California unveils low-carbon plan: more hybrids, hydrogen cars, high-speed rail; more solar, wind, and cap-and-trade

The California Air Resources Board outlined its plan to reduce emissions by 10 percent. The plan aims to reduce pollutants 10 percent by 2020, from current levels, and is an outcome of 2006 low carbon legislation promoted by Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger. The policy initiatives include a cap-and-trade emissions cap, a switch to 33 percent renewable energy by utilities, and cleaner fuels. Other policy initiatives include the reduction of commuting by developing walkable cities, high-speed rail, hybrid and hydrogen-powered cars.

California background

• A group of 27 distinguished US scientists, citing a severe lack of hard empirical data, urged California to adopt a Low Carbon Fuel Standard based on commonly understood direct impacts on carbon dioxide emissions, and further study indirect land use changes before incorporating any of these indirect impacts in that standard.

“There remain great uncertainties and challenges in combining land-use change and life cycle analysis (LCA) models that make their use highly problematic, particularly if the outputs of these models are used as a basis for policy decisions, or for comparing indirect impacts between fuel types. Some of the problems include the lack of large-scale, reliable data sets from field and process trials of growing, harvesting, and converting dedicated energy crops into biofuels. These data are needed as “training sets” for the LCA models.”

“The scientists and researchers, signing on their own and not on behalf of their institutions, include scientists from Universities and National Laboratories across the nation,” and included signatories from Sandia National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the Center for Environmental Research & Technology, the Joint BioEnergy Institute, the USDA and a number of major universities including Berkeley, MIT and Michigan State. Distinguished pioneers in the field such as Lonnie Ingram of Florida, Bruce Dale of Michigan State, Charles Wyman of Cal-Riverside and Jay Keasling of Berkeley were among the signers.

• San Francisco Mayor Newsom announced that the city received $1 million from the California Energy Commission to assist with construction expense of the city’s proposed biodiesel refining plant, which would focus on conversion of brown grease (pan scrapings and oil residue from grease traps), versus yellow grease (fryer oil). Mayor Newsom said that the city had 2.5 million gallons of brown grease compared to 1.5 million gallons of yellow grease.

• Pacifica ratified the US Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement. The agreement, developed by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, includes commitments by US cities and towns to: measure carbon footprints, set emission reduction targets, promote energy efficiency, promote sustainable building practices, increase fuel efficiency in municipal fleets and convert diesel vehicles to biodiesel, and increase recycling rates.

• Kern County Supervisors approved the 55 Mgy Cilion corn ethanol plant proposed for Famoso. Groundwater usage and wastewater concerns had been considered in the environmental report on the plant, but ultimately the county board voted 4-1 in favor of the plant.

• ZeaChem said that its cellulosic process can produce up to 160 gallons of ethanol per ton of biomass, and that a farm with a radius of eight miles could produce 300 Mgy of ethanol per year from wood waste, switch grass, or other waste, with a net return on energy of nearly 10 to 1 and a price at the pump of around $1.50 per gallon.

• Gevo announced that Burill & Co and Malaysian Life Sciences Capital Fund have joined a $17 million third round of financing that closed this week, joining Vinod Khosla’s Khosla Ventures and Richard Branson’s Virgin Green Fund as investors. The company uses synthetic biology to produce advanced biofuels such as butanol from cellulosic biomass.

• BlueFire Ethanol said that it plans to build to a capacity of up to 550 Mgy by 2013 using agricultural and wood waste and non-food crops including switchgrass. The company said that its sulfuric acid-based process for breaking down cellulose is superior to enzyme- or thermochemical-based approaches to the problem. “It’s an issue of financing, not technology,” BlueFire CEO Arnold Klann told CheckBioTech in discussing the company’s barriers to growth.

• Algae startup Aurora BioFuels announced that has raised $20 million in series A financing from Oak Investment Partners, Noventi and Gabriel Venture Partners. Gabriel and Noventi has participated in a seed stage round. Aurora will use technology developed by Berkeley professor Tasios Melis for an open-pond algae production system, and will produce biodiesel from algae. The company says that its process reduces the cost of biodiesel production by half, compared to current methods.

• Sapphire Energy debuted it’s “green crude”, a gasoline equivalent refined from algae. The company did not disclose its production process but said that it is producing 91 octane gasoline, and said that the company has planned capacity of 153 Mgy on desert land sites in the southwestern US.

The company has raised $50 million in venture capital from ARCH Venture Partners, Venrock and the Wellcome Trust of the UK. It’s research partners include Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Project; the University of California at San Diego; Scripps Research Institute; and the University of Tulsa. The company said that it will open a facility by 2011, but did not announce the location or production capacity.

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California unveils low-carbon plan: more hybrids, hydrogen cars, high-speed rail; more solar, wind, and cap-and-trade

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