Alternative Fuels

Great article in the Seattle Times about the current state-of-the-art of bio-fuels in WA State (hint: Not Good)

Homegrown fuel: a waste of energy?
On a blazing day last July at his farm west of Spokane, Fred Fleming placed a machine that looks like a meat grinder the size of a truck engine on a concrete slab and started dumping tiny canola seeds into the top.

The machine kept clogging as it squashed the seeds into oil, and Fleming was reduced to slowly pouring in the seeds.

After three straight days under the searing Eastern Washington sun, he shut down the crusher. After all that, he had managed to produce about 400 gallons of vegetable oil, which eventually was sold to become some of the first homegrown bio-diesel ever made in Washington. The bio-diesel was a paltry trickle.

"That was one of the dumber things I did," Fleming said, recalling the heat and "wondering if I should really be committed and be in counseling."

Such is the state of Washington's bio-diesel industry � more farmyard experiment than full-sized factory.

Heh... A bit more:

Gov. Christine Gregoire recently proposed low-interest loans for bio-diesel factories, and a requirement that diesel sold in the state contain at least some bio-diesel. State lawmakers from both parties are vowing to promote similar plans when the Legislature convenes next month. And Congress last summer included a tax credit for bio-diesel in its energy bill.

At least four companies plan to build bio-diesel plants, and a refinery is already operating in South Seattle. But even the enthusiasts say there are daunting obstacles to actually making money. Skeptics point out that recent history has seen plenty of hype around crops like sugar beets that were supposed to be the salvation of Washington farmers but flopped.

"It's like an old carcass out there and everyone's circling to see if it's going to make us sick when we eat it," said Fleming, a fourth-generation farmer.

And these low-interest loans are subsidized by our tax dollars so as well as the much higher price at the pump, we are paying even more for this stuff. Price check on Aisle Five:

Tuesday, Laurelhurst Oil in Seattle sold bio-diesel for $3.18 a gallon, compared with $2.60 for regular diesel.

And more:

Though getting fuel from plants isn't new, the industry has been mostly confined to the Midwest, where corn is turned into ethanol and soybean oil is made into bio-diesel. Bio-diesel can be mixed with regular diesel or, in some engines, used alone.

But recent high gas prices and global warming, joined with farmers' hunger for a new lucrative crop, have people in Washington talking seriously about homegrown fuel.

While most of the bio-diesel today comes from soybeans, the oil can also come from canola and mustard seeds that grow well in Washington.

The unintended consequences here are that the government subsidization of corn into ethanol makes the price of other corn products rise. (Making ethanol costs more energy to produce than it yields in the final product -- ethanol is an energy sink, not a source) I had written about this several times: here, here, here and here The article talks about the boosterism that is going on trying to get the farmers to switch to oil crops but nobody seems to be putting up the $8 to $12Million plant to process the seeds efficiently. A quote:

"We need the capital for a crusher and a refinery, that's what it boils down to," said Mike Conklin, president of Palouse Bio-diesel, an alliance of four Eastern Washington farm cooperatives, including Cooperative Agricultural Producers.

And another quote:

Others, however, warn a mandate might only benefit huge Midwest biofuel producers, such as Archer Daniels Midland (ADM).

"If we go with a mandate and a big-time program and we don't think of the producer at the farm level or the refinery level, we've done ADM a great favor but we really haven't helped the state's economy," said state Sen. Mark Schoesler, a Republican whose district includes much of the farm country south of Spokane.

And snake oil?

Hanging over all this is another specter: the legacies of strawboard and sugar beets.

In the 1990s, boards made from straw were hyped as an environmentally friendly substitute for wooden particle board, and also touted as a boon for Washington farmers. By the end of the decade, factories started churning out the boards.

But quality was uneven. Horses sometimes ate the grassy panels. And the boards often cost more than the wooden ones. The main plant went out of business.

Around the same time, a group of farmers in Moses Lake built a $100 million sugarbeet refinery. But equipment failures left beets rotting on the ground. Farmers lost big. Banks quit loaning on the crop. Four years after opening, the refinery shut down.

"You have seen a lot of snake-oil salesmen come through with the next best thing," acknowledged Conklin, the Palouse Bio-diesel president.

Excellent real-world writing. I would personally love to be able to use 100% bio-diesel at our farm but the economics just are not there. Using government subsidies to cover the additional cost is just a game of smoke and mirrors, the money still comes out of our pockets, it's just a different check that we are writing.