Retooled ethanol plant in Iowa would make RNG to meet demand in California

A German bioenergy company’s reboot would make ethanol and renewable natural gas, though questions remain about its life-cycle climate and environmental impacts.

By Karen Uhlenhuth Energy News Network

A German bioenergy company is preparing to produce corn ethanol and renewable natural gas at the site of a failed cellulosic ethanol plant in Nevada, Iowa.

Verbio Vereinigte BioEnergie AG is building an anaerobic digester on the site that will annually convert up to 100,000 tons of corn stover — a crop leftover consisting of everything but the kernel — into a renewable fuel that can be fed into the nation’s natural gas pipeline system. Verbio hopes to begin production by fall of 2021.

The biogas, known as RNG, is more expensive to produce than conventional natural gas, but producers can turn a profit by selling credits to refineries and fuel suppliers in California, where a state low-carbon fuel standard requires annual reductions in the carbon intensity of transportation fuels.

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“In a facility we own in Germany, we make ethanol and then turn around and make renewable natural gas,” said Greg Northrup, president and chief executive officer of Verbio North America. “We are just taking what we do in Germany and bringing it here to the U.S.” 

Verbio purchased the facility in November 2018 from DuPont Industrial Biosciences, which operated the plant for less than two years. The German company expects initially to produce enough RNG to equal about 7 million gallons of gasoline. That will require between 75,000 and 100,000 tons of corn stover annually, which Northrup said is readily available within 50 miles of the plant. Plans call for expanding that to possibly the equivalent of 20 million gallons of gasoline.

The other side of the operation, corn ethanol production, is likely to begin sometime in 2022, he said, topping out at 10 or 12 million gallons annually. The residue from ethanol production will be added to the corn stover to produce RNG.

Northrup said it will be the first facility in this country to produce both ethanol and RNG, which he expects will be in demand. Oregon also has a low-carbon fuel standard, and other states including Minnesota, New York, and Washington are considering policies similar to California’s.

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Sunoco ordered to reroute pipeline after spill in Pennsylvania

A sign warns visitors to Marsh Creek Lake at the entrance of Marsh Creek Lake State Park in Chester County, Pa., where about 8,000 gallons of drilling mud is being cleaned up due to construction of the Mariner East pipeline. Kimberly Paynter / WHYY

Mile-long alternative route will avoid area where 8,000 gallons of drilling mud escaped

By Jon Hurdle, StateImpact

Pennsylvania environmental officials on Friday ordered Sunoco to reroute one of its problem-plagued Mariner East pipelines away from a site where construction spilled more than 8,000 gallons of drilling fluid into a lake and created a 15-foot sink hole.

The order from the Department of Environmental Protection was the first to demand a partial reroute of  the pipeline in its troubled three-and-a-half year construction history, and follows criticism that a series of fines and shutdowns previously imposed by the DEP have done little to improve Sunoco’s performance on the project — which has prompted the department to issue more than 100 notices of violation.

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“These incidents are yet another instance where Sunoco has blatantly disregarded the citizens and resources of Chester County with careless actions while installing the Mariner East II Pipeline,” said DEP Secretary Patrick McDonell, in a statement. “We will not stand for more of the same. An alternate route must be used. The department is holding Sunoco responsible for its unlawful actions and demanding a proper cleanup.”

The DEP ordered Sunoco to immediately stop all construction on a horizontal directional drilling site in Uwchlan Township, Chester County, and to prepare to reroute its 20-inch pipeline over an approximately 1-mile section that the company previously identified as being technically feasible but which was not implemented.

The company was also directed to submit full reports on how it spilled some 8,100 gallons of drilling mud into a stream that fed Marsh Creek Lake on Aug. 10, and how its construction led to the sinkhole the next day. And it was ordered to submit an impact assessment and cleanup plan for the incidents by Oct. 1.

The order said Sunoco re-evaluated the site, as ordered by a court, following two spills there in 2017 while it was building a 16-inch pipeline along the same route, and concluded there was a “moderate to high risk” that drilling fluids would be lost and there would be inadvertent returns.

The DEP noted that 33 acres of Marsh Creek Lake, in a state park less than 40 miles west of Philadelphia, had been closed to the public because of the spill.

DEP spokeswoman Virginia Cain said the order had been issued because of the spill but also because Sunoco had not acted on earlier assurances that it would prevent further spills at the site, following “inadvertent returns,” or spills, there in 2017.

“It was the nature of the spill, and the things that they said they would do if there was a spill, which they didn’t do,” she said.

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Lack of action on climate change could unseat Lindsey Graham

The three-term Republican senator and his challenger, Democrat Jaime Harrison both talk about global warming and they are neck-and-neck in the polls.

Graham v. Harrison

BY JAMES BRUGGERS, Inside Climate News

Three-term Sen. Lindsey Graham was once viewed as the relatively rare Republican who would seriously work on climate legislation, but since 2010 he’s been mostly missing in action on the issue.

Democrat Jaime Harrison, a former aide to Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), and the first black leader of the South Carolina Democratic Party, has turned out to be a prolific fundraiser and has been giving Graham a run for his money.

At least among some voters, climate change is becoming a voting issue in South Carolina, which has been hammered by powerful hurricanes and flooded by rising tides. But climate is being overshadowed by the pandemic and President Trump.

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U.S. Showers Tiny Wind Turbines With Big Love

By Tina Casey, Cleantechnica 

Now is the time for the US distributed wind industry to blossom and spread its tiny turbines across the land. Coal has collapsed in a steaming heap, the COVID-19 crisis has stomped all over the market for oil and gas, and the burning of the US west coast will most likely convince more people to pay more attention to the benefits of smaller wind turbines. Here to help do the convincing is the US Department of Energy, which apparently did not get the memo about saving all those coal jobs.

Small wind turbines are the focus of a push to grow the distributed wind sector in the US, with help from the Energy Department (screenshot courtesy of Bergey Windpower).

The Case For Distributed Wind & Tiny Wind Turbines

To be clear, the distributed wind sector is not confined to tiny turbines, or even small or mid-sized turbines. The defining factor is how the turbines are used. In the view of the Energy Department, distributed wind refers to turbines that are used for on-site electricity generation, for example at a farm, a medical center, or a school campus. Also included in the category are wind turbines that support a local distribution grid.

Although large-scale turbines of 8-10 megawatts and more could come under that definition, much of the distributed wind focus is on the small and mid-sized turbine categories. That includes everything under the 1-megawatt marker and all the way down into the micro scale range measured in a handful of kilowatts.

So, who needs a tiny wind turbine in their backyard? Though some urban and suburban locations fit the bill, a primary focus is on rural households as well as farmers and other rural businesses. The Energy Department has been making a big deal about distributed wind because it can assist economies in far flung areas where major new transmission infrastructure is expensive or impractical.

Beyond its application to rural economic growth, a strong US distributed wind industry would support extra resiliency and reliability for both local communities and the national grid, as an element in the Energy Department’s broader focus on grid modernization and  distributed energy resources.

The agency is also promoting the US distributed wind industry as job-creating agent for both the domestic and export markets, helping to boost the nation’s wind manufacturing profile globally.

More & Better & Smaller Wind Turbines

Up through the last century, the small wind turbine category was hobbled by an unregulated, wild-west environment that left plenty of room for overstated promises, if not outright hucksterism. Now it’s the 21st century, and the small wind industry has matured with new certification and standardization measures supported by the American Wind Energy Association.

That leaves the challenge of bringing turbine costs down to a competitive level, and that’s where the Energy Department’s Competitiveness Improvement Project comes in. CIP is a cost-sharing program launched in 2013 under the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, with the aim of accelerating deployment of small and mid-sized wind turbines.

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In the most recent development on the turbine cost-cutting score, last month NREL selected seven US  wind firms for funding through CIP. None of them have crossed the CleanTechnica radar before, which just goes to show how quickly the industry has been growing while we weren’t looking.

The selection also demonstrates that the small wind sector can generate electricity and jobs all over the US, and not just in the wind-rich midsection.

Two Vermont firms are included in the mix. The CIP funding will enable Star Wind (aka Star Wind Turbines) to take steps toward certifying its uniquely styled 45 kilowatt, “low-wind-speed-optimized, six-bladed horizontal-axis wind generator,” explains NREL.

United Wind LLC will polish off its prototype “Class III rotor, advanced system controls, and integrated storage for the XANT M 95-kW wind generator, allowing this system to provide expanded grid services and creating an autonomous 100-kW energy system” (note: as of this writing, unitedwind.com redirects to Ecocycle).

Pennsylvania also lays claim two of the chosen ones. Matric Limited (aka Matric Group) is working on the wind power inverter end of things, which is important because wind turbines produce electricity in direct current (DC) mode, and you need an inverter to switch onto alternating current (AC)

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Woodpecker wars draw spectators from far and near

Acorn woodpeckers are ferocious fighters, and their battles create a spectacle for other woodpeckers, which will leave their own territories unguarded in order to come watch.Credit…Bruce Lyon

By Priyanka Runwal, the New York Times

Acorn woodpeckers are renowned food hoarders. Every fall they stash as many as thousands of acorns in holes drilled into dead tree stumps in preparation for winter. Guarding these “granary trees” against acorn theft is a fierce, familial affair. But all hell breaks loose when there are deaths in a family and newly vacant spots in prime habitat are up for grabs.

The news travels fast. Nearby woodpecker groups rush to the site and fight long, gory battles until one collective wins, according to a study published Monday in Current Biology. These wars also draw woodpecker audiences, the researchers reported, who leave their own territories unattended, demonstrating the immense investment and risks the birds are willing to take in pursuit of better breeding opportunities and intelligence gathering.

“I think these power struggles are major events in the birds’ social calendars,” said Sahas Barve, an avian biologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and lead author of the study. “They’re definitely trying to get social information out of it.”

Acorn woodpecker societies are complex. Each family consists of up to seven adult males, often brothers, which breed with one to three females, often sisters but unrelated to the males. They live with nest helpers who are typically their offspring from previous years. Together they defend 15-acre territories, on average, encompassing one or more granaries in the oak forests along coastal Oregon down into Mexico.

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Radha Swaminathan Joins TRC Companies’ Board of Directors

Radha Swaminathan

TRC Companies (“TRC”) welcomes Radha Swaminathan to its Board of Directors. Swaminathan will assist TRC’s growth by providing invaluable guidance in areas of innovation such as digital solutions, renewables and electric operations.

“We are excited to have Radha join us, at TRC we cannot overstate how important technology is to the health of our business and the business of our clients,” said Chris Vincze, CEO of TRC. “Radha will provide vital perspective on how we can propel the business forward through innovation and digital solutions.”

Swaminathan has served as Executive Vice President and Chief Customer, Strategy and Technology officer for American Water, the largest publicly traded U.S. water and wastewater utility company. Before joining American Water, Swaminathan served as Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at WIPRO Technologies, a global information technology, consulting and business-process services company. Swaminathan has also served as the Director, Smart Grid Technologies for Florida Power & Light and NextEra Energy, where he spearheaded the business and technology efforts for Florida’s largest investor-owned electric utility, including the development and deployment of “smart grid” technology.

“TRC has been an industry leader for decades and as we look to the future, technological innovation must be incorporated in every aspect of our business,” said Swaminathan. “I look forward to providing governance and guidance to advance the growth of TRC.”

Swaminathan earned a Master of Science and a Master of Philosophy in Mathematics from the University of Madras in India.

A pioneer in groundbreaking scientific and engineering developments since the 1960s, TRC is a leading consulting, engineering and construction management firm that provides technology-enabled solutions to the power, infrastructure, environmental and energy markets

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