China Surges Ahead In Renewable Energy
| Fri Nov. 23, 2007 3:32 PM PST
Griping about China's exploding fuel consumption? (Who isn't?) Check this out. The Worldwatch Institute reports that ambitious Chinese energy targets, supported by strong government policies and manufacturing prowess, may enable China to leapfrog the rest of the industrialized world in renewable technology in the near future. This even as it conducts breakneck expansion of economy via its reliance on coal.
In Powering China's Development: The Role of Renewable Energy, Eric Martinot and Li Junfeng report that China will likely achieve, and may exceed, its target of 15% energy from renewables by 2020. Furthermore, renewables could provide more than 30 percent of the nation's energy by 2050.
The nations of the world invested more than $50 billion in renewable energy in 2006. China alone is expected to invest more than $10 billion in new renewables in 2007, second only to Germany, and double the amount the US invested in 2006. China's production of wind turbines and solar cells doubled in 2006, and is poised to pass world solar and wind manufacturing leaders in Europe, Japan, and North America in the next three years. China already dominates the markets for solar hot water and small hydropower.
Still not enough. But moving in the right direction. Evidence of understanding. Unlike here at home.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
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Submitted by EDRO (not verified) on Sun Nov. 25, 2007 6:06 AM PST.
Creating a Sustainable Future (CASF), a non-profit organization, is creating a blueprint for the first of a series of research-led, sustainable communities with very low-energy profiles, provisionally named the 'Pioneer Clusters,' leading the transition to the post-fossil fuel era.
CASF is seeking partners in all focus areas and new members for its Steering Committee.
For more information, please visit http://edro.wordpress.com
Spanish company touts process to turn urban waste into biodiesel
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue Jul. 21, 2009 2:39 AM PDT.
Spanish company touts process to turn urban waste into biodiesel
By Ron Kotrba
A group of Spanish developers working under the company name Ecofasa, headed by chief executive officer and inventor Francisco Angulo, has developed a biochemical process to turn urban solid waste into a fatty acid biodiesel feedstock. “It took more than 10 years working on the idea of producing biodiesel from domestic waste using a biological method,” Angulo told Biodiesel Magazine. “My first patent dates back to 2005. It was first published in 2007 in Soto de la Vega, Spain, thanks to the council and its representative Antonio Nevado.”
Using microbes to convert organic material into energy isn’t a new concept to the renewable energy industries, and the same can be said for the anaerobic digestion of organic waste by microbes, which turns waste into biogas consisting mostly of methane. However, using bacteria to convert urban waste to fatty acids, which can then be used as a feedstock for biodiesel production, is a new twist. The Spanish company calls this process and the resulting fuel Ecofa. “It is based on metabolism’s natural principle by means of which all living organisms, including bacteria, produce fatty acids,” Angula said. “[It] comes from the carbon of any organic waste.”
He defined urban waste as “organic wastes from home like food, paper, wood and dung,” and added that any carbon-based material can be used for biodiesel production under the Ecofa process. “For many years, I wondered why there are pools of oil in some mountains,” he said, explaining the reasoning behind his invention. “After delving into the issue, I realized that [those oil deposits] were produced by decomposing organic living microorganisms.” This, in Angulo’s mind, sparked the idea that food waste and bacteria could be turned into fatty acids that could react into biodiesel. Two types of bacteria are under further development by Biotit Scientific Biotechnology Laboratory in Seville, Spain: E. coli and Firmicutes. The Ecofa process also produces methane gas, and inconvertible solids that can be used as a soil amendment or fertilizer. “There is a huge variety of bacteria,” Angulo said. “Currently, [biodiesel producers] receive a fat that must be processed through transesterification into biodiesel, but we are also working on other types of bacteria that are capable of producing fatty acids with the same characteristics as biodiesel.” He said this would eventually allow producers to skip the transesterification step.
Ecofasa may avoid the ongoing food-versus-fuel debate and its expected successor, indirect land use, with its Ecofa process. “It would not be necessary to use specific fields of maize, wheat, barley, beets, etc., which would remain for human consumption without creating distortions or famines with unforeseeable consequences,” the company stated in a press release. “This microbial technique can be extended to other organic debris, plants or animals, such as those contained in urban sewage. You can even experiment with other carbon sources, and this opens up a lot of possibilities. It is only necessary to find the appropriate bacteria.”
The company created its name by combining the term “eco-combustible” with F.A., the initials of the inventor.
“Today we feel that we can produce between one and two liters [of biodiesel] per 10 kilograms of trash,” Angulo said. That’s a little more than one-fourth to one-half of a gallon for every 22 pounds of trash—or between 24 and 48 gallons per ton of urban waste. “We are working to improve that,” he said.
