California's showdown over waste feedstocks

A showdown is looming in the California State Senate this summer over an issue that is at the heart of the nationwide drive to develop and deploy bioenergy conversion technologies.

In a state that prides itself on its landmark achievements in outlining Global Warming Solutions (AB 32), Bioenergy Action plans, and Low Carbon Fuel Standards, access to some of the most sustainable feedstocks for conversion to bioenergy is currently blocked by inexact statutory language and permitting regulations. As a result, municipalities and utilities are frustrated in their ability to exercise local authority over how they meet stringent waste diversion goals to reduce reliance on landfills for dumping post-recycled waste.

Post-recycled municipal solid waste is considered to be the most sustainable feedstock for biomass conversion into biofuels and biopower because, unconverted, this waste emits greenhouse gases while it decomposes. It is the only feedstock that has "negative" cost - receiving facilities receive per ton "tipping fees" that vary from region to region. Socially, it could provide good urban jobs that cannot be off-shored.

At the rate that municipal landfills are filling up and closing down, there is no time to wait. The state's largest landfill in Puente Hills, which services Los Angeles County, is scheduled to close in 2013. MSW currently disposed of there will instead be sent by train to a landfill 200 miles away!

Legendary former California State Senator (President Pro Tem) David Roberti and his Bioenergy Producers Association (BPA) is working overtime this month lining up support for passage of the bipartisan California Assembly Bill 222. With over 60 organizations supporting it (including municipalities, utilities, labor organizations, waste disposal facilities, and others) the bill was unanimously approved by the Assembly Utilities and Commerce Committee on April 27, 2009, and passed the State Assembly by a vote o 54-13 on Monday, June 1st. The Senate is expected to be a much more challenging battleground where, without support, the act might not get out of committee.

AB 222 proposes to update the Integrated Waste Management Act of 1989. It is one of those seemingly innocuous pieces of legislation that only a policy wonk could love, but it is extremely important because without its passage municipalities will continue to find it virtually impossible to permit and fund deployment of municipal solid waste conversion technologies around the state. In a Catch-22 they are penalized for not deploying solutions that achieve minimum state diversion targets..

If passed, deployment of such facilities could divert approximately 30 million tons of post-recyclables from landfills while producing biopower and biofuels in accord with state (AB 32) and national initiatives (EISA, the Farm Bill, and pending Waxman/Markey cap and trade bill) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The strongest opposition to the legislation is being coordinated by Californians Against Waste (CAW). They see the bill as a threat to their sizable influence over waste streams in California. The BPA acknowledges the contributions that CAW has made to reducing, reusing, and recycling MSW in the state but dispute the contention that this measure will set recycling back. Instead, they emphatically assert it will help expand recycling in the state.

To point out other discrepancies, BPA is currently distributing a document titled CAW Misrepresents Renewable Energy Bill (AB 222) throughout Sacramento itemizing CAW's objections ("myths") and countering them with the facts at the foundation of AB 222 as written. The document charges that "Californians Against Waste has repeatedly attempted to discredit or thwart legislative and regulatory initiatives that would make possible the production of advanced biofuels and green power from these resources."

At a common sense level, if society can't even agree that post-recyclables are qualified feedstock for conversion to alternative forms of energy then the likelihood of other feedstocks being qualified is virtually nil. It is time for legislators to put more authority back in the hands of municipal governments to meet their diversion goals and to determine what is and what is not safe and sustainable. Public and private industries will always have to meet stringent standards on emissions and pollution for any solutions they deploy.

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technorati bioenergy, biofuels, waste, pollution, urban, landfill, legislation, California

Green Collar Workers for the Renewable Energy Economy

Perhaps the most overlooked issue for all sectors of the renewable energy paradigm is the availability of trained manpower. Maybe it should be the prime issue rather than a secondary one. It certainly will be once new technologies have emerged because widespread implementation and deployment will depend on the availability of a generation of new laborers for work that cannot be off-shored.

A leading advocate for the building this green collar workforce now is Van Jones, a legal scholar and an Oakland, California activist who has just received notification that his new book, The Green Collar Economy, has been listed on the NY Times Bestseller list. Any author would be thrilled but you get the feeling that it means more to him than better market exposure for the book. The book is, afterall, a means to an end. It is the cause that matters and Jones is nothing if not passionate about the cause.

What is the cause? The subtitle of the book is "How One Solution Can Solve Our Two Biggest Problems." The two problems are the fossil based economy and its impact on the economy. The "one solution" proffered by this book is the creation of new, meaningful green collar careers for the underemployed and often unskilled urban and rural workforce in America and other parts of the world.

Clearly, with a new administration headed to Washington (coupled with a clear Democratic majority in both houses) social policymaking and budget allocation is going to change. Add to that the threat of global economic collapse and the question isn't is the government going to address the needs of the middle class - it is how is it going to do it? Surely, this administration will attempt to get more Americans back to work.

Public works programs like the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), not seen since the days of FDR, are already being forecast above the fold in major newspapers. The likely projects will involve not only energy production, but also energy efficiency and transportation infrastructure. That is good because new bioenergy projects in particular will be dependent on increased traffic of heavy vehicles on good roads.

This is what is making Van Jones' book so timely. He addresses the economic justice issue by advocating a new spirit of survival collaboration (Noah and the Ark) in place of counterproductive confrontation (David vs. Goliath). He presents numerous case studies that document different ways that community-based organizations are changing their landscape, employment picture, and can-do self image.

In the back of the book is a list of online resources for learning more and getting involved. Some of my favorites are ACORE, the Apollo Alliance, the Los Angeles Coservation Corps, Andy Lipkis' Tree People, and Majora Carter's inspirational Sustainable South Bronx.

Perhaps the most obvious choice for getting involved is the Green For All website - a sophisticated online resource for engaging stakeholders, advocating policy, and expanding public awareness of the need and potential for "Green Jobs Now!" It too is a means to an end, leveraging the power of the internet to coordinate events as well as defining the scope of the campaign.

What I see missing in the book is a comparable campaign for rural America. The forests, farms, and rangelands of the countryside will provide a host of opportunities for growth of meaningful green collar jobs. Who will run the new equipment, build and operate green power plants and biorefineries for an increasingly decentralized renewable energy paradigm? Unless we stop the leaching of jobs from our depressed rural cooperatives and enterprises, much of the existing infrastructure will need to be refinanced and rebuilt and new manpower trained to deploy regional solutions. These are issues that are part of the agenda of 25x'25 and many national industry associations.

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technorati manpower, waste, pollution, urban, landfill, legislation

BIOwaste 101: The BioTown Sourcebook

For anyone who desires a simple introduction to the subject of Biomass Waste I suggest a careful reading of a brief technical overview document called The BioTown, USA Sourcebook of Biomass Energy (released in April, 2006). It was written for the Indiana State Department of Agriculture by scientist and fellow blogger, Mark Jenner, PhD. who has his own website called Biomass Rules. Mark is particularly well schooled on the subject of biosolids, manure, and sludge conversion.

Below you can see an overview graphic that charts where biomass feedstocks (highlighted in blue) fall in proper context for addressing BIOconversion, BIOoutput, and BIOstock issues. For this reason, I offer a similar 101 abstract treatment in each of my BlogRing blogs.


This BioTown sourcebook is the official inventory on local energy use, available biomass fuels and emerging technologies for Reynolds, Indiana. As such, it can serve as an inventory template for any similarly focused study of a medium-sized rural community. It greater importance is its microcosmic view of rural communities as decentralized, sustainable entities that possess more than enough biomass to service their own energy needs.

Within the third section of the report a generous amount of detail if given to a subject that generally escapes most discussions about biofuels and bioenergy - its energy content and how it can be converted to useful form. He addresses Manure, Municipal Sewage/Biosolids, and Municipal Solid Wastes. He emphasizes the high variability of manure:

The point is that manure has a high degree of variability. In this case, it is easy to this variability using hog manure nutrients and technology as an example. Starting with the same basic fresh manure, different treatment technologies achieved different results. Successful conversion technologies must be designed and managed to remove the variability by segregating non-similar flows or combining them consistently into an aggregate flow. Biomass feedstock variability is a challenge, but it can be managed by system design.

The subjects of biodiesel converted from used vegetable oil and number 2 yellow grease are also addressed.

In this particular community, landfill gas is used to drive methane electric generators - which is far preferable to having it vented or flared. However, he admits:

Some biomass energy advocates argue that landfill gas is not the best use of biomass energy resources. This argument is based on the sheer volume of underutilized biomass going into a landfill. Using the EPA breakdown of organic, biomass materials going into a landfill (65 percent), 355,678 tons of the 547,197 tons of MSW entering the Liberty Landfill are biomass feedstocks. Using the value of 4,830 BTU/lb, 356,000 tons of landfilled-biomass materials contain 3.4 million MMBTUs. That is a lot of underutilized fuel. This new separation and energy production process would not be as simple as it sounds and would require significant changes in the current collection system.

This report is not a utopian call to return to rural, communal living. It is, instead, an affirmation that there are many biomass resources available and technologies in development to provide environmentally clean bioenergy alternatives to the existing fossil fuel energy paradigm. Rural communities can develop expertise and marketable output best suited to their own resources and industries. Urban communities can develop some technologies that are relevant to the diversion of trash from landfills.

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The BioTown, USA Sourcebook of Biomass Energy

BioTown, USA is Indiana Governor, Mitch Daniel’s, bold approach to develop local renewable energy production, create a cleaner environment, find new solutions to municipal/animal waste issues, and develop new markets for Indiana products – all at the same time. BioTown, USA is quite simply the conversion of Reynolds, Indiana from a reliance on fossil fuels to biomass-based fuels. With the implementation of BioTown, USA, a template will be set that simultaneously promotes Indiana energy security, rural development, profitable agriculture and a green, thriving natural resource environment.

The only conclusion that can be made is that BioTown, USA is profoundly thermodynamically and technologically viable. Reynolds, Indiana used 227,710 million BTUs (MMBTU) in 2005. White County annually produces over 16,881,613 MMBTU in undeveloped biomass energy resources. That is 74 times more energy than Reynolds consumed in 2005.

BioTown, USA is a concept whose time has come. This Sourcebook and subsequent BioTown reports will serve as vital stepping stones to the implementation of BioTown, USA and subsequent bioeconomic rural development opportunities across Indiana and the nation.

technorati BIOblog, BIOwaste, bioenergy, biofuels, waste, urban, landfill

Small Town with a BIG green vision

Although located near the site of two famous Bull Run battles of the Civil War, the rural community of Warrenton, Virginia is not the kind of place you would normally expect to find revolutionary figures. Yet the town's mayor, George Fitch, envisions a future of green choice and self-reliance for his community by converting local waste and crops into bioenergy - ethanol for cars and green electricity for the grid. He may be one point of light that ignites the imagination and energy of thousands with a similar vision throughout the nation - and the world.

Apparently, someone on the U.S. Senate Energy Committee decided it was a perspective that needed closer inspection. At its Transportation Biofuels Conference on February 1, this small town mayor was a featured speaker along with representatives from Ford, Chevron, MIT, and the American Corn Growers Association.

An advocate of decentralized waste diversion into energy production Fitch's message is that local communities can be a major contributor to the goal of 20 billion gallons of renewable fuel. He said he has embarked on a plan for an integrated biorefinery at a landfill site which would produce 10 million gallons of ethanol and 8MW of electricity from a wide variety of wastes and residues.

“Most of the feedstocks would come from municipal solid wastes including construction debris which now are being buried at the landfill emitting greenhouse gases. This amounts to more than 100,000 tons annually of useable waste that can be converted into energy. The reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from a biorefinery using wastes would be over 50%,” Mayor Fitch commented.

“We’ve estimated there are about 10,000 tons of forest residues, 5,000 to 20,000 tons of collectible agriculture residue and another 5,000 to 7,000 tons of sewer sludge and animal manures which could be used as feedstock for the plant. “I’ve been told there are more carbons in a 10 cent bushel of manure than a $4 bushel of corn.” the Mayor said.

“We don’t expect to get much of the agriculture residue at the beginning because it will take awhile to solve the infrastructure problem of efficiently harvesting, gathering, storing and transporting the corn stover Right now, it’s trial and error. We hope to involve John Deere which has developed a machine that allows just a single pass to pick up the grain and the residue at the same time. This would reduce the cost of corn stover to the biorefinery by at least $10 per ton.

He pointed out that the technology seems to have evolved so you can use a wide variety of biomass material to co produce ethanol and electricity at an integrated biorefinery. He added, “we are looking at three different gasification technologies from three different companies for our project.”

Mayor Fitch told the committee and audience, “there are a lot of communities like Warrenton across the country, certainly hundreds if not thousands, which could be self sufficient in renewable energy. Like Warrenton, they have a variety of biomass material right in their backyard. Collectively, that represents billions of gallons of ethanol or renewable diesel – and all of it made from waste and residues.”

“That is a major contribution, which I think has been overlooked, to the goal of 20 billion gallons of renewable fuel by the 2020. The focus seems to be on creating large scale biorefineries producing 50 to 100 million gallons a year by the ADM’s and Cargill’s of the world. Communities like mine are just as valuable. Perhaps more so because we can engage the people in our community to get behind our renewable energy initiative and be a stakeholder.”

Mayor Fitch added, the economics of small scale biorefineries now work. It used to be that you needed at least 3,000 to 5,000 tons of feedstock per day to be economical. Not any more. Our model shows that 300 to 500 tons per day will be profitable; provided it produces both ethanol and electricity.”

Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina told the audience, “Mr. Mayor, you have stimulated our thinking. We need to think about small scale biorefineries across the country using different types of wastes. He added, “decentralization of renewable energy would give our country more energy security.”

For more information, you can contact Mayor Fitch directly at: (540) 347-1101. He would appreciate supportive letters to the editor to a local newspaper article written about his plan. Address the letters to the author Cheryl Chumley.

technorati BIOblog, BIOwaste, bioenergy, biofuels, waste, pollution, urban, landfill, decentralization