Take a look: BIOenergy Blog Ring

The first link that caught my eye was the BIOconversion Blog with an article about woody biomass as a feedstock consideration. In particular the role woody biomass can play in sequestering carbon as well as producing wealth. This blog is part of a series of blogs shown in the graphic below. All worth checking out.
In the BIOenergy blog post, the author C. Scott Miller, starts with a map (see below) of renewable energy developments throughout the U.S. and asks the question: What about the blanks spaces in the map?

What renewable energy should be considered if you don't have a wind, solar, or agricultural resource immediately available. The answer of course being woody biomass. He also points to the wealth generating and economic development success of ethanol in his argument. This argument for biofuels being a potential urban/rural political divide bridge in Oregon (see quote below).

"The revitalization of the Corn Belt is illustrative of what could happen in the forest regions of the country- hundreds of biorefineries, billions of gallon of liquid fuel, stronger feedstock prices, revitalized communities, tens of thousands of jobs, rising land equity and stronger communities."

I came across this over the weekend. A really good blog examining the big questions floating around the piece forest thinning might play in the clean-tech energy sector. It also offers depth rarely seen explaining cellulosic ethanol and wood. The depth of his knowledge, information provided, and most of all his examination is pretty impressive.

I highly recommend taking a look.

Vegetable Oil Fuel Cell

Another good catch by Richard Stuebl over at the Cleantech Blog.

It had to happen. The hydrogen crowd is crashing the biofuel party. Its good to see as this party is alot more fun anyways. Fewer PhD's and more entrepreneurs makes for a sector that steps hard and pushes envelopes.

Technology Management (a.k.a. TMI) demonstrates first-ever use of vegetable oil in solid oxide fuel cell.
See picture to the right.

This same fuel cell has also ran on diesel, propane, natural gas, and JP8 jet fuel (which is also cross listed as Jet A, No. 1 Diesel, or K1 Kerosene in many parts of the world). Logically I would assume this means their fuel cell can also run unrefined petroleum distillates and I'd even bet unpolished glycerin.

This is another one of those small scale distributive technologies. Or in a nutshell described simply as expensive and small scale. Small scale works though in remote energy production from multiple sources of liquid fuel. Hence distributed, away from large power generation infrastructure.

There has been a real cross over the last year of technologies that were in development during the age of sub-$40 a barrel petroleum. These already promising technologies making the necessary flexibility to include biofuels (the hot energy of today).

Funny how the very technologies that were oh-so sexy when hydrogen was the future pick up the ability to use other fuels the moment the grant money requires something other than hydrogen.

More about the fuel cell technology at FMI's site as well as a good history of their financial support from grants at FMI's news site.

Here they come... Fuel cost predictions.

"We're in a world of triple digit oil prices for the foreseeable future"

So says Jeffrey Rubin of the Canadian investment bank CIBC.

He goes on to say: "Triple digit prices is not a spike, triple digit oil prices is what is going to be required to maintain, let alone grow, world oil supplies."

I've always bet on the opposite side of the market for the last four years. If I make a bet about petroleum markets it consistently goes the opposite way. I am the worst petroleum economist the world has ever seen (I'm glad I saved myself the cost of an econ grad-school).

I was drawn to biofuels (biodiesel in particular) because of the low carbon and domestic aspects. I've always considered it a super-premium product similar to higher end coffee and organic produce. A product that's value distinguished it from a pure commodity market.

I therefore have always focused on avoiding a commodity market and told myself it was for safety's sake. To protect myself and true biofuel supporters from the eventual market inversion.

I am breaking with my tradition. For once I'm going with the obvious trend of upwardly bound prices and tighter supplies (given new information I won't go into here). Something tells me for the first time we might unexpectedly see motor-fuel prices trend downward.

For a long while there I predicted oil would never stay above $40 a barrel for long. For a long while I predicted expanding Asian refinery capacity and oil shale/tar sand production to enter the US pushing prices down.

As you've obviously guessed I've been long for as long as I've been doing biofuels.

Here is the most recent credible prediction of ever more expensive petroleum. I was tipped off by the Cleantech Blog I recently found as well. Worth the bookmark to say the least.