Archive for the ‘Biofuels’ Category

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Green groups oppose MECO plan to bring in palm oil

Published on November 11, 2010 in Alternative Energy, Biofuels and General Ag News and Notes.


Maui environmental groups are organizing a letter-writing campaign to persuade Hawaiian Electric Co. and the state government to head off plans to import palm oil from Malaysia to be used in a test at Maui Electric Co.’s Maalaea power plant.

The international campaign was sparked by a German group, Rainforest-Rescue.org. Maui Tomorrow Foundation, Sierra Club Maui and the statewide group Life of the Land are protesting here in the islands.

They oppose a Public Utilities Commission decision to allow HECO to use palm oil at Campbell Industrial Park and to allow Maui Electric to test palm oil at Maalaea.

A spokesman for HECO said Tuesday: “We share a concern for the environment and human rights, which is why in 2007 Hawaiian Electric worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council to create a sustainable biofuels policy that we include in all contracts.”

HECO has signed what it calls a “very short” (two years) contract to supply its Campbell plant with fuel made from recovered animal waste on the Mainland. To get its new Campbell plant permitted, HECO had to promise to use renewable fuel.

For the Maalaea test, it contracted with Sime Darby to supply a million gallons of palm oil. Continue reading ‘Green groups oppose MECO plan to bring in palm oil’

Decision time on Hu Honua

Published on October 28, 2010 in Alternative Energy, Biofuels and General Ag News and Notes.


Power plant proposal thrashed out at hearing, Pepeekeo site visit

by Peter Sur
The president of Hu Honua Bioenergy answered community concerns about a proposed power plant under oath Wednesday and gave a tour of the shuttered facility that he hopes to reopen.

The final witness in the contested case hearing in Hilo was Hu Honua President Rick McQuain, who appeared before hearings officer Robert Crudele and the 16 opponents, called intervenors, who are against the proposed $70 million biomass plant.

Once the final briefs are submitted, Crudele will review the evidence and make a recommendation to the county’s Windward Planning Commission. The seven-member commission will then decide whether to approve Hu Honua’s request to change a 1985 special management area permit that authorized a coal-fired plant.

Hu Honua wants to generate electricity by burning chipped eucalyptus trees, processing about 260,000 tons of biomass per year. The company wants to use the former Hilo Coast Processing Co.’s coal-burning plant in Pepeekeo, which closed in 2004. Continue reading ‘Decision time on Hu Honua’

Feds helping Big Island company with $5 mil loan guarantee

Published on September 23, 2010 in Agriculture Grants, Biofuels and General Ag News and Notes.


An energy company on the Big Island will receive a $5 million loan guarantee from the federal government to help finish construction of a manufacturing plant in Kawaihae.

The announcement was made Thursday in a Washington news release by Hawaii’s Democratic U.S. Sens. Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka.

Big Island Carbon’s $25 million plant will convert discarded macadamia nut shells into a product that can generate power, filter air and purify water.

Plans call for the company to buy about 10,000 tons of more than 20,000 tons of shells produced annually on the Big Island to convert into 1,000 tons of granular activated carbon.

Big Island Carbon will power its own operations. Any excess biofuel or gas will be sold on the island.

Feds helping Big Island company with $5 mil loan guarantee – Hawaii News – Staradvertiser.com

Navy pursuing biofuel

Published on August 15, 2010 in Biofuels, General Ag News and Notes and Sugar Cane.


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Hawaiian sugar grower working on crops to fuel ships, planes.

HONOLULU — The federal government has turned to a 130-year-old Hawaii sugar grower for help in powering the Navy and weaning the nation off a heavy reliance on fossil fuels.

It will spend at least $10 million over the next five years to fund research and development at Maui cane fields for crops capable of fueling Navy fighter jets and ships. The project also may provide farmers in other warm climates with a model for harvesting their biofuel crops.

Hawaii has become a key federal laboratory for biofuels because of its dependence on imported oil as well as its great weather for growing crops. Factor in the heavy military presence at places such as Pearl Harbor, and the islands become an ideal site for the government to test biofuel ideas on a commercial scale.

“Hawaii is kind of the perfect storm of opportunity,” said Tom Hicks, the Navy’s deputy assistant secretary for energy. Continue reading ‘Navy pursuing biofuel’

Hawaii sugar grower working to power Navy

Published on August 9, 2010 in Biofuels, General Ag News and Notes and Sugar Cane.


Navy fighter jets and ship could be powered by biofuels grown in Hawaii under an effort funded by the federal government.

The government is spending at least $10 million over five years on research and development at Maui cane fields for crops capable of fueling Navy fighter jets and ships. The project also may provide farmers in other warm climates with a model for harvesting biofuel crops.

Hawaii has become a key federal laboratory for biofuels because of its dependence on imported oil and its great weather for growing crops. It also has a large military presence.

The Office of Naval Research is funding the five-year program at Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar, a company dating to the 1870s that runs the last sugar plantation in the state.

Hawaii sugar grower working to power Navy – Hawaii News – Staradvertiser.com

Exploring Algae as Fuel

Published on July 26, 2010 in Biofuels, General Ag News and Notes and Sustainability.


SAN DIEGO — In a laboratory where almost all the test tubes look green, the tools of modern biotechnology are being applied to lowly pond scum.

Foreign genes are being spliced into algae and native genes are being tweaked.

Different strains of algae are pitted against one another in survival-of-the-fittest contests in an effort to accelerate the evolution of fast-growing, hardy strains.

The goal is nothing less than to create superalgae, highly efficient at converting sunlight and carbon dioxide into lipids and oils that can be sent to a refinery and made into diesel or jet fuel.

“We’ve probably engineered over 4,000 strains,” said Mike Mendez, a co-founder and vice president for technology at Sapphire Energy, the owner of the laboratory. “My whole goal here at Sapphire is to domesticate algae, to make it a crop.”

Continue reading ‘Exploring Algae as Fuel’

Department of Energy – Secretary Chu Announces Six Projects to Convert Captured CO2 Emissions from Industrial Sources into Useful Products

Published on July 22, 2010 in Biofuels, General Ag News and Notes and Sustainability.


Secretary Chu Announces Six Projects to Convert Captured CO2 Emissions from Industrial Sources into Useful Products
$106 Million Recovery Act Investment will Reduce CO2 Emissions and Mitigate Climate Change

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced today the selections of six projects that aim to find ways of converting captured carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from industrial sources into useful products such as fuel, plastics, cement, and fertilizers. Funded with $106 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -matched with $156 million in private cost-share -today’s selections demonstrate the potential opportunity to use CO2 as an inexpensive raw material that can help reduce carbon dioxide emissions while producing useful by-products that Americans can use.

“These innovative projects convert carbon pollution from a climate threat to an economic resource,” said Secretary Chu. “This is part of our broad commitment to unleash the American innovation machine and build the thriving, clean energy economy of the future.”

Converting captured CO2 into products such as chemicals, carbonates, plastics, fuels, building materials, and other commodities is an important aspect of carbon capture and storage technology. Converting CO2 into other useful forms can help reduce carbon emissions in areas where long-term storage of CO2 is not practical. It is anticipated that large volumes of CO2 will be available as fossil fuel-based power plants and other CO2-emitting industries are equipped with CO2 emissions control technologies to comply with regulatory requirements.

The projects announced today were initially selected for a first phase funding in October 2009 as part of a $1.4 billion effort to capture CO2 from industrial sources for storage or beneficial use. Over the succeeding months, the project teams have performed experiments on innovative concepts and produced preliminary designs for pilot plants to study the feasibility of capturing and using CO2 exhausted from industrial processes. The selected projects now enter a second phase in which researchers design, construct, and operate their innovations at pilot-scale and evaluate the technical and economic feasibility of applying them commercially.

The projects selected to demonstrate the beneficial use of CO2 include:

Phycal, LLC (Highland Heights, Ohio)-Phycal will complete development of an integrated system designed to produce liquid biocrude fuel from microalgae cultivated with captured CO2. The algal biocrude can be blended with other fuels for power generation or processed into a variety of renewable drop-in replacement fuels such as jet fuel and biodiesel. Phycal will design, build, and operate a CO2-to-algae-to-biofuels facility at a nominal thirty acre site in Central O’ahu (near Wahiawa and Kapolei), Hawaii. Hawaii Electric Company will qualify the biocrude for boiler use, and Tesoro will supply CO2 and evaluate fuel products. (DOE Share: $24,243,509) Continue reading ‘Department of Energy – Secretary Chu Announces Six Projects to Convert Captured CO2 Emissions from Industrial Sources into Useful Products’

Isle ethanol efforts stall

Published on June 27, 2010 in Biofuels and General Ag News and Notes.


two surviving ventures face high hurdles

Ask just about anyone involved in the effort to start a home-grown ethanol industry in Hawaii and invariably the word "challenging" comes up.

Challenging, it turns out, is an understatement.

Four years ago companies were lining up to build ethanol production facilities in Hawaii after the state launched a program that offered generous tax credits and set a mandate that most gasoline sold in the state must contain 10 percent of the renewable fuel. Soaring ethanol prices, which hit a record $4.23 a gallon in the summer of 2006, also spurred interest. On the mainland, dozens of corn-based ethanol plants sprouted up across the Great Plains.

In Hawaii, meanwhile, plans were moving forward to erect ethanol plants that would mostly use sugar cane or sugar cane byproducts as a feedstock. Before any of the companies could get their permits approved, however, the price of ethanol collapsed, falling as low as $1.40 a gallon in late 2008. In addition to falling prices, difficulty in securing land to grow feedstocks and dwindling investor interest have made it difficult to get any new processing facilities up and running.

There were plans in recent years to build at least six plants in Hawaii to produce ethanol, an alcohol-based renewable fuel that can be made from a variety of organic materials, including sugar cane. Of the original six that were planned, only two are still on the books, and neither has a target date to begin construction.

Continue reading ‘Isle ethanol efforts stall’

USDA Blog » Biomass and Biofuel – What’s in it for Hawaii’s Agriculture?

Published on June 25, 2010 in Agriculture Grants, Alternative Energy, Biofuels and General Ag News and Notes.


Hawaii and the Pacific Basin

The dwindling global supply of fossil fuels and the resulting escalation in prices has set the stage for entry of commercial biofuel produced from biomass, including co-products and bi-products. This transition in the energy sector’s feed stocks offers Hawaii a unique opportunity to locally produce biofuel from locally produced biomass feed stocks, and ultimately support the stabilization of the state’s energy resources; increase the local circulation of energy dollars; and further under gird Hawaii’s agricultural industry.

In October 2009, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced plans for a “Great Green Fleet” to demonstrate that Navy and Marine Corps ships and aircraft could operate utilizing non-fossil fuels by year 2016. In January, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Secretary Mabus to support the biomass and biofuel development that would ultimately fuel the Green Fleet. Hawaii was selected as a pilot region, with USDA providing the “push” through research and business incentives and the Navy making the “pull” with plans for purchase of biofuel from locally produced biomass. Continue reading ‘USDA Blog » Biomass and Biofuel – What’s in it for Hawaii’s Agriculture?’

10 answer HECO’s call for biofuel

Published on June 24, 2010 in Biofuels, General Ag News and Notes, Sugar Cane and Sustainability.


Local production is the key to gradually moving the state away from imported fuel

By Alan Yonan Jr.

The state’s quest for energy independence took a step forward with Hawaiian Electric Co. receiving bids from 10 companies seeking to supply the utility with biofuel produced locally to burn in its power plants.

    There are a number of potential biofuel feedstocks that can be produced in Hawaii, including:
      » Sugar cane
      » Sorghum
      » Jatropha
      » Eucalyptus
      » Invasive trees
      » Algae
      » Microbes
      » Yeast
      » Waste products

HECO said it would begin buying the renewable fuel over the next five years, starting with small amounts and gradually expanding its intake as the fledgling biofuel industry matures in Hawaii.

"We are pleased with the strong response," said HECO spokesman Peter Rosegg.

The deadline for companies to submit bids was Friday, and HECO is now evaluating the proposals. The names of the companies will not be made public until the winning bid or bids are announced.

Continue reading ‘10 answer HECO’s call for biofuel’

HC&S hires industrial processing plant expert – The Maui News

Published on June 6, 2010 in Biofuels and General Ag News and Notes.

maui-news-ad

HONOLULU (AP) – Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. has hired Anna Skrobecki to be the company’s senior vice president for factory and power plant operations. HC&S General Manager Christopher Benjamin said in a statement that Skrobecki has extensive experience in industrial processing plants.

Benjamin said this will help the sugar plantation as it researches alternative processing methods for biofuels.

The Navy and U.S. Department of Energy earlier this year announced they would spend several million dollars researching biofuel production at HC&S’ sugar cane fields on Maui. Skrobecki most recently was operations vice president at Wausau Paper in Wisconsin.

She also worked for Weyerhaeuser and James River Corp.

HC&S hires industrial processing plant expert – Mauinews.com | News, Sports, Jobs, Visitor’s Information – The Maui News

Exxon $600 Million Algae Investment Makes Khosla See Pipe Dream – Bloomberg.com

Published on June 3, 2010 in Biofuels, General Ag News and Notes and Sugar Cane.

Bloomberg

June 3 (Bloomberg) — Inside an industrial warehouse in South San Francisco, California, Harrison Dillon, chief technology officer of startup Solazyme Inc., examines a beaker filled with a brown paste made of sugar cane waste. While the smell brings to mind molasses, this goo, called bagasse, won’t find its way into people-pleasing confections.

Instead, scientists will empty it into 5-gallon metal flasks of algae and water. The algae will gorge on the treat — filling themselves with fatty oils as they double in size every six hours, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its July issue.

Down the hall, past a rainbow of algae strains arrayed in Petri dishes, Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Wolfson shows off a gallon-size bottle of slightly viscous liquid. After drying the algae, wringing out the oil and shipping it to a refinery, this is the prize: diesel fuel that Wolfson says is chemically indistinguishable from its petroleum-based equivalent and which has already powered a Jeep Liberty and a Mercedes Benz sedan.

“We’ve produced tens of thousands of gallons, and by the end of 2010, I hope I can say we’ve produced hundreds of thousands,” Wolfson, 39, says. “In the next two years, we should get the cost down to the $60 to $80-a-barrel range.”

At that price, Solazyme’s algae fuel would compete with $80-a-barrel oil.

Continue reading ‘Exxon $600 Million Algae Investment Makes Khosla See Pipe Dream – Bloomberg.com’

Mansfield Oil Acquires Western Ethanol

Published on June 2, 2010 in Biofuels and General Ag News and Notes.

Mansfield Oil Acquires Western Ethanol

Addition of established ethanol wholesaler and logistics provider broadens company service offering in Western US

Atlanta, GA (Vocus/PRWEB ) June 2, 2010 — Today, Mansfield Oil Company announces the acquisition of substantially all of Western Ethanol’s assets and the addition of Doug Vind to the Mansfield team. Orange County, CA-based Western Ethanol is a leading ethanol wholesaler and logistics provider and is led by industry innovator Vind. In addition to providing bulk deliveries of ethanol, Western Ethanol specializes in the distribution of E85 for use in Flex Fuel Vehicles and is a leading distributor of E85 in the western United States.

News Image

Our acquisition of Western Ethanol is an important addition to our renewable fuels strategy and provides Western’s customers and suppliers with long-term stability in a partner they have valued for many years

We are also excited to add Doug Vind to our management team. He has been an innovator in the ethanol industry over the past two decades and we look forward to integrating his vision and experience into our long-term strategy for our renewable fuels business.

I’m proud to have Doug on our team and by leveraging his experience in the west, in conjunction with the C&N division nationally and our ethanol team in Charlottesville, VA we will now have the most complete nationwide ethanol marketing and supply team in the country.

We look forward to offering our customers the additional supply chain management capabilities provided by Mansfield being able to grow both our wholesaling efforts and proprietary ethanol transloading services business with their support

Western Ethanol’s customers include major gasoline refiners and large gasoline blenders for bulk ethanol sales, as well as independent gasoline retailers and federal, state and municipal automotive fleets for E85 sales throughout California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Arizona and Hawaii. Continue reading ‘Mansfield Oil Acquires Western Ethanol’

Thielen: Water decision meets most demands – The Maui News

Published on May 30, 2010 in Biofuels, General Ag News and Notes and Water.

maui-news-ad

By CHRIS HAMILTON, Staff Writer

State Commission on Water Resource Management Chairwoman Laura Thielen on Friday called the panel’s decision last week to put millions of gallons of water a day back into East Maui’s streams "groundbreaking."

For more than 125 years, Hawaiian Commercial & Sugar Co. has diverted water from the East Maui watershed for its sugar cane cultivation in Central Maui. Maui County also uses stream water to supply 10,000 customers Upcountry, including farmers and ranchers.

In a statement issued by the state Department of Land and Natural Resources, which Thielen also heads, she called Tuesday’s 5-1 vote during a Paia meeting "a flexible approach that meets most of the needs of competing water demands."

The commission’s decision also "strongly emphasized responsible management of public trust resources," Thielen said. For the first time, HC&S must monitor and report water in its irrigation system to the state. And Maui County must fix its leaky Waikamoi flume within three years, a process already under way.

"Maui County and HC&S need to make the necessary investments to repair existing infrastructure and to develop responsible and reliable alternative water sources to meet their critical domestic and agricultural water needs," Thielen said.

Continue reading ‘Thielen: Water decision meets most demands – The Maui News’

Alexander & Baldwin, Inc. Q1 2010 Earnings Call Transcript — Seeking Alpha

Published on May 5, 2010 in Agriculture Grants, Biofuels and General Ag News and Notes.

The Last Sugar Mill in Hawaii
HC&S Puunene Maui
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Alexander & Baldwin, Inc. (ALEX)

Q1 2010 Earnings Call Transcript

May 4, 2010 5:00 pm ET

Executives

Suzy Hollinger – Director, IR

Stan Kuriyama – President & CEO

Matt Cox – President, Matson Navigation Company, Inc.

Norb Buelsing – President, A&B Properties, Inc.

Chris Benjamin – SVP, CFO & Treasurer; General Manager, HC&S

Analysts

William Horner – Stephens Incorporated

Sloan Bohlen – Goldman Sachs

Sheila McGrath – KBW

Brendan Maiorana – Wells Fargo

Tom Wilson – Wilson Capital Management

Tom Spiro – Spiro Capital Management

Presentation

Operator

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the first quarter Alexander & Baldwin earnings conference call. My name is O'Meara and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will be conducting a question-and-answer session. (Operator Instructions) As a reminder, this conference is being recorded for replay purposes.

I would now like to turn this conference over to your host for today’s call, Ms. Suzy Hollinger, Director of Investor Relations. Please proceed.

Suzy Hollinger

Thank you, operator. Aloha and welcome to Alexander & Baldwin's first quarter 2010 earnings call. On the call with me today are Stan Kuriyama, A&B's President and CEO; Chris Benjamin, A&B's CFO and also General Manager of HC&S; Norb Buelsing, President of A&B Properties; and joining us from Matson's headquarters in Oakland is Matt Cox, President of Matson Navigation Company.

Before we commence, please note that statements in this call and presentation that set forth expectations or predictions are based on facts and situations that are known to us as of today, May 04, 2010. Actual results may differ materially due to risks and uncertainties such as those described on pages 17 through 26 of our 2009 Form 10-K and our other subsequent filings with the SEC. Statements in this call and presentation are not guarantees of future performance.

Slides from this presentation are available for download at our website www.alexanderbaldwin.com. You will see an icon at the top of the website to direct you to the appropriate section for download.

This slide provides an agenda for our presentation, after which we will take your questions. We will start with Stan who will comment on the performance for the quarter.

Stan Kuriyama

Thank you, Suzy. I'm pleased to report that A&B posted a solid first quarter and a positive start to 2010. Net income was significantly higher in the first quarter at $17 million or $0.42 per share compared to earnings in the first quarter of 2009 of $3 million or $0.07 a share.

As you'll note from this chart, operating results for all segments improved in the first quarter of 2010 with the exception of real estate leasing. Consolidated operating profit was $42 million in the quarter compared to $17 million a year ago. However, our first quarter '09 operating profit was impacted by a $6 million workforce reduction charge that did not recur in the first quarter of 2010.

Let me now brief you on the quarter highlights from each of our business units. In ocean transportation, our China service is benefitting from the recovery in both volume and rates. Volumes in particular were significantly higher than a year ago and rates are higher on a sequential basis. Matt will have more details for you later in the presentation.

Hawaii container volumes and rates were relatively flat in the quarter compared to last year. While we believe that material increases in volumes and rates are unlikely for the rest of the year, we are pleased that the Hawaii trade seems to have bottomed. Guam's performance was also stable for the quarter. Overall, operating profits in our ocean transportation business continue to benefit from the vessel deployment changes, workforce reduction, and other cost cutting and operating efficiencies implemented over the past two years.

First quarter operating results for MIL benefitted from a large movement for the Department of Defense, as well as from prior year's cost cutting measures. Some stabilization in MIL's intermodal business also occurred in the quarter. In real estate, we continue to observe demand and favorable pricing for quality commercial properties as evidenced by our sales of Mililani Shopping Center in January. This sale drove quarter results for this segment, as well as for the overall company.

Leasing, however, was challenged by several factors; the downward reset of market rents, lower occupancies in our Mainland portfolio, and the time lag between sales and acquisitions of properties in our 1031 exchange program. Norbert would be addressing this further in our presentation.

Agribusiness results improved in the quarter with losses declining by $800,000. However, we didn’t plan on harvesting any sugar in the first quarter, meaningful performance comparisons can't be made until the second quarter. As Chris will describe later, we continue to expect significant improvement for the full year and we recently learned federal grant monies will be made available to help us accelerate our bioenergy research at HC&S.

Continue reading ‘Alexander & Baldwin, Inc. Q1 2010 Earnings Call Transcript — Seeking Alpha’

Scientists Try Algae ‘Alchemy’ to Grow Oil in Paddies – BusinessWeek

Published on April 20, 2010 in Agriculture Grants, Biofuels and General Ag News and Notes.

Bloomberg

By Shigeru Sato and Yuji Okada

April 20 (Bloomberg) — As Japan’s rice fields turn fallow and its farming communities decline, a new army of workers is preparing to make the countryside fertile again. This time the crop is motor fuel and the laborers are microscopic algae.

At least 75 developers globally are studying algae, which has the potential to generate more energy per hectare than any other crop used for making fuel, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. The technology has attracted the U.S. Department of Energy and big oil including Exxon Mobil Corp., which plans to spend as much as $600 million on research over five years.

Japan abandoned a $132 million algae project in the 1990s, when oil prices dropped below $10 a barrel and climate change took a back seat to reviving the economy in what became known as “the Lost Decade.” Now companies including Toyota Motor Corp. and refiner Idemitsu Kosan Co. may join a study into the microorganisms that can turn waste water into oil, scrub carbon dioxide out of the air and reduce dependence on fossil fuels.

Continue reading ‘Scientists Try Algae ‘Alchemy’ to Grow Oil in Paddies – BusinessWeek’

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