Biobutanol will get a federal tax credit of $1.10 per gallon. So says, Jim Ostroff in “The Kiplinger Letter” dated July 5 on the Kiplinger web site. Now, that is more even than “renewable diesel” has been granted, so somebody is pushing hard on this one. Mind you, that is Ostroff says that will be specifically for biobutanol from cellulosic sources. It also is speculation on his part, since no actual legislation has been passed carrying that provision. Mr. Ostroff merely claims that there will be such a law passed before the end of the year.
The Kiplinger report has the whole bioenergy industry dancing and shouting “hosannas” from the treatment they can expect from legislators in Washington in the near term. I have no information to back him up, but I certainly hope he is correct. I am always pleased to see high minded individuals succeed in worthwhile enterprises.
Speaking of such persons, some folks who have been into the recycle and re-use segment of business for a long time, previously known as “Filtra Group” for their operations in filtering and re-use of vegetable oils in the restaurant and food service industries are now a diversified renewable energy company called, “Xenerga, Inc.” Xenerga is currently based in Orlando, Florida. When I spoke to Dave Jarrett, their “Chief Communications Officer” this week, he said that initial response to their solicitations for “qualified investors” as partners brought in more applications than they could possibly handle. It has taken them over 6 months just to get a reasonable handle on the original group. Indeed when they received my email inquiry, it triggered an automated response that said, in effect, “hold your horses, we can’t even think about you until this fall.” Now that’s a nice position to be in.
Xenerga’s current efforts in the short term are mainly focused on Waste Vegetable Oil (WVO) type conversions to biodiesel (methyl ester biodiesel), although their process can actually handle most types of organic and renewable oil, including tallow and lard. Their partnership opportunities are for “qualified investors”, which is to say, people financially capable of making significant investments such that the SEC doesn’t feel that they need SEC protection. This is no fly-by-night operation. They have merged with a European company who have sold biodiesel equipment into Sweden, Romania, South America, and the UK, to name just a few of the dozen or more countries where their equipment are now operating. They have a very efficient methanol recovery system, nearly, “100%,” says Dave Jarrett. Despite what Dave told me, their equipment division’s web site says, “25%” recovery but also points out that they use 20% less methanol as input than most other biodiesel processors.
Xenerga have existing contracts for the supply of WVO as well as contracts from multiple buyers for the biodiesel that will be produced by “partnership” facilities. They plan to build a lot of these around the country, and eventually in several of the other countries where they are still operating as the restaurant, school, and hospital cafeteria deep fryer oil servicing company.
But these are some more smart people (I LIKE smart people!!). They are also developing jatropha plantations and have their own jatropha breeding and hybridizing/cloning development program. They have planted in Africa and have at least one deal in place to plant in South America too. They have been so busy that they admitted that their plans in another area have run into administrative delays.
Xenerga’s web site talks about an alga farm in Africa and says that they plan to have, “The first farm will be built in the US by June 2007. Details will be announced then.” Mr. Jarrett says that is behind schedule as of now, being distracted by success in other areas and permits and permissions red tape. It won’t be the first in the US, as I said in a prior column, there is an algae farm that has been operational for many years in Hawaii, but, in fact, it was Xenerga’s graphic of the projected algae farm that I used in an earlier column.
Okay, new topic, I decided to warn you since the next paragraph had no transition into it, and the change was so abrupt it was disorienting, even for me and I wrote the darned thing.
In my opinion the judge is grandstanding for his own aggrandizement or in fear of “looking bad” in the eyes of his peers. If that sounds familiar, it should. I grant that in this case the judge is not a pontificating, would-be raconteur, as was the case in the Anna Nicole Smith court travesty, but it does seem that judges are taking a more active stand in trying to assure that their judgments and sentencing decisions are not eroded by administrative underlings. (Or “overlings” as the case might be.) The Paris Hilton fiasco just being one of the most recent to receive publicity. In this case, however, I am referring to the war of words between Judge Walton and the White House over the commutation of the I. “Scooter” Libby sentence. Now Judge Reggie Walton of the US District Court is claiming that the commutation cannot be carried out because “parole” is only for people who have already served time in jail, which, of course, Mr. Libby has not. The point of the commutation in the first place: to avoid him spending time in jail during his appeals process. Despite Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald being a Republican appointee, the trial was a witch hunt, looking for someone to carry the burden of exposing a CIA operative while avoiding attaching blame to the highest levels of the White House administration (though you can’t get much higher than “Special Assistant to the President”, Libby’s job title as assistant to the Vice President.) Ain’t politics wonderful? They even lie in your job title.
My point, however, long winded as usual though it may be, is that judges are constantly awarding sentences of suspended jail time which can be extinguished by successful completion of a supervised period of parole. Judge Walton claiming that parole is “invalid” in this case is just headline seeking by opposing the President of the United States. Mind you, it is working, on the level of pure publicity effectiveness; you have to grant that it is working, even I am talking about Judge Reggie today.
“Use the RIGHT biofuel, or the monkey gets it!” is a campaign by the folks at Greenpeace. I hate coming out in opposition to Greenpeace, not just because they are so often “right”, but because the whole idea behind the organization of making the planet more livable by eliminating wars and treating the planet with respect seems like one of the best ideas ever for a bunch of people getting together in common efforts. In this instance, however, I have at least a quibble with the alarmist technique they are using. Greenpeace UK, in cooperation with World Wildlife Federation, Friends of the Earth, enoughsenough.com, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds have actually taken out newspaper ads using the slightly more proper English phrasing: “TELL THE GOVERNMENT TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT BIOFUEL – OR THE ORANG-UTAN GETS IT !” Their ads, published in British newspapers (AFAIK) feature an organgutan with a hands-up gesture being pointed to by a gasoline pump nozzle with a hand already squeezing the trigger. I object to the strategy for several reasons. Firstly because it assumes that those who are attempting to meet the fast growing demand for biofuels will not take into consideration the overall well-being of the planet and its natural resources (including humans and animals) especially rainforests. Secondly it presupposes the governments are qualified to determine, in advance, which biofuels that already exist (ignoring all the innovation that is going on in the field on a daily basis) will be the best for the long-term stability, sustainability and least disruptive to the environment, while still addressing that pressing concern we have developed regarding the contribution of fossil-based carbon to global warming. (BTW: It is now more politically correct to call it, “climate change” – being ‘politically correct’, or even being expected to be ‘politically correct’, is an annoying pain in the posterior.) The other argument behind Greenpeace’s assertion that we must choose the “right” biofuel goes to the food versus fuel debate, which is a red herring to begin with. I am not going to try to hash out the numbers here.
On the other hand, I am not insensitive to the fact that there may be unscrupulous individuals who would happily choose the wildlife preserves that are habitats for endangered species to conduct energy projects. But let’s not go pointing fingers at the Malaysians and Indonesians until we elect politicians in American who will stand up to the oil companies that think it is necessary to drill in the Alaskan wildlife wilderness preserves. For that matter, don’t we need to get rid of all the politicians who think that war is acceptable and stop killing the hundreds of thousand who are dying each year as a direct or indirect result of the worlds various conflicts. I am not saying that orangutans are not important. By all means let us not neglect our obligation of stewardship towards all the creatures of the earth, but can’t we figure out a way to stop killing our own species.
I fear that Greenpeace’s approach to an answer is to limit technology and head back towards their romanticized stone age level of self-sufficiency. The reason I fear that point of view is that it is only through modern technology that we can sustain the world’s current population. I also tend to think that the way to end war is to create so much prosperity that no one lacks for any necessity or even any luxury they desire. That may be utopian of me, but it is truly the course on which I would like to see us, as a planet, take from this day forward.
The “man burns salt water” story from late May and early June of this year (mentioned in my column last week) has prompted quite a stir in the blogosphere. Lots of talk, lots of cynicism (and references to “Back to the Future” where they mispronounce “gigawatts” as “jiggowatts”) and a few serious efforts at analysis of what is observable in the news video of the “Kanzius Effect” as it is currently being called, but no definitive answers have been provided by the inventor as yet. He himself is still puzzling over what it happening. Mr. Kanzius, a retired radio engineer, was actually trying to create a hyperthermic cancer treatment technique by inducing high temperature using metallic targets on biomolecules aimed to attach themselves to tumour cells, which he would then target with his radio waves. (Reader Jim Ernsberger was kind enough to point out that this instance was radio frequency radiation, not the same as the microwave frequencies in the process used by Global Resource Corporation to dissolve plastics from “autofluff”.)
Most of the serious speculation (as opposed to those who just dismiss the whole thing as a “probable” violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics) centers on this being some form of simple electrolysis induced by the radio frequency energy. The ones which sound most plausible seem to suggest that the “right” radio frequency is likely around 13.56 Mhz which some claim is the magnetic resonance (as in magnetic resonance imaging [MRI] used in medical imaging) of platinum, which is a catalyst used in hydrogen fuel cells. Some reports say that Mr. Kanzius has put an “embargo” on further information about the testing results now that he is getting a little more serious about looking into this odd, accidental discovery.
I have to admit it looks like my own speculations about dissolved carbon dioxide was apparently off base. When I looked at a second video I saw that this used just “salt water” (using Morton’s salt from a household container). It was not sea water as originally presented in the headline. Though, I also admit, the whole idea of making the sea our next source of “fuel” has a rather romantically idealistic appeal, doesn’t it? I also would point out that some folks in Canada who are using ultrasonic (hypersonic?) techniques in a biofuels process have told me recently that they believe cavitation plays a role in the effectiveness of their process. I am waiting to hear more from them. Their work sounds interesting too.
I do like to talk about movies, video and television from time to time, as regular and semi-regular readers know. They are a really interesting economic engine. That is to say that movies, video and television produce a tremendous amount of commerce around them, not only in terms of box office sales, commercial time slots in the broadcasts and popcorn, but also as multibillion dollar support industry to the support and distribution itself. Then there is the economic factor of entertainment as a (relatively) low cost export that generates positive balance of payments income for the originating country. In the case of the US, that too is a multibillion dollar amount of international trade. In a sense entertainment exports are like a kind of reverse tourism. It works rather like renting a room and charging extra for the view. Neither of those things depletes the assets of either the number of rooms you own, nor of the quality or quantity of the view. You still have it to sell again tomorrow. I rent a seat in my theatre to a member of the public to see a movie, and I still have the movie to show tomorrow. Not only that, but I still have the movie to show on airlines, on pay-per-view cable, eventually on television, then on video.
But even more important than the economic engine that is the filmed entertainment industry, it is also an ambassador of common experience. It may be that the average citizen of Kenya will never spend a lot of time snowmobiling through the European Alps with Russian spies chasing them, but that doesn’t prevent them from enjoying the thrills of a James Bond movie chase sequence. Few of us will ever have experienced the “comfortable” feeling portrayed by Humphrey Bogart in a starkly lit waterfront loading dock, but we have learned to recognize the symbolic meaning of the setting from the dozens of other movies that have used that setting since then. And so it is, or at least it can be, for a citizen of Japan or Chechnya. Notice, please that I didn’t say ambassadors of an American way of life. We too can learn a great deal from the exports of the cinema of other countries too. Just like the language of music is universal, so too is the language of storytelling a unifying force for understanding and tolerance in the world.
I know I mentioned Bruce (“Bruno”) Willis’ new movie in the Die Hard series. I saw it recently. It was as fingernail biting, edge of the seat as the original, and better than the other sequels.
But this time out I want to mention a couple of really exceptional movies that are already available on DVD. Let’s start with the Samuel L. Jackson and Christina Ricci film, Black Snake Moan. Samuel Jackson gives his usual amazing and memorable performance, but Christina Ricci is spectacular as the wayward, self-destructive young woman Jackson decides to try to reform. I was so impressed (mind you, I like Christina Ricci, and have since she was a “child actress”) that I decided to try to include an embedded bit of promotional trailer for the film in the column today. It takes a couple of minutes, but I hope you might be tempted to see the whole film. I felt my time was well spent.
Also, surprisingly better than the amount of publicity it received on theatrical release (or maybe I was sleeping, because my local video store gave it a floor to ceiling section of wall space by itself) was a movie staring Mark Wahlberg (ladies will probably still remember him from when he did underwear ads in his early career). The movie, available now on DVD is called Shooter. The genre itself is somewhat tried-and-true, disillusioned military veteran is framed for acts of high treason, but this one combines terrific plot momentum and nail-biting action. Another well-above-average second tier movie, this one, like Syriana, Blood Diamond, and Constant Gardener also has a critical point-of-view on the real contemporary political climate in the underdeveloped world, and America’s role in it. Of course, it doesn’t hurt, these days, that the bad guys turn out to be ruthless politicians with far too much influence on the normal judiciary for our hero to simply expose them. The result is a spectacular, pyrotechnical, extravaganza ending. The “Hollywood” solution in the case of the Shooter movie is hardly one I would advocate for dealing with political corruption in every case, but it was emotionally satisfying for the audience.
Love,
Stafford “Doc” Williamson
