engineering (JEC, news, msgs), but probably the most undervalued name in the group is Halliburton spinoff KBR Inc. (KBR, news, msgs). Right now, the stock is in a downtrend, so buy only above $22.50 or $23.50. For that foreign flair, again, look at Swedish-Swiss construction manager ABB Ltd. (ABB, news, msgs), which was also first recommended a year ago but still looks very cheap to me and can be bought on pullbacks.

Surely no Unearth Day portfolio would be complete without some asphalt to pave paradise and put up a parking lot, so lastly turn your attention to NuStar Energy (NS, news, msgs), which is structured as one of those master limited partnerships that I wrote about two weeks ago. Formerly known as Valero LP before being fully spun off from the refinery giant, NuStar is one of the largest independent operators of terminals and pipelines for the transportation of gasoline, diesel and ethanol, with 6,200 miles of pipeline and 35 million barrels of storage capacity. To serve the fertilizer industry, NuStar also has plans to expand its current 2,000-mile ammonia pipeline that runs from the Gulf coast of Mississippi to Nebraska and Indiana. And in an effort to become a major player in asphalt -- a neglected niche in the industry which its veteran chairman believes will become a premium product -- NuStar purchased two plants this month. Its chairman, a Valero founder and former CEO, put some of his own skin in the deal by buying $2 million worth of his company's shares on the open market on April 13 and March 29 at just a touch below the current price.

Now for the unicorn chasers out there, I will throw you one idea for Unearth Day, too. Small-cap Darling International (DAR, news, msgs), which collects used cooking oils and animal fats from restaurants and refines them into tallow, grease and proteins for the soap, pet food, cosmetics, livestock and leather goods industries, and now for biofuels. Its veteran managers know they have a formerly neglected commodity that could become very valuable and are considering plans to build biodiesel refining facilities to take advantage. Darling is very cheap: At $7.30 a share, it is trading at around 16 times next year's estimated earnings per share despite growth well north of 25%.

As a skier, camper, cyclist and card-carrying Sierra Club member since the '70s, it doesn't give me any pleasure to make these observations. But it's valuable for investors to see the world as it really is, not as they wish it to be -- and after all, you can always tithe 25% of your profits to an environmental cause.

Unearth Day portfolio

Company name	Market cap	4/23/07 price
Peabody Energy (BTU, news, msgs)	$12.7 billion	48.22
Arch Coal (ACI, news, msgs)	$5.2 billion	36.5
Westmoreland Coal (WLB, news, msgs)	$217 million	24.07
Fording (FDG, news, msgs)	$3.5 billion	24.07
BHP Billiton (BHP, news, msgs)	$144 billion	49.04
Teck Cominco (TCK, news, msgs)	$16 billion	77.02
Joy Global (JOYG, news, msgs)	$5.4 billion	49.94
Bucyrus International (BUCY, news, msgs)	$1.9 billion	60.27
Metso Oyj (MX, news, msgs)	$7.9 billion	56.33
ABB Ltd. (ABB, news, msgs)	$40 billion	18.75
Union Pacific (UNP, news, msgs)	$31.5 billion	116.15
CSX Corp. (CSX, news, msgs)	$19 billion	44.72
ADA-ES (ADES, news, msgs)	$109 million	19.45
NuStar Energy (NS, news, msgs)	$3.2 billion	68.5
Darling International (DAR, news, msgs)	$607 million	7.52

Political Liquor's Economic Hangover Just Beginning

Political Liquor's Economic Hangover Just Beginning
By Dr. Henry I. Miller : 11 Jul 2007



From pre-school to planning funerals, green is in. Very in. But green policies and decisions need to be based on more than a vague desire to save the planet. The principles of the natural sciences and economics must play an essential role -- a part of policy-making that often eludes politicians. The latest examples are the federal government's efforts to reduce the United States's dependence on imported oil (now more than 60 percent) by shifting a big share of the nation's largest crop, corn, to the production of ethanol for fueling automobiles.

Good goal, bad policy. In fact, in the short- and medium-term, ethanol can do little to reduce the vast amount of oil that is imported, and the ethanol policy will have widespread and profound ripple effects on other commodity markets. Corn farmers and ethanol refiners are ecstatic about the ethanol boom, of course, and are enjoying the windfall of artificially enhanced demand. But it is already proving to be an expensive and dangerous experiment for the rest of us.

The U.S. Senate is debating new legislation that would further expand corn ethanol production. A 2005 law already mandates production of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012, about 5 percent of the projected gasoline use at that time. These biofuel goals are propped up by a generous federal subsidy -- via tax credits -- of 51 cents a gallon for blending ethanol into gasoline, and a tariff of 54 cents a gallon on most imported ethanol, to keep out cheap imports from Brazil. This latest bill is a prime example of the government's throwing good money after a bad idea, of ignoring science and economics in favor of politics, and of disdain for free markets.

President Bush has set a target of replacing 15 percent of domestic gasoline use with biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) over the next 10 years, which would require almost a five-fold increase in mandatory biofuel use to about 35 billion gallons. With current technology, almost all of this biofuel would have to come from corn because there is no other feasible, proven alternative. However, it is unlikely that American farmers will be able to meet such demands: Achieving the 15 percent goal would require the entire current U.S. corn crop, which represents a whopping 40 percent of the world's corn supply. This would do more than create mere market distortions; the irresistible pressure to divert corn from food to fuel would create unprecedented turmoil.

Thus, it is no surprise that the price of corn has doubled in the past year — from $2 to $4 per bushel. We are already seeing upward pressure on food prices as the demand for ethanol boosts the demand for corn: Nationally, food prices were up 3.9 percent in April, compared to the same month a year earlier. Until the recent ethanol boom, more than 60 percent of the annual U.S. corn harvest was fed domestically to cattle, hogs and chickens, or used in food or beverages. Thousands of food items contain corn or corn byproducts. A spokesman for one of California's largest cattle ranches and feedlots noted that since the end of 2005, the company has experienced a 36 percent increase in the cost of feed, "which translates to an additional expense of $101 per head raised." Reflecting these trends, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association has demanded an end both to government subsidies for ethanol and to the import tariff on foreign ethanol.

The poultry industry is also squawking. The National Chicken Council is demanding remedies from senators who represent the big southern poultry states, and the National Turkey Federation estimates that its feed costs have gone up nearly $600 million annually.

The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

These effects may be only a hint of things to come. Any sort of shock to corn yields, such as drought, unseasonably hot weather, pests or disease in the next few years could send food prices into the stratosphere. Even Gregory Page, the CEO of agribusiness giant Cargill, a major beneficiary of the ethanol boom, shares these fears, "We just have to be sure that the more-is-better mindset [regarding ethanol] doesn't get way out ahead of the capacity of the land to provide the fuel . . . What we would like to see is some thoughtfulness about what we will do if we have a weather calamity." Such concerns are more than theoretical: In 1970, a widespread outbreak of a fungus called southern corn leaf blight destroyed 15 percent of the U.S. corn crop, and in 1988, drought reduced U.S. corn yields by almost 30 percent.

Politicians like to say that ethanol is environmentally friendly, but these claims must be put into perspective. Although corn is a renewable resource, it has a far lower energy yield relative to the energy used to produce it -- what policy wonks call "net energy balance" -- than either biodiesel (such as soybean oil) or ethanol from many other plants.

Moreover, ethanol yields about 30 percent less energy per gallon than gasoline, so mileage per gallon in internal combustion engines drops off significantly. Finally, adding ethanol raises the price of blended fuel because it is more expensive to transport and handle. Lower-cost biomass ethanol — for example, from rice straw (a byproduct of harvesting rice) switchgrass, or other sources — would make far more economic sense.

Even in the most favorable of scenarios, large volumes of ethanol from biomass will not be commercially viable for many years, but we should not delay production unnecessarily by government policies that, by means of corn subsidies, discriminate in favor of corn-based ethanol. Government policies should stimulate innovation as broadly as possible, and let the marketplace determine winners and losers.

Recent issues of the journals Nature Biotechnology and Nature describe precisely the kinds of advances that should be permitted to compete with corn-derived ethanol on a level playing field. Researchers at the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation in Oklahoma report in the former journal the genetic engineering of a new variety of alfalfa that contains less lignin, the substance that imparts mechanical strength to plant stems and woody tissue, than conventional alfalfa and that is, therefore, a better crop for ethanol production. Because the new variant is defective in biosynthesis of lignin, it is more susceptible to digestion by the enzymes used to convert plant material into the sugars from which ethanol is produced; some of the engineered varieties of alfalfa yield almost double the amount of sugar that is available from conventional alfalfa. This approach has dual advantages: It promises to reduce the costs and increase the yield of ethanol production from alfalfa, as well as to reduce the need for environmentally damaging acid in the biofuel refining process.

A research team at the University of Wisconsin described a catalytic process that converts the simple sugar fructose -- which can be obtained directly from biomass or derived from glucose, another simple sugar -- into 2,5-dimethylfuran. The advantage therein is that compared with ethanol, the only renewable liquid fuel currently produced in large quantities, 2,5-dimethylfuran has an energy density -- the amount of energy stored per unit mass -- 40 percent higher and is also less volatile; and because it is insoluble in water, it is easier to obtain in pure form.

American legislators and policymakers seem oblivious to the scientific and economic realities of ethanol production. Brazil and other major sugarcane-producing nations enjoy significant advantages over the U.S. in producing ethanol, including ample agricultural land, warm climates amenable to vast sugarcane plantations, and on-site distilleries that can process cane immediately after harvest. At current world prices for sugar and corn, Brazilian ethanol production would remain competitive even if oil prices were to drop below $30 per barrel, but U.S. corn-based ethanol plants would be losing money at forty-dollar oil, even with the subsidy. Thus, in the absence of cost-effective, domestically available sources for producing ethanol, rather than using corn it would make far more sense to import ethanol from Brazil and other countries that can produce it efficiently — and also to remove the 54 cents-per-gallon tariff on Brazilian ethanol imports.

Another important strategy would be to encourage a more prominent role for nuclear power, which consumes no fossil fuels and emits no greenhouse gases. Good news on that front is that with electricity demand projected to soar more than 40 percent by 2030 -- not including the potential demand from greater availability of plug-in hybrids and other forms of electric cars -- the Nuclear Regulatory Commission expects applications for as many as 11 new units this year, and for as many as 28 by the end of 2009.

Our politicians may be drunk with the prospect of corn-derived ethanol, but if we don't adopt policies based on science and sound economics, it is consumers around the world who will suffer from the hangover.

Henry I. Miller, a physician and fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, was an FDA official from 1979 to 1994; his most recent book is "The Frankenfood Myth." Colin A. Carter is a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California at Davis.

New Ethanol Plants to Be Fueled by Cow Manure

New Ethanol Plants to Be Fueled by Cow Manure
Scott Norris
for National Geographic News
August 18, 2006

While a cheap alternative to gasoline may be pie in the sky, ethanol producers in cattle country will soon be reaping the energy rewards of pies on the ground.

Ethanol production plants fueled by cow manure are under construction in Hereford, Texas, and Mead, Nebraska.

The new facilities may have a big impact on the growing debate over the value of ethanol—a liquid fuel distilled from food starches such as corn—as a supplement or alternative to gasoline.

Critics have long argued that traditional ethanol production consumes nearly as much fossil fuel energy as it saves, once all the energy costs of growing and processing corn are factored in.

(Read "Ethanol Not So Green After All?" [July 2006].)

But in Hereford, a cattle town in the Texas Panhandle (Texas map), Dallas-based Panda Ethanol is building a production facility driven by the area's most abundant and least appreciated resource: manure.

The new plant is expected to extract methane from 1 billion pounds (453,000 metric tons) of manure—the product of about 500,000 cows—to generate 100 million gallons (378 million liters) of ethanol, plus ash by-product, each year.

Methane derived from the manure will be burned to generate the steam necessary for processing corn into ethanol.

"We thought it made a lot of sense to use a renewable fuel to create a renewable fuel," said Panda CEO Todd Carter.

"There are literally mountains of manure in the Hereford area."

Cows Crack Corn

By mining those mountains for energy, the Panda facility is expected to save the equivalent of a thousand barrels of oil a day that would otherwise be required to fuel ethanol production.

The manure will come free of charge, courtesy of local feedlot operators for whom waste disposal is a difficult and costly necessity. The Hereford plant will begin operating in the second half of 2007.

Panda has plans to build similar facilities in Haskell County, Kansas, and Yuma, Colorado.

In Mead, Nebraska, a small town of about 600 people 30 miles west of Omaha (Nebraska map), E3 Biofuels is taking the idea of cow power a step further.

Their new facility, set to begin operation in October, will integrate cattle and ethanol production in a highly efficient "closed loop" system.

The E3 operation is smaller than the Panda facilities. Built around an existing feedlot, 30,000 head of cattle will provide the energy needed to produce 24 million gallons (91 million liters) of ethanol a year.

Cattle will be kept in long, covered enclosures with slotted floors, and manure falling through will be pumped directly into the processing facility.

E3 CEO Dennis Langley says collecting the manure immediately eliminates the common problem of water pollution caused by manure left standing in feedlots or spread across farmland.

The process also prevents the atmospheric release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from manure left to slowly decompose.

While Panda relies on an incineration process, E3's manure will be broken down inside an oxygen-free "digester," yielding methane fuel and an ammonia by-product that can be sold as fertilizer.

The energy generated will be used to convert locally grown corn into ethanol and wet distillers' grain, a protein-rich by-product that is fed back to the cattle on site.

Langley says the three-part combination of feedlot, methane generator, and fuel processor will allow the company to make ethanol at less cost and with far better energy return than traditional methods.

"The normal process is, you put one BTU [a unit of energy] in and get two BTU out," Langley said.

"What we do is radical. We put one BTU in and get 46.7 BTU out."

What that means, he continues, is that "producing 1 gallon [3.8 liters] of our ethanol is like producing 23 gallons [87 liters] of traditional ethanol or 15 gallons [57 liters] of gasoline."

Fueling Controversy

With gas prices high and the future of world oil production uncertain, interest in alternative fuels is surging.

But ethanol, a fuel now widely used in Brazil, has been the subject of an often polarized debate in the U.S.

The controversy has been playing out recently both in science journals and on energy blog sites such as The Oil Drum.

Proponents like Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla argue that ethanol can replace gasoline, while opponents counter that not enough agricultural land exists to meet more than a fraction of the country's energy needs.

Cornell University ecologist David Pimentel is an ethanol skeptic and co-author of a study finding that corn ethanol typically costs more energy to produce than it provides.

Pimentel says manure-fueled production does represent an improvement over traditional methods.

"It probably would make [the net energy balance] slightly positive," Pimentel said, though he remains skeptical about the efficiency claims of E3 Biofuels.

"If you omit some of the inputs, you can make it look good. I'd like to see all the data," he added.

But another outspoken ethanol critic, oil industry analyst and blogger Robert Rapier, has endorsed the E3 Biofuels approach, calling it "responsible ethanol."

The 2005 energy bill approved last summer by U.S. President George W. Bush included a controversial mandate for increased ethanol production, and many new facilities are now being built.

Once the Mead facility is up and running, E3's Langley hopes to see small-scale, integrated cattle-ethanol operations spread across the rural Midwest, bringing both environmental and economic benefits.

"We want to build three to five new plants in 2007 and every year thereafter," Langley said.

Pathogen Work at Texas A&M Suspended

Pathogen Work at Texas A&M Suspended
By Jocelyn Kaiser
ScienceNOW Daily News
2 July 2007

In an unprecedented step, federal officials have suspended all research on dangerous pathogens known as select agents at Texas A&M University (TAMU) in College Station after the school failed to report two cases of exposure last year.
The incidents involved the bacteria that cause brucellosis and Q fever, livestock diseases that can infect humans and are on the federal list of potential bioweapons. These pathogens are studied in highly secure labs with oversight by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia. The first exposure at TAMU occurred in February 2006, when a lab worker cleaning a chamber containing brucella bacteria in a biosafety level-3 lab developed brucellosis; she recovered after treatment with antibiotics (Science, 20 April, p. 353). One month later, three other workers tested positive for antibodies to Coxiella burnetii, the bacterium that causes Q fever, but didn't become sick. The brucella exposure and details of the Q fever incident first became public in April and June of this year through documents obtained by Edward Hammond of the Sunshine Project, a watchdog group in Austin.

TAMU admitted to CDC in April it had failed to report both incidents, but after visiting the campus, CDC inspectors weren't satisfied. In a 30 June letter, the agency told the university that research on select agents must be halted immediately while CDC conducts a "comprehensive review" to see if TAMU meets standards for handling select agents. If the university can't comply, its select agent work could be shut down and transferred to other labs, the letter says. According to CDC spokesperson Von Roebuck, this is the first time all of a university's select agent work has been suspended. The school could also face fines.

TAMU interim president Eddie J. Davis said in a statement that "we take this matter very seriously and are committed to taking all appropriate steps to ensure that we are in full compliance" with federal rules. He told reporters today that TAMU didn't think the Q fever exposures needed to be reported to CDC because the workers did not develop clinical symptoms. "There was no requirement that it be reported," he said. He also said two of the people were likely exposed before they joined the TAMU lab. Five labs with 120 workers have been shut down, he said. In addition, the principal investigator on the brucella project was suspended from the lab about a month ago.

The university is in the running for a major new agricultural biosecurity lab, the $450 million National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. The Department of Homeland Security expects to announce a short list of potential sites for the lab this month. But Hammond of the Sunshine Project suggests TAMU's prospects aren't looking so good now. And if the university makes the list, he asks, "What does that say about the safety and security of these facilities?"

Related site
TAMU documents on the exposures and CDC's letter (pdf) provided by The Sunshine Project

Charting Greed for All Things Green

Charting Greed for All Things Green
By Michael Balter
ScienceNOW Daily News
2 July 2007

Humans are leaving a heavy mark on Earth, but it's not just climate change. A new study shows that in addition to overfishing and other resource extraction, humans are also hogging nearly a quarter of the planet's yearly production of plant life. The findings suggest that humans are endangering Earth's biodiversity and call into question a leading strategy for slowing global warming--the use of biofuels to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
In recent years, scientists have made numerous attempts to determine how much vegetation, or "biomass," is appropriated by humans. Past estimates have varied widely, however, according to the models used and the data available to plug into them. A team led by Helmut Haberl, an ecologist at the University of Klagenfurt in Klagenfurt, Austria, has taken another crack at the question using a larger number of updated databases and taking into account the effects of land use by humans on overall plant growth. Haberl and his co-workers took the latest available statistics on agricultural production, forestry, and human-caused soil degradation, and mapped them.

The analysis showed that in 2000, humans used up to 23.8% of that year's biomass production, the team reports online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Of this total impact, the researchers found, 78% was due to agriculture and 22% to forestry, human-caused fires, and other activities. The team also found marked variations in human use of plant life around the world. Southern Asians topped the charts, appropriating about 63% of their area's vegetation, mostly due to more intense agricultural practices. North Americans used 22% and central Asians only about 12%. The authors warn that measures to increase the consumption of biofuels produced from agricultural and forestry products "need to be considered carefully," because they could double the amount of biomass used by humans and put even more pressure on other species trying to get their share of the Earth's plants.

Nathan Moore, an earth scientist at Michigan State University in East Lansing, says that the team's analysis is "sound" and its results are "quite alarming." Christopher Field, an ecologist at the Carnegie Institution in Stanford, California, agrees. The new estimate, he says, "is based on a conservative interpretation of the best available information." Field adds that "one species is appropriating about a quarter of the productive activity of all the world's lands. With millions of species sharing the leftovers, it is hard to know how many will be squeezed out of the game." Field also agrees with the Haberl team's concerns about biofuel use. "There simply isn't enough [biomass production] for us to solve the energy challenge of the 21st century with biofuels."

Related site

Biofuel basics from the U.S. Department of Energy