European demand for biofuels is leading to a ‘land grab’ in Africa, the latest research from Friends of the Earth suggests.

According to a new report from the charity, ‘Africa: Up For Grabs’, the amount of land being taken in African to produce biofuels for Northern countries is being underestimated and is currently out of control.

The research detailed in the report looks at eleven African countries and found that at least five million hectares of land-an area the size of Denmark-is being acquired by foreign companies to produce biofuels mainly for countries in the Northern hemisphere.

The practice – known as land grabbing – is increasing and is dominated by European and Chinese companies. However with official public information largely absent, current figures are likely to be only a snapshot and gross underestimates.
The new report reveals how local communities are having their land taken and there are few safeguards for local community land rights. Forests and natural vegetation are being cleared, and biofuels are competing with food crops for farmland.

A leaked World Bank report, published in the Financial Times back in July (see story), detailed a wider land grabbing problem and corroborates the pattern found by the charity. It stated that ‘consultations with local communities were often weak… Conflicts were common, usually over land rights’. The World Bank has so far refused to release these controversial findings publicly.

In Tanzania, Madagascar and Ghana there have been protests following land-grabs by foreign companies.

Even more land will be required for biofuels if the European Union is to meet its  targets to increase transport fuels from renewable sources, according to the research.

Adrian Bebb, food and agriculture campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe, said:
“Our research shows that Europe’s demand for biofuels is a major driver of land grabbing in Africa. Local communities are facing increasing hunger and food insecurity just so rich countries can fuel their cars. The EU must urgently scrap its biofuel policy. We must invest instead in environmentally friendly agriculture and decrease the energy we use for transport.”

A map showing the scale of the problems and a list of companies involved in growing biofuels in Africa can be found here: http://www.foeeurope.org/agrofuels/FoEE_Africa_up_for_grabs_2010-Map-Tables.pdf

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Scientist have developed a new whisky-based biofuel which not only makes use of waste by-products left over from whisky production but can also promise 30 per cent more power than traditional ethanol fuels.

The fuel can also be used in traditional cars without the need for any adaptations to the car, boasting a further advantage over high-concentration ethanol-based fuels.

Researchers at Edinburgh Napier University who developed the new fuel, used whisky distilling by-products from nearby Diageo’s Glenkinchie Distillery in East Lothian to produce the new fuel. As part of a two-year research project,  funded by £260,000 grant from the Scottish Enterprise’s ‘Proof of Concept’ programme, the Edinburgh Napier team focused on the £4bn whisky industry as a ripe resource for developing biobutanol.

As Scotland’s biggest export, whisky production produces tonnes of waste every year in the form of draff (used grain) and pot ale (the liquid from the copper stills). Using this waste product to produce biobutanol as opposed to just extracting ethanol, as with many biofuel products, the team successfully produced a much more powerful fuel.

The University now plans to create a spin-out company to take the new fuel to market and leverage the commercial opportunity, in the bid to make it available at petrol pumps.

Professor Martin Tangney, Director of the Biofuel Research Centre at Edinburgh Napier University, is leading the ground-breaking research.

He said: “The EU has declared that biofuels should account for 10 per cent of total fuel sales by 2020. We’re committed to finding new, innovative renewable energy sources.

“While some energy companies are growing crops specifically to generate biofuel, we are investigating excess materials such as whisky by-products to develop them.

"This is a more environmentally sustainable option and potentially offers new revenue on the back of one Scotland’s biggest industries. We’ve worked with some of the country’s leading whisky producers to develop the process.”

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Tuesday 10 August 2010. The Green Piece Column

After the debut of the UK’s first sewage powered car (see article) the Bio-Bug, we decided to take a look at some of the more unusual methods of fuelling a car that have emerged in recent years.

Here is our top 10 countdown:

10. Ashes to ashes, dust to fuel

Biofuel can come from everything from wood chips to sawdust under the heading “biomass”.

The Obama administration has targeted a billion gallons of diesel fuel from biomass by 2020 even though it’s not necessarily much cleaner in output than existing petrol/diesel. What makes the fuel a winner however, is its lifecycle emissions, with walnut shells among the better examples. They normally release methane but can be used to produce hydrogen to power cars with the leftovers used to grow more walnuts.

9. Painting the way to the future

Paint is pretty expensive, so comparing it to petrol doesn’t sound too enticing. However, Swansea University engineers have worked on a special solar paint that captures energy from the sun and could then be used to power vehicles. It is said to generate as much electricity as 50 wind farms for a fraction of the price.

8. An idea that will blow you away

It’s no surprise that wind is seen as a potential alternative fuelling method for motor vehicles and there are already a couple of concepts that have put this solution to the test.

University students in Denmark raced a working concept in a renewable energy contest – it depicted a giant wind turbine on the back of a racing car. Another wind powered option is the kite car, a three-wheel creation that uses a kite in a similar manner to a windsurfing board. It features three electric motors – one in each wheel – for back-up power when wind speeds aren’t high enough.

7. Cup a load of this

Is there anything more wasteful than polystyrene plates and cups? OK… they might save water if you don’t have to do the dishes, but we all know they don’t exactly do the environment too many favours.

However, now a professor at the University of Massachusetts has suggested polystyrene could make a good fuel additive in diesel engines with minor modifications. According to studies, polystyrene melts quickly into biodiesel but there is a stumbling block because at higher concentrations it gets too thick and emissions can be a problem.

6. Turkeys aren’t just for Christmas

Vegetarians should probably look away now, but it appears that turkeys could become more than just our annual Christmas crop.

Entrepreneurs in Carthage, Missouri, opened a plant to process turkey waste – including feathers – into a fuel oil. Known as thermo-depolymerisation it involves high heat and pressure to break down the waste to yield natural gas, oil and minerals. The company, known as Changing World Technologies, uses similar methods for chicken and pig waste, onion by-products and cheese rinds, but there have been complaints in the local area about the smells from the factory.

5. Anyone for coffee?

Coffee grinds are a waste product that can take years to biodegrade. However, in Germany and Switzerland, they are collected for the production of natural gas and compost.

In fact, coffee is a fairly rich oil source. It contains about 10-15 per cent usable oil for biofuel and a study by the University of Nevada suggested we could produce as much as 340million gallons a year from the annual 15billion pounds of coffee production.

4. Nappy days: diaper fuel

The idea of recycling disposable nappies (diapers to our friends in the States) for just about any purpose is a little stomach churning to all but the staunchest environmentalist. However, Canadian company AMEC started work on a pilot plant in Quebec in 2009 that would make diesel fuel from nappies using a pyrolosis process.

Basically, the plastics, resins, fibres and… other contents… of a nappy are turned into a mix of gas, oil and char with the company now hoping to take in around 180million nappies a year to produce 11million litres of diesel.

To be fair, given the fact that it can take 100 years for a disposable nappy to decompose at a landfill site, this is definitely one recycling method we approve of.

3. Cars get the cosmetic treatment

Sewage powered cars may make use of human waste – but what about a car that makes use of human fat?

A cosmetic surgeon in California who performed liposuctions reportedly saved the fat and used it to power his SUV. Unfortunately for the doctor however, the process is currently illegal.

2. The tastiest way to travel: the chocolate powered car

A team from the University of Warwick built and track-tested a Formula Three race car that runs on 30 per cent biodiesel derived from chocolate waste.

The car was one of the more bizarre stories we’ve come across here at TheGreenCarWebsite.co.uk because not only did it run on chocolate, but it also featured a steering wheel made partly from carrots and a front wing formed with potato starch and flax fibre.

James Meredith, the project’s leader, rationalised that anything that contains fat can be turned into diesel and so chocolate was an obvious solution. Perhaps we should hope this one never makes it into the mainstream or it might be tempting to make a fuel stop every time we have a sweet tooth.

1. Moo-ving forward

Another one that’s not exactly for the weak of stomach, the United Nations has found that livestock is responsible for 18 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. With the world having more than 1.5billion cows, which collectively produce two thirds of the planet’s ammonia, scientists have been looking into ways of using this ‘output’ to their advantage.

For example, a dairy farm in Vermont actually puts its cows into anaerobic digesters for three days, allowing them to produce methane which is then burned in generators to produce electricity. The so-called cow power has even been fed back into the grid and sold to local colleges.

So perhaps cows could beef up our fuel supplies in the future? I’ll get my coat.

Faye Sunderland

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The Bioenergy Research Group (BERG) at Aston University is at the centre of a £1.4million project aimed at developing technology for producing and fractioning bio-oil components.

The idea is that the bio-oil components can be used as a basis for a biorefinery that produces green chemicals, transportation fuels and energy. It is partly funded by the Research Council of Norway and could develop bio-oil technology that would transform biomass into biofuels through fast pyrolysis.

Under the project, biomass liquefaction is carried out using fast pyrolosis, which is a pre-treatment technology that is flexible in terms of feedstock. It also allows for efficient energy densification that makes the technology suitable for decentralised bio-oil production of wood waste materials and favourable transport costs.

According to Tony Bridgwater, the professor of chemical engineering and head of BERG at Aston University, it is hoped that the technologies could make bio-oil viable on a large scale at lower costs.

BERG has already co-ordinated 11 EC sponsored RTD projects and is managing SUPERGEN, which is a UK University Consortium in thermal biomass conversion.

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The UK’s first sewage powered car has taken to the streets of Bristol this week, after the Greenfuel Company converted a Volkswagen Beetle to run on biogas.

Wessex Water-owned company, GENco imported special equipment to treat gas generated at its sewage treatment works in Avonmouth to power the car.

A collaboration between the water works firm, the South West Regional Development Agency and the renewable fuels supplier lead to the creation of the converted car, known as Bio-Bug. GENco claim that waste flushed down the toilets of just 70 homes in Bristol is enough to power the car for a year, based on an annual mileage of 10,000 miles.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mohammed Saddiq, the firm’s general manager, said he was confident that methane from sewage sludge could be used as an alternative energy source and was an innovative way of powering company vehicles.

He said: “Our site at Avonmouth has been producing biogas for many years which we use to generate electricity to power the site and export to the National Grid.

“With the surplus gas we had available we wanted to put it to good use in a sustainable and efficient way. We decided to power a vehicle on the gas offering a sustainable alternative to using fossil fuels which we so heavily rely on in the UK.”

Using biogas from sewage sludge has yet to take off in the UK despite a significant amount being produced everyday at sewage plants around the country.

The fuel has excellent potential.The waste water firm estimates that if all the biogas produced at its Avonmouth works alone was converted to run cars it would avoid around 19,000 tonnes of CO₂.

Though the UK motorists might be a little concerned about running sewage powered cars, Mr Saddiq says their fears are unfounded: “If you were to drive the car you wouldn’t know it was powered by biogas as it performs just like any conventional car. It is probably the most sustainable car around.”

GENeco believes that more gas will be produced at its Avonmouth site when the company embarks on its latest green venture to recycle food waste.

Around 18 million cubic metres of biogas is currently produced at Bristol sewage treatment works a year. It is generated through anaerobic digestion – a process in which bugs in the absence of oxygen break down biodegradable material to produce methane.

The Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association (ADBA) said the launch of the Bio-Bug proved that biomethane from sewage sludge could be used as an alternative fuel for vehicles.

ADBA chairman Lord Rupert Redesdale said: “This is a very exciting and forward-thinking project demonstrating the myriad benefits of anaerobic digestion (AD).

“Biomethane cars could be just as important as electric cars, and the water regulator Ofwat should promote the generation of as much biogas as possible through sewage works in the fight against climate change.”

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Subsidies for the fossil fuel industry dwarf those paid to encourage growth in the renewable energy sector, new research reveals.

According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF), governments around the world are spending substantially more on subsidising dirty forms of energy such as coal, gas and oil than on renewables such as wind, solar and biofuels.

In all, governments of the world provided approximately $43‐46bn to renewable energy and biofuels technologies, BNEF concludes in preliminary analysis. This figure stands in stark contrast to the $557bn spent on subsidising fossil fuels in 2008, as estimated by the International Energy Agency last month.

The total funding for renewable energy sector takes into account the cost of feed‐in‐tariffs (FiTs), renewable energy credits or certificates (RECs), tax credits, cash grants, and other direct subsidies paid to renewable and biofuel projects and companies.

"One of the reasons the clean energy sector is starved of funding is because mainstream investors worry that renewable energy only works with direct government support," said Michael Liebreich, chief executive of Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

"Setting aside the fact that in many cases clean energy competes on its own merits ‐ for instance in the case of well‐situated wind farms and Brazilian sugarcane  ethanol ‐ this analysis shows that the global direct subsidy for fossil fuels is around ten times the subsidy for renewables. And that is without taking into account the enormous security and public health costs of fossil fuels, as well as the appalling pollution catastrophes on the Gulf Coast, the Niger Delta and elsewhere," he adds.

The  analysis shows that the US is the top country, as measured in dollars deployed, in providing direct subsidies for clean energy with an estimated $18.2bn spent in total in 2009. Approximately 40 per cent of this went toward supporting the US biofuels sector with the rest going towards renewable forms such as tidal and wind energy. The federal stimulus program played a key role; its Treasury Department grant program alone provided $3.8bn in support for clean energy projects.

While subsidies for fossil fuels stood substantially higher than for the renewable sector in 2009, the gap is set to shrink, BNEF predict. The independent analysis suggests that the gap between the two sectors will narrow this year, for two reasons; first subsidies for the renewable and clean energy sector will increase and secondly the amount governments such as China spend to keep fossil fuel prices artificially low for consumers has dropped as oil prices retreated from their mid‐2008 peaks.

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Land blighted by the nuclear fallout from the Chernobyl disaster could be cleaned up by growing biofuel crops, scientists say.

The Belarus government has teamed up with Irish firm Greenfield to build one of Europe’s largest bioethanol plants which would convert crops grown on contaminated land into fuel.

According to online resource, the Environmental Data Interactive Exchange (EDIE), the crops would grow on land not yet suitable for food production following the meltdown of the Chernobyl reactor over two decades ago.

The land is still very fertile and therefore ideal for crop production. Growing the crops would have the added benefit of helping to clean-up the land as they absorb toxins in the soil. Greenfield plan to use the project to study how the crops can help return the land back to full use and will use the Chernobyl land as part of a wider study into the environmental benefits of biofuel production on contaminated land.

Greenfield chairwoman Ann McClain told the online publication: "Greenfield’s plan to produce bio-ethanol will use land which has been contaminated by radioactive isotopes to cultivate biomass crops for the ethanol distilleries.

"At the same time, we believe that growing the biomass crops will work to clean up the affected areas.

"At a later stage, when we move on to second-generation cellulose ethanol, there will be even greater advantages which will mean faster bio-cleaning of the contaminated zones.

"We hope we can build on research, field trials, and the experience we accumulate to go on to a comprehensive programme to use biological methods to clean up the areas affected by Chernobyl.

"The benefits will be economic, of course, but above all they will be social and environmental."

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The UK has exceeded its target for biofuel use, the latest provisional figures from the Renewable Fuels Agency (RFA) show.

Last year the UK used almost 1.6 billion litres of biofuel accounting for 3.33 per cent of the total of the country’s road transport fuel. This exceeds the Government’s target of 3.25 per cent  set for the last year.

The agency calculate that the biofuel use has resulted in a carbon saving of 51 per cent compared to petrol and diesel, equivalent to taking half a million vehicles off the road; or making Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast car-free. 

However the agency and the biofuel industry has been criticised for its lack of clarity over the true environmental cost of biofuel use. The calculated carbon saving above for a start, fail by the agency’s own admission to take into account emissions and environmental damage arising from Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC).

Following pressure from environmental groups, the European Commission is due to report by the end of this year on how ILUC should be addressed and still allow European countries to meet their renewable fuel targets.

Meanwhile the Agency is also battling to ensure that those who supply biofuel into the UK report on the sustainability of their sources. The UK’s renewable fuels regulator spoke of its disappointment at some big oil companies who are still failing to take significant steps towards sourcing biofuels sustainably.

Nick Goodall, the Agency’s CEO, said: “The volume target has been met which is welcome news. But this is about sustainable carbon reduction. The leading suppliers have demonstrated that it is possible to secure sustainable biofuels in volume. Others have fallen well short.”

The Agency maps performance against three sustainability targets; data collection, greenhouse gas savings and performance against sustainability standards.

Mandatory carbon and sustainability performance requirements will be introduced with the implementation of the European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive (RED) expected to be introduced by the end of the year.

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You can’t turn on the television lately without BP dominating the news headlines. However, now it is making news for some positive reasons.

BP Biofuels North America is to acquire Verenium’s cellulosic biofuels business for $98.3million, which will include the facilities at Jennings, LA and San Diego, CA. Verenium meanwhile will retain its commercial enzyme business and have the right to develop its own lignocellulosic enzyme program. It will also retain select research and development capabilities and the rights to access select biofuels technology. 

According to Carlos A Riva, the president and chief executive officer at Verenium, the strategic development partnership with BP has advanced the cellulosic ethanol technology to the cusp of commercialisation. Now the agreement will allow both companies to pursue growth opportunities in their respective businesses and to achieve goals in the near-term.

BP will also become the sole investor in Vercipia Biofuels, which is a joint 50-50 venture it formed with Verenium in February, 2009. Vercipia is aiming to commercialise cellulosic technology for the production of ethanol from a wide range of non-food feedstocks.

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A new greenhouse facility has been opened in California with the aim of enabling the next level of research and testing of an algae biofuels programme.

ExxonMobil and Synthetic Genomics are behind the facility in La Jolla, CA, which was opened yesterday and moves the project from a laboratory setting to an environment that founder and CEO Dr Craig Venter described as a “halfway house” where researchers can test whether developments from the lab bench can function in a larger, contained environment.

According to Dr Emil Jacobs, the vice president of research and development at ExxonMobil Research and Engineering, the vision is to produce a new source of oil from algae that can be processed and delivered through existing distribution systems.

The greenhouse will be used to examine different growth systems including open ponds and closed photo-bioreactors. Both natural and engineered strains of algae will be examined and research will also be carried out into other aspects of the algae fuel production process.

It is expected that the next major milestone in the programme will be the opening of an outdoor test facility in mid-2011. Exxon expects to spend more than $600million on the algae biofuels programme over the next decade.

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