ECONEWS
Factory opened in Mozambique began to produce ethanol
Macauhub - Angola
The factory of ethanol (ethyl alcohol) NDZiLO company in the province of Dondo, Mozambique, was inaugurated Thursday featuring a production capacity of two million liters obtained from cassava, informed partners in the business.
A partnership between cleanstar Ventures, a North American venture capital and Denmark’s Novozymes, NDZiLO aims to provide an improved solution for the preparation of meals to residents in the urban centers of Mozambique, where the price of coal has tripled in the last three years avoiding the production of smoke from burning coal and reducing the cutting of trees for charcoal production.
Besides cleanstar Ventures and Novozymes, Bank of America Merrill Lynch has invested in carbon credits from the project and the U.S. ICM donated materials and labor-intensive and has a substantial financial contribution.
When operating at full capacity, the factory will produce 30,000 liters of fuel per week, from cassava grown by local farmers using a system of crop rotation developed by the agricultural experts of the company, which will be sent to Maputo since per week, according to Andre Roberts, director of plant operations.
Currently, the plant is 1/4 of its capacity due to the fact that the teams that sell the stoves and the fuel they need to get more contracts, although there have already been placed on the market 500 stoves and there are more pre-orders for 2200.
Andre Roberts anticipated a surplus of cassava and said the company is considering building a production unit of cassava flour.
Like the U.S., Brazil may also have biobutanol plant
DCINews - Brazil
The news came from the United States (U.S.) and may impact sugarcane industry in Brazil: from 2013, a plant in the U.S. state of Minnesota will produce on a commercial scale biobutanol.
The product, biofuel is an alternative to aviation fuel and can replace diesel fuel in combustion engines. The detail is that the Butamax Advanced Biofuels, which will manufacture biobutanol from corn in the U.S., is already studying the use of sugarcane as raw material for manufacturing the product in its Brazilian laboratory in the city of Paulinia, northwest of São Paulo (SP).
“The establishment of an industrial unit dedicated exclusively to the production of this new fuel in the U.S. is a decisive step towards consolidating the new technology on the market. And that might be interesting for the industry of sugar cane in Brazil, since the cane is a more efficient energy source than corn, “says Alfred Szwarc, a consultant and Emissions Technology Industry Union Cane (UNICA).
To Szwarc, the advantage of biobutanol compared to other types of renewable fuels, including ethanol here, is its energy content: four carbons in its molecular chain, two more than ethanol, which gives more energy.
In 2010, a year after being consolidated joint venture between BP and British American DuPont, the interior of Butamax chosen to be the company’s research center in Brazil. At the time, Tim Potter, CEO of the company which is headquartered in the city of Wilmington in the U.S. state of Delaware, explained that the objective of the laboratory in Paulinia is to accelerate the entry of biobutanol from sugar cane in the market.
The project to produce biobutanol on a commercial scale in the U.S. left the paper in December 2011, when the Butamax acquired ethanol plant in Minnesota, belonging to the Highwater Ethanol.
By early 2013, the plant, which currently produces 55 million gallons of ethanol (208,180,000 liters) of corn in the largest state in the Midwest U.S., will be converted to produce the new fuel.
Like the U.S., Brazil may also have biobutanol plant
The news came from the United States (U.S.) and may impact sugarcane industry in Brazil: from 2013, a plant in the U.S. state of Minnesota will produce on a commercial scale biobutanol.
“This is the next generation of biofuels that will take the market by 2014,” notes the current CEO of Butamax, Paul Beckwith. The estimated production and the total investments made by Butamax were not disclosed by the executive.
According to the evaluation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), when commercially available biobutanol will help reduce transportation costs of fuel in the U.S.. This is because the new product mix with gasoline may be transported directly by pipeline without adaptations or building new structures.
Study: Ethanol lowered gas prices by $1+ per gallon
Sioux City Journal - USA
America´s use of domestically produced ethanol reduced wholesale gasoline prices by an average of $1.09 per gallon in 2011, according to updated research conducted by economists at the University of Wisconsin and Iowa State University.
In research sponsored by the Renewable Fuels Association, which represents the ethanol industry, the 2011 results show a $0.20-per-gallon greater price reduction than the $0.89-per-gallon impact in 2010. The results were released by the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State.
An update to a 2009 peer-reviewed paper published in Energy Policy by Dermot Hayes of Iowa State and Xiaodong Du of Wisconsin, the study also found gasoline prices have been reduced by an average of $0.29 per gallon nationally, 17 percent, from 2000-2011 thanks to the use of ethanol. The reduction in the Midwest was even greater, $0.45 per gallon, according to the research.
“Growth in U.S. ethanol production has added significantly to the volume of fuel available in the U.S.,” Hayes said in a press release. “It is as if the U.S. oil refining industry had found a way to extract 10 percent more gasoline from a barrel of oil. This additional fuel supply has alleviated periodic gasoline shortages that had been caused by limited refinery capacity. It has also changed the relative prices of gasoline and diesel and allowed the U.S. to switch from being a net importer of gasoline to a net exporter. As a result of these changes, U.S. gasoline prices are measurably lower than would otherwise have been the case.”
The study said three primary factors are responsible for ethanol´s bigger price benefit at the pump in 2011: higher oil and gasoline prices, higher ethanol inclusion, and ethanol being priced at a larger-than-normal discount to gasoline.
Based on government data, U.S. households consumed an average of 1,124 gallons of gasoline in 2011, the study said, which means ethanol reduced the average American household´s spending on gasoline by more than $1,200.
Their calculations presume the wholesale saving is passed on to the consumer.
Since 2000, the $0.29-per-gallon price dampening impact of greater domestic ethanol use has saved the American economy an average of nearly $40 billion per year, the study concluded. As a result, ethanol has helped the average American household reduce its spending on gasoline by an average of more than $340 per year since 2000, the research showed.
“It´s hard to imagine that gas prices could be even higher than they are now, (but) this study clearly underscores that the current pain at the pump would be far worse without ethanol,” said Bob Dinneen, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, in a press release.
Among critics of the fuel is Doug Carper of DEC Capital in Lincoln, a member of the CME Group, the commodities futures market in Chicago, who called attention to ethanol´s tradeoffs.
“Finished Motor Gasoline prices have been affected by ethanol… of course, but gasoline consumption is off about 6 percent from 2007,” he said in an email. “Obviously, by diverting corn to produce ethanol (through the production mandate and subsidies), prices are lower than may have otherwise been. The offset to that is that animal feed has been much higher priced. You can´t take calories/energy from one place and put them somewhere else without consequences.”
Congress has voted to end taxpayer subsidies for ethanol made from corn, but the congressional requirement for the fuel industry to use millions of gallons remains in place.
Anticipating the argument that ethanol´s lower energy content means it must be priced below gasoline to provide the same cost per mile, the researchers cited figures from the EPA that 10 percent ethanol blends produce just a 2.5-3 percent reduction in mileage. They conclude that the “impact of ethanol´s lower energy content on gas prices is much smaller than the price impacts we have measured and does not change the overall conclusions of our analysis.”
Ethanol Rises for Third Day as Report Shows Stockpiles Eroding
Bloombergnews
Ethanol futures rose for a third day in Chicago after the government reported a second weekly stockpile decline.
Prices jumped a day after the Energy Department said stockpiles sank to 20.6 million barrels in the week ended May 11, the lowest amount since Jan. 17 and 9.3 percent below the record of 22.7 million for the week ended March 16. Supply is up 1.1 percent from a year ago.
“For the last three or four months, everyone has been talking about this glut,” said Jerrod Kitt, an analyst at Linn Group in Chicago. “What happened to it? You´re only about a percent off the year-ago number and almost 10 percent from the high.”
Denatured ethanol for June delivery climbed 1.1 cents, or 0.5 percent, to settle at $2.181 a gallon on the Chicago Board of Trade, the highest price since May 8. Ethanol has fallen 1 percent this year.
In spot market trading, ethanol on the West Coast added 3.5 cents, or 1.5 percent, to $2.325 a gallon and in New York the additive increased 1.5 cents, or 0.7 percent, to $2.20, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Ethanol in Chicago advanced 0.5 cent to $2.14 a gallon and in the U.S. Gulf the biofuel sank 2 cents, or 0.9 percent, to $2.185
Ghana: Bioenergy for Sustainable Development – the Role of Sugar Cane in Africa
All Africa
Sugar cane has been used to make sugar (sucrose) in varying forms for thousands of years but only in recent decades has its potential as a renewable energy source been exploited on any significant scale.
As recently as a decade ago, in global terms it was still viewed mainly as a commodity crop for sugar, whereas today there is considerable interest in its use as a feedstock for many energy and non-energy products.
Indeed, the long-term significance of biomass sources or feed stocks such as sugar cane is that they offer pathways for developing many bio-based products and materials as well as renewable energy in the form of ethanol, cogenerated electricity and biogas.
Due to climatic factors, tropical biomass resources such as sugar cane are more productive than temperate biomass sources, offering many developing countries a comparative advantage over their northern counterparts in the emerging global market for bioenergy and bio-based materials.
Improving that resource through careful breeding, agro-ecological zoning and agro-industrial infrastructure development creates the building blocks for low carbon sustainable growth.
Long experience with sugar cane and good growing conditions in various areas dispersed throughout sub-Saharan Africa offer new opportunities to those countries and companies willing to make the significant long-term investment required.
They can benefit directly from the experiences of the past few decades, including the pioneering effort to develop bioethanol from sugar cane in Brazil, the long experience in implementation of cogeneration systems in Mauritius and India and the experimentation with a wide range of bio-based products in many countries.
The agricultural importance of sugar cane in Africa in combination with many African countries´ vulnerability to external shocks highlights important linkages between agro-industrial development and the energy/climate forces that are driving new markets domestically and for export.
Developing a highly productive and dispersed biomass resource such as sugar cane has strategic value throughout sub-Saharan Africa in addressing the triple challenge of energy insecurity, climate change and rural poverty.
Sugar cane is not only about agriculture, energy, climate and technology–important those these issues are–but also relates fundamentally to the choice of future pathways for economic growth and development in sub-Saharan Africa.
The fossil fuel pathways followed by the developed countries are neither feasible nor desirable in the future: not only are these resources non-renewable but their socio-economic and environmental costs have begun to exceed their benefits.
Highly productive and versatile biomass resources such as sugar cane can support a green economy that is better matched to local needs but also integrated into regional and global markets.
In the fossil economy, poorer countries are vulnerable and powerless, whereas the bio-based economy of the future has the potential to link more closely to local resources and knowledge.
Achieving this potential in Africa and elsewhere will be challenging: it will require a significant amount of well-targeted investment in infrastructure, technology deployment and human capacity, which in turn will require more effective policies and institutions at multiple scales.
The physical building blocks are there, but the builders will need to be persistent and determined in order to succeed.