Teru Talk - 2011 Newsletter V-I-7

Conferences come and conferences go, but what are you gonna DO about it, that’s what I’d like to know … The 8th Annual California Biomass Collaborative Forum on April 5th and 6th has indeed come and gone, and Teru Talk will be sifting gold nuggets from gravel for a couple weeks. The pages of notes and stack of cards are daunting, yet unless you work those business cards you collected and actually follow up on the main contacts you made, it’s just another rodeo. Looking around the room, we all saw a whole lot of very familiar faces. Many of us have been, as Doug W. put it, “chewing this same bone” for quite some time. Chin up … there WERE signs of progress, and maybe that tunnel light wasn’t a train, after all. Stay tuned here, for help in sorting out the lessons learned.

Hey Rube!

Now, I’d bet Google thinks their donation of one billion core-computing hours will be used to find a global cure for insomnia, or some other dread disease. I’ll bet nobody has considered that all that heavy-handed data crunching might just work out a cure for our Energy Sickness, this addiction to trading blood for oil. I just think that there SHOULD be an “academic researcher” out there somewhere who could use that number-crunching to wean us off of Dinosaur Juice (that’s very crude oil, folks) once and for all. So contact the best and brightest data-crazy researchers in our industry and tell ‘em about Exacycle, Google’s class act. See this week's Action Item below.

The Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) Advisory Panel has released a summary of its first meeting held on February 16, 2011. 04/09/2011

The Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future released last week by the Obama administration outlines a three-part strategy: (1) Develop and Secure America’s Energy Supplies, (2) Provide Consumers with Choices to Reduce Costs and Save Energy, and (3) Innovate our Way to a Clean Energy Future. 04/09/2011

Oregon based Trillium FiberFuels has received a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to advance their cellulosic ethanol development. 04/09/2011

The US House of Representatives met on April 7, 2011 to consider H.R 1425, a bill that in part calls for 3-year reauthorization of the Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant program. 04/09/2011

Pacific Northwest investment bank Cascadia Capital and the Soros Management Fund have both recently engaged in what is now totaling a $143 million financing round for Canadian waste to energy firm Plasco Energy Group, Inc. 04/08/2011

Clenergen Corporation has acquired a 1.5MWe Anaerobic Digestion (AD) Biomass power plant near Salem in Tamil Nadu, India. The plant operates using chicken litter as a source of feedstock in order to generate renewable electricity. 04/08/2011

A co-digestion “gas to energy” plant under construction at the F. Wayne Hill Water Resources Center in Gwinnett County, Georgia, will convert sewage biosolids, fats, oils, greases and other wastes into renewable energy. 04/08/2011

United Kingdom (UK) based Ener-G subsidiary Energos operates an advanced gasification facility for conversion of municipal solid waste to energy on the Isle of Wight, UK. 04/08/2011

The Arizona Public Service (APS) is seeking a variety of renewable energy generation projects in the range of 2 to 15 megawatts (MWe) generating capacity. 04/07/2011

Last month, Teru Talk reported that the Environmental Council of Rhode Island (ECRI) was exploring development of a waste food collection program. 04/07/2011

German AD specialist Weltec Biopower GmbH is constructing their second anaerobic digestion (AD) biogas facility in the town of Limbaz ̌ i in north-western Latvia, about a dozen miles inland from the Baltic Sea. 04/07/2011

Google is donating one billion computing hours to science. Google’s Exacycle for Visiting Facility is designed to “address grand challenges in science and engineering” by offering visiting scientists staff and CPU resources. 04/09/2011

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