2007-06-29

ASV Enerģētikas aģentūra turpina investēt šķidrās bioenerģijas pētniecības centros

"The U.S. Energy Department on Tuesday announced that it will invest up to $375 million in three new Bioenergy Research Centers that will be located in Oak Ridge, Tennessee; Madison, Wisconsin; and near Berkeley, California.
These centers would develop cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels that will help reduce America's gasoline demand, the agency said in a statement.
The three new research centers in association with universities, national laboratories and private companies will try to develop new ways of turning switchgrass, poplar trees and other plants into biofuel.
Each centre will receive $125 million to research new technologies for the development of cellulosic ethanol and other biofuels over five years. All three Centers will use different plants both for laboratory research and for improving feedstock crops.
"Where energy is concerned, we simply must find ways to do more with less," said Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. "We can develop fundamentally new sources of energy, but only by inventing radical new technology will we be successful."
US Energy Department’s investment in the three centers comes as part of Bush administration's "Twenty in Ten" initiative, which seeks to make cellulosic ethanol produced from cheaper agricultural and forest wastes and reduce U.S. gasoline consumption by 20 percent within 10 years.
In the United States Ethanol is produced mainly from corn, however, the US Government intends to replace this traditional corn-based with an alternative that uses nonfood sources for energy.
"This research is critical because future biofuels production will require the use of feedstocks more diverse than corn, including cellulosic material like agricultural residues, grasses, poplar trees, inedible plants, and non-edible portions of crops," the DOE said.
Bodman said the new bioenergy research centers would bring together science experts from 18 of the country’s leading universities, seven Energy Department national laboratories, one nonprofit organization and a number of private companies.
The “DOE Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center” will be led by the University of Wisconsin in Madison, Wisconsin, in close collaboration with Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan.
The other two Research Centers, the “DOE BioEnergy Research Center” and the “DOE Joint BioEnergy Institute” will be led by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, respectively.
The three bioenergy research centers are expected to begin their work in 2008 and be fully operational in 2009."

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2007-06-20

Jauna mājas lapa kārklu audzētājiem Velsā

Informācija, protams, dublējas ar citām radniecīgām mājas lapām Lielbritānijā, bet tajā ir publicētas arī reģionam specifiskas lietas.

http://www.willow4wales.co.uk/

Par videi draudzīgo Zviedrijas pilsētu Vaxjo

"IN THE cool forest region of southern Sweden, the city of Vaxjo has turned off the heating oil, even on the darkest, snowbound days of winter.
Coal, too, is gone and next on the fossil fuel hit list is petrol. In the underground car park of the local government offices, there are no private vehicles, just a communal green-car fleet. Staff who cycle or take the local biogas buses to work book ahead to drive - fuelling up on biogas or E85, a blend of 85 per cent renewable ethanol.
Petrol is still readily available to the public, but carbon emissions in Sweden are heavily taxed. Drivers pays about 80 cents a litre extra at the bowser.
Vaxjo is chasing a future free of fossil fuels, and it's almost halfway there without having sacrificed lifestyle, comfort or economic growth.
When local politicians announced the phasing out in 1996, it was little more than a quaint curiosity. Oil prices were hovering around a manageable $US20 a barrel and global warming was still a hotly contested debate. Today, at least one international delegation a week mainly from China and Japan beats a path to Vaxjo to see how it's done.
The Vaxjo model has been repeated all over Sweden, creating a network of "climate" municipalities. Sweden's total emissions have long been falling and last year the Government announced its own ambitious national goal: to end oil dependency by 2020.
Today, Sweden's annual greenhouse gas emissions are just over five tonnes per capita, compared with Australian and US levels in the high 20s and climbing. That's before calculating Sweden's forests, which serve as huge carbon sinks that could offset emissions by another 30 per cent. In Vaxjo, it's 3.5 tonnes of carbon per capita, the lowest urban level in Europe.
Meanwhile, the heavily taxed Swedish economy has clawed its way up into the world's top five, partly due to cutting-edge "clean tech".
The first step towards Vaxjo's and Sweden's success was the city power plant. Today, its giant smokestack towers over the pristine lakes, parks and cycle ways, barely emitting a puff of steam. Inside there's a huge furnace, similar to those that burn coal. But, the suffocating heat feels and smells like a sauna. Wood chips, sawdust and other wood waste discarded by local forestry industries are burning at extremely high temperatures to produce electricity."

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Lielbritānijas Vides aizsardzības ministrs aicina vairāk izmantot līdz šim nepietiekoši apgūtos enerģētiskās koksnes resursus

"Environment Minister, Michael Russell, announced today that he has asked Forestry Commission Scotland to convene an industry-wide 'task force' to consider how to increase the supply of wood for renewable energy production.
The new task force will consider ways of bringing forward supplies from currently under-utilised sources such as forest residues, short rotation coppice and under-managed woodlands. It will also consider the impact of increased demand for wood fuel on the future balance between supply and demand within the wood processing sector.
The task force will be led by Forestry Commission Scotland and will include representatives from the renewable energy, wood processing and land management sectors.
The announcement was made during a visit to E.ON's £90 million biomass plant in Lockerbie, the largest of its kind in the UK. Currently, E.ON expects to begin testing the plant after the summer and commission the station by the turn of the year. Overall, the new biomass station could provide over 300 jobs in the forestry and farming sector.
Mr Russell said:
"The E.ON biomass plant in Lockerbie is certainly very impressive. When it is operational it will generate enough green power to meet the needs of 70,000 homes and displace the emission of 140,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases each year, a significant contribution towards renewable energy targets.
"It is clear that the demand for wood as a raw material is increasing in Scotland. This is due to more forward looking businesses and organisations opting for wood as a fuel for renewable energy. This is good news but we need to work harder to ensure that the correct supplies are available to meet the upsurge in demand.
"The new Scottish Government is committed to supporting the woodfuel industry and we want to do this by working in partnership with the industry. This new task force signals a fresh drive to develop the woodfuel sector and maximise the opportunities.""

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Par to pašu

2007-06-15

Par biometanola ražošanas perspektīvām Indonēzijā

"Using wood as an energy source is a rational choice for underprivileged and rural people. According to a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report in 2005, the availability and high price of kerosene and other fossil fuels (such as liquefied petroleum gas or LPG) make their use limited, particularly in rural areas.
Research conducted H.Y. Hadikusumah in Majalaya, West Java, concluded that poor people use wood for energy as much as possible, resorting to kerosene only when the supply is exhausted.
Although woodfuel creates significant health hazards and has been declared the "silent killer" of women and children, it is the energy of necessity rather than choice.
The decision to use either kerosene, woodfuel or other energy (such as bio-methanol) depends on several factors, such as the price, availability, reliability of supply, the cost of appliance replacement (i.e. stoves) and the energy content of available alternatives. However, in many rural areas there is no option but to use woodfuel because of isolatiob and the lack of infrastructure to deliver other types of energy.
The use of forest biomass to produce energy can play a significant role in the lives of many people in the world. However, we need to explore the following questions:
Is it economically viable, environmentally sound, and socially acceptable if the raw materials for charcoal and woodfuel are transformed into biomethanol using mobile technology that is both environmentally friendly and inexpensive?
Can we use the available silviculture regimes or ecosystem management principles to achieve sustainable forest management while at the same time producing forest biomass for bioenergy?
Can we use forest certification to prove that the sources of forest biomass are managed under the principles of sustainable forest management?
If the answer is "yes" to most of those questions, then we may use forest materials for biomethanol without further loosing significant forest areas or damaging the forest ecosystem in Indonesia.
According to the FAO, Indonesia has the 8th largest forest area in the world. Yet Indonesia is also one of ten countries with the largest annual net loss in forest area in the years 2000-2005. This situation reflects the manifestation of a problematic structural of the forest sector, including the policy and regulatory frameworks, economic and financial policies, the operations of the timber industry, and corruption
Inefficiency also happens in forest harvesting operations. Even with conservative calculations using production levels in the 1980s, total log waste was 7.5 million m3/year with a value of almost Rp. 1.2 trillion/year.
Making forest more productive and sustainable will be one among technical tools to control deforestation. In fact, using forest biomass for bioenergy with appropriate silvicultural techniques will not only reduce pressure to harvest more commercial timbers since economic benefits not only come from commercial trees.
It is also from less commercial trees, shrubs, and other biomass. The program will also provide opportunity to have more healthy forest and other community-based programs in the rural area.
According to a study in Washington state, production of biofuels or bioenergy from otherwise un-merchantable forest thinnings will be insufficient to cover the cost of removing thinnings from the forest. However, if this material must be removed to reduce the risk of wildfire, then the range of biofuel and energy production options are preferable to the disposal of this material and should be aggressively pursued.
Approximately about 71.86 percent of what has been classified as forest residue can be used as raw material for bioenergy production. If there are 7.5 million m3/year (5.063 tonnes) forest residues and if we assume that we can use a very conservative calculation of 25 percent efficiency when converting biomass to methanol, the total biomethanol that can be produced will be 39.87 million liters.
  • Electricity production from the amount of methanol will support 12,493 households.
  • Total net carbon emissions avoided by subtracting bio-methanol for natural gas in fuel cell is 29,365 tonnes of carbon, while 26,581 tonnes of carbon would avoid being emitted if bio-methanol was used to substitute or supplement gasoline use at country level.
There are always negative externalities that need to be carefully considered when implementing any bioenergy program. In conventional forestry, forest management will need to take into consideration both harvesting practices and special treatment of forest biomass.
To some extent, energy farms (plantation forests) will increase the competition of land use and will gradually increase the price of agricultural products. If woodfuel is produced on an unsustainable basis by the clear cutting of forests, substituting energy produced from wood for energy produced from fossil fuels will not have a positive effect on carbon balances and could even be worse than the use of fossil fuels.
If woodfuel is produced from sustainably managed forests where the wood harvested is replaced, then the substitution of wood energy for fossil fuels will result in a real reduction in the net carbon balance. From this point of view, forest certification programs can be an appropriate tool when used to prove that sustainable forest management practices have been implemented in the FMU.
Similarly, if residues from harvesting and the wood industry are used for energy production, rather than left unused, this would also have a positive net effect to forest health (by reducing forest fire) and the availability of clean energy for rural people."

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