Prairies Vanish in the US Push for Green Energy

 

1.2 million acres of prairies vanish, undermining Obama's green energy goal

ROSCOE, S.D. (AP) — Robert Malsam nearly went broke in the 1980s when corn was cheap. So now that prices are high and he can finally make a profit, he's not about to apologize for ripping up prairieland to plant corn.

Across the Dakotas and Nebraska, more than 1 million acres of the Great Plains are giving way to cornfields as farmers transform the wild expanse that once served as the backdrop for American pioneers.

This expansion of the Corn Belt is fueled in part by America's green energy policy, which requires oil companies to blend billions of gallons of corn ethanol into their gasoline. In 2010, fuel became the No. 1 use for corn in America, a title it held in 2011 and 2012 and narrowly lost this year. That helps keep prices high.

"It's not hard to do the math there as to what's profitable to have," Malsam said. "I think an ethanol plant is a farmer's friend." What the green-energy program has made profitable, however, is far from green. A policy intended to reduce global warming is encouraging a farming practice that actually could worsen it.

That's because plowing into untouched grassland releases carbon dioxide that has been naturally locked in the soil. It also increases erosion and requires farmers to use fertilizers and other industrial chemicals. In turn, that destroys native plants and wipes out wildlife habitats. It appeared so damaging that scientists warned that America's corn-for-ethanol policy would fail as an anti-global warming strategy if too many farmers plowed over virgin land. The Obama administration argued that would not happen. But the administration didn't set up a way to monitor whether it actually happened.

It did.
More than 1.2 million acres of grassland have been lost since the federal government required that gasoline be blended with increasing amounts of ethanol, an Associated Press analysis of satellite data found. Plots that were wild grass or pastureland seven years ago are now corn and soybean fields. That's in addition to the 5 million acres of farmland that had been aside for conservation — more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined — that have vanished since Obama took office.

In South Dakota, more than 370,000 acres of grassland have been uprooted and farmed from since 2006. In Edmunds County, a rural community about two hours north of the capital, Pierre, at least 42,000 acres of grassland have become cropland — one of the largest turnovers in the region. Malsam runs a 13-square-mile family farm there. He grows corn, soybeans and wheat, then rents out his grassland for grazing. Each year, the family converts another 160 acres from grass to cropland.
Chemicals kill the grass. Machines remove the rocks. Then tractors plow it three times to break up the sod and prepare it for planting.

Scattered among fields of 7-foot tall corn and thigh-high soybeans, some stretches of grassland still exist. Cattle munch on some grass. And "prairie potholes" — natural ponds ranging from small pools to larger lakes — support a smattering of ducks, geese, pelicans and herons. Yet within a mile of Malsam's farm, federal satellite data show, more than 300 acres of grassland have been converted to soybeans and corn since 2006.

Nebraska has lost at least 830,000 acres of grassland, a total larger than New York City, Los Angeles and Dallas combined. "It's great to see farmers making money. It hasn't always been that way," said Craig Cox of the Environmental Working Group. He advocates for clean energy but opposes the ethanol mandate. "If we're going to push the land this hard, we really need to intensify conservation in lockstep with production, and that's just not happening," he said.

Jeff Lautt, CEO of Poet, which operates ethanol refineries across the country, including in South Dakota, said it's up to farmers how to use their land. "The last I checked, it is still an open market. And farmers that own land are free to farm their land to the extent they think they can make money on it or whatever purpose they need," he said. Yet Chris Wright, a professor at South Dakota State University who has studied land conversion, said: "The conversation about land preservation should start now before it becomes a serious problem." Wright reviewed the AP's methodology for determining land conversion.

The AP's analysis used government satellite data to count how much grassland existed in 2006 in each county, then compare each plot of land to corresponding satellite data from 2012. The data from the U.S. Geological Survey and the Department of Agriculture identify corn and soybean fields. That allowed the AP to see which plots of grassland became cropland.

To reach its conservative estimate of 1.2 million acres lost, the AP excluded grassland that had been set aside under the government's Conservation Reserve Program, in which old farmland is allowed to return to a near-natural state. The AP used half-acre sections of earth and excluded tiny tracts that became corn, which experts said were most likely outliers. Corn prices more than doubled in the years after Congress passed the ethanol mandate in 2007. Now, Malsam said, farmers can make about $500 an acre planting corn. His farm has just become profitable in the past five years, allowing him and his wife, Theresa, to build a new house on the farmstead.

Four miles south, signs at each end of the town of Roscoe announce a population of only 324. But the town, which relies in part on incomes like Malsam's, supports a school, a restaurant, a bank, a grocery store and a large farm machinery store. The manager of the equipment dealership, Kaleb Rodgers, said the booming farm economy has helped the town and the dealership prosper. The business with 28 employees last year sold a dozen combines at about $300,000 apiece, plus more than 60 tractors worth between $100,000 and $300,000, he said.

"If we didn't have any farmers we wouldn't have a community here. We wouldn't have a business. I wouldn't be sitting here. I wouldn't be able to feed my family," Rodgers said. "I think ethanol is a very good thing." Jim Faulstich, president of the South Dakota Grasslands Coalition, said the nation's ethanol and crop insurance policies have encouraged the transformation of the land. Faulstich, who farms and ranches in central South Dakota near Highmore, said much of the land being converted is not suited to crop production, and South Dakota's strong winds and rains will erode the topsoil.

"I guess a good motto would be to farm the best and leave the rest," he said.

Gillum reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Dina Cappiello and Matt Apuzzo contributed to this report from Washington.


http://www.newsdaily.com/article/15847e18e6398470fc3bf01220241814/prairies-vanish-in-the-us-push-for-green-energy

Wasted Energy: Converting Discarded Food into Biofuels

Diverting just a portion of the world's food waste to waste-to-energy systems could free up large amounts of landfill space while powering vehicles and heating homes.

CHEW ON THIS: Diverting even just a portion of the world's food waste to energy could put a significant dent in our collective carbon footprint.

Food waste is indeed an untapped resource with great potential for generating energy. Some one third of all food produced around the world gets discarded uneaten, and environmentalists, energy analysts and entrepreneurs are beginning to take notice. Diverting even just a portion of this waste to so-called waste-to-energy (WTE) systems could free up large amounts of landfill space while powering our vehicles and heating our homes, and thus putting a significant dent in our collective carbon footprint. Perhaps that’s why WTE is one of the fastest growing segments of the world’s quickly diversifying energy sector.

Currently there are some 800 industrial-scale WTE plants in more than three dozen countries around the world, and likely thousands of smaller systems at individual sites. Most employ anaerobic digesters, which make use of microorganisms to break down and convert organic waste into a fuel such as biogas, biodiesel or ethanol. With some 70 percent of food waste around the world still going into landfills, there is a lot of potential feedstock to keep this environmentally friendly carbon neutral fuel source coming.

“Waste-to-energy doesn’t involve drilling, fracking, or mining, and it doesn’t rely on scarce and politically-charged resources like oil,” reports RWL Water Group, an international company that installs water, wastewater and waste-to-energy systems. The waste from small slaughterhouses, breweries, dairy farms and coffee shops can power hundreds of typical homes each day if the infrastructure is in place to sort, collect and process the flow of organic material.

Navigant Research, which produced the 2012 report “Waste-to-Energy Technology Markets, which analyzes the global market opportunity for WTE, expects waste-to-energy to grow from its current market size of $6.2 billion to $29.2 billion by 2022. “With many countries facing dramatic population growth, rapid urbanization, rising levels of affluence, and resource scarcity, waste-to-energy is re-establishing itself as an attractive technology option to promote low carbon growth in the crowded renewable energy landscape,” says Navigant’s Mackinnon Lawrence. “China is already in the midst of scaling up capacity, and growth there is expected to shift the center of the WTE universe away from Europe to Asia Pacific.”

The question is whether governments and individuals will make the effort to support diversion of waste into yet another separate stream. In areas where such systems are working, individuals are incentivized to separate out their organic and food waste because it saves them money on their trash pick-up bills. And bakeries, restaurants, farms, grocers and other big producers of organic or food waste provide an endless source of feedstock for WTE systems as well.

“We’re barely scratching the surface of this potential—dumping over 70 percent of the world’s food waste into landfills, rather than harnessing it for fuel and electricity,” reports RWL. “Over the next 25 years, global energy demand will grow by 50 percent, while global oil supply dwindles at a rapid pace. Waste-to-energy is an obvious solution to meet the world’s burgeoning energy demand.”

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=food-waste-to-energy

Pee Power: Charge Your Phone with Urine

Gross or practical? Soon you may be able to charge your phone by plugging it into the urinal.

On the off chance that your phone has ever inconveniently lost power while you were in the bathroom, you'll soon never have to worry about it happening again. Researchers from the University of the West of England have invented a way for you to charge your phone with urine,  reports USA Today. That's right, pee power has finally arrived.

 

The charger makes use of a microbial fuel cell, which relies on bacteria to break down organic matter and turn it into electricity. Although the organic matter doesn't have to come from pee, it just so happens that urine-- of all things-- seems to work best.

 

"Urine is chemically very active, rich in nitrogen and has compounds such as urea, chloride, potassium and bilirubin, which make it very good for the microbial fuel cells," said Dr. Ioannis Ieropoulos, team leader on the project.

 

In fact, urine is the only readily available substance that the researchers have tested for the device that outputs enough electricity for it to be commercially viable. Go figure.

 

The idea behind microbial fuel cells has been around for decades, but it wasn't until Ieropoulos' team tried out urine that they got one to generate enough power to operate a smartphone.

 

"So far the microbial fuel power stack that we have developed generates enough power to enable SMS messaging, web browsing and to make a brief phone call," said Ieropoulos. "Making a call on a mobile phone takes up the most energy but we will get to the place where we can charge a battery for longer periods. The concept has been tested and it works – it's now for us to develop and refine the process so that we can develop [microbial fuel cells] to fully charge a battery."

 

So there you have it. Though the idea of plugging your phone into a urinal may take a while to catch on, the charger could have more immediate applications in the developing world where power sources can be scarce and/or expensive. Of course, the charger could also be used to power things besides your phone. Perhaps a more sensible application would be for powering your various bathroom electronics: electric razors, hair dryers, lighting, etc. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has offered funding for the device with these kinds of applications in mind. 

 

http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/gadgets-electronics/stories/pee-power-charge-your-phone-with-urine

Nanoleaves; Technology Breeding New Ways To Harness Energy

In a relatively modern field, known as “Biomimicry”, nanoleaves are being construed to harness renewable energy. These “leaves” are attached to artificial plants and trees to capture solar energy. The nanoleaves are constructed with miniature thermovoltaic and photovoltaic modules that absorb the light and heat provided via solar energy, and thereafter converts it into electricity.

Overview of Nanoleaves Technology
One of the emerging nanotechnologies related to renewable energy is nanoleaves and stems of artificially created trees or plants. They are intended to harness energy provided by the wind and sun, thereafter converting it into electrical energy. Moreover, to better understand the fundamental of nanoleaves, we have to dig into an innovative field of technologic development, called Biomimicry.

Overview of Biomimicry Technology
The nanoleaves have been specially designed to imitate the natural process of photosynthesis. A mechanism by which, typical plants absorb the light emitted by the sun and CO2 in the atmosphere. The artificial trees do even copy the natural re-cycling process of oxygen. It is very recent that nanoleaves technology started to reap even more advanced levels. It can now harvest thermal energy as well. Moreover, the leaves fixed on artificial trees are also able to collect energy derived through movement of the wind, known as kinetic energy, which is as well converted into electrical energy.

Compositions of Nanoleaves
The nano-technology was initially developed to harness solely solar energy. However, nowadays it has widespread uses. It exploits various alternative sources of energy like wind, solar and thermal energy. Furthermore, these highly advanced artificial plants and/or trees use tiny cells to capture energy:

Thermal Energy - Tiny thermovoltaic cells are used to capture thermal energy via semi-conducting material which converts the heat into electricity.

Light Energy - There are also tiny photovoltaic cells (PV) incorporated in the nanoleaves. These small PV cells capture the light rays emitted by the sun. The light is then converted into electricity.

Kinetic Energy - Kinetic energy is harnessed through movement. The wind produces motion in stems and branches. This motion is collected via piezovoltaic (PZ) cells. The PZ has semi-conducting devices incorporated into the artificial structure of trees and plants. The PZ and the semi-conducting devices convert typical wind energy (kinetic energy) into electricity.

Best Places to use Nanoleaves
The use of piezvoltaic, thermovoltaic and photovoltaic cells does effectively convert an amalgamation of energy sources into electricity. Artificial energy trees can be used for both domestic or even industrial purposes. According to Solarbotanic, erecting an approximate of six meter area of nanoleaves can produce enough energy for an average household. More, intricate is that, artificial trees can be constructed at various areas, like;

Desert - The earth has large areas of unexploited deserts which can be used to generate a massive amount of electricity, if artificial trees were planted. The energy produced could be used to solve the most predominant challenge in desert; provide electricity to power desalination. The desalinated water could thereafter be used for irrigation and drinking purposes. The fragile desert environment would hardly be affected by such a project yet the benefits are extensive. To further minimize the environmental impact on desert, the artificial trees could be planted alongside roads, coasts and other areas where it would protect inhabitants from sandstorms and provide constant shade form the sun.

Golf Courses, Recreation Grounds and Parks - Artificial golf courses, recreational grounds and parks could have artificial plants and trees planted to supply electricity for at least a portion of recreational parks. For golf course, the nanoleaves could fuel ground maintenance vehicles.

Office Parking and industrial Zone - The multi-fold benefits of planting trees near office parkings and industrial zone are numerous. It provides with electricity to office, parking lights and other uses. Moreover, it does also provide with shade from the sun and offers an aesthetic landscaping.

http://www.renewablepowernews.com/archives/1371