Teru Talk Newsletter
Volume V, Issue 44,
November 9,
2015
Teru Talk by Michael
Theroux (pronounced
"Terú")
Teru's Trash Talk
Wood's the Word this week, it
seems. Well, with the
California Governor's last
proclamation, Wood was the word
last week as well. But this
week, there's state and federal
Money for doing stuff with
Wood, converting excess
unwanted Wood into commodities
like fuel, chemicals, heat and
power. New high efficiency Wood
stoves go head to head,
competing for accolades (and a
crucial marketing edge). The
EPA has turned their benevolent
eye on Wood, with dispensations
for those that might heat
industrial boilers with the
stuff. Companies are sporting
out how to turn Wood into jet
fuel, and those that make fuel
from anything
having
the wood-basic cellulose can
now rely on the 2015 EPA CWC
price metric in their economic
board. Meanwhile California's
waste management agency,
CalRecycle, has just about
finalized their new composting
regs. Wood! It's
everywhere…
Think about this circular
organics economy thing we're
attempting to establish. We
have to wonder: just how much
of the organic resource can we
recover, reprocess, and put
back into use? We put over 30
million tons of trash into
California landfills in 2014,
and a third of that was
'organic'. Now add in all the
hundreds of thousands of tons
of dead trees and excess brush
we need to remove to reduce
fire risk and clean up after
the fires we have already had.
That's a whole lotta
biomass.
Let's just look at the front
end of the cycle for a moment.
Recovering any resource from
waste means you first must
figure out how to gather up the
stuff. What you collect becomes
your Process Input. We have the
system in place for collecting
standard residential and
commercial organics – that's
the door-to-door routing of the
trash trucks. But those rigs
really aren't designed to
handle sloppy wet food waste,
especially if you want to keep
it separate from the dry trash.
We know how to get the Wood out
of the Woodlands, but that is
no simple matter either: forest
waste usually costs more to
remove and recover than what's
it's worth.
After this year's disastrous
fire loss, we can compare
up-front forest wood collection
costs with the alternative of
doing too little, too late. We
don't often see the results of
throwing away other organics,
but if we had been putting that
woody carbon back into building
healthy, organic rich soil, we
would not have needed nearly so
much precious water for
landscaping and agriculture.
There is cost savings there
that belongs in the
comparison.
This
week, Teru helped the EPA stage
the 10th Annual California
Bioresources Alliance
Symposium, and the general
topic was the national Healthy
Soils Initiative. The symposium
speakers all dealt with some
aspect of Too Much Organics,
and for two days we hammered on
the difficulties, the
perplexities, and the
conflicting regs, and we made
an impressively broad sweep
through the potential
solutions. We got our communal
minds around the tonnages to be
collected, the processing
methods available, and the
commodities to be served up to
the market. We poked holes in
the local, state, and federal
regulations, the conflicts
between them, and the
often-absurd public
misconceptions. One theme rang
through the entire agenda:
Biomass is awkward and
expensive to manage. For all
organics, we must collect,
convert, and remanufacture
everything locally, returning
the recovered and remade
resources right back to the
region from which they
came.
Hey Rube!
Sometime
next week, EPA Region 9 will
have all the slide decks posted
to their web
site, so be sure to go
through the presentations.
You may have missed our
group head-knocking session,
but you can still enjoy the
headache.
This Week's Extra
Reading
CalRecycle
Releases First 2014 Solid
Waste Characterization
Study
The California Department of
Resources Recycling and
Recovery (CalRecycle) has
released its
2014
Disposal-Facility-Based
Characterization of Solid
Waste in California.
11/06/2015
This Week's Top Story
Neste and
Boeing Partner to
Commercialize Renewable
Aviation
Fuels
Neste Corporation and Boeing
will work together to promote
and accelerate the
commercialization of renewable
aviation fuel with the goal of
gaining widespread market
acceptance for renewable
aviation fuels, and progressing
sustainability accreditation
efforts.
11/04/2015
The Week's News
Oregon CED
Receives New Funds to Study
Forest Biomass
Management
The Central Oregon
Intergovernmental Council's
(COIC) Community and Economic
Development Department (CED)
has been working to improve
biomass and small diameter wood
markets and business
opportunities since beginning
forest restoration programs in
2001.
11/06/2015
California
GO-Biz Publishes Hydrogen
Station Permitting
Guidebook
The California Governor's
Office of Business and Economic
Development (GO-Biz) has
announced release of the first
edition of a guidebook to help
smooth the process of hydrogen
station development.
11/06/2015
US EPA
Releases 2016 Cellulosic
Waiver Credit Price for
Biofuel
Conversion of cellulosic
biomass to transport fuel
receives price support
specified by the Clean Air Act
(CAA).
11/05/2015
Ener-Core
Launches Public Offering of
Common
Stock
California based Ener-Core, Inc
has announced the launch of an
underwritten public offering of
2,250,000 units, subject to
market and other conditions,
pursuant to a registration
statement on Form S-1 filed
with the US Securities and
Exchange Commission (SEC).
11/05/2015
CRS
Publishes Guides to
Renewable Energy in EPA
Clean Power
Plan
Center for Resource Solutions
(CRS) recently released two
reports on renewable energy in
the US Environmental Protection
Agency's (EPA) Clean Power
Plan, which directs states to
implement greenhouse gas
emissions limits for existing
electricity generators.
11/03/2015
AGH's Pellet
Stove Assessment Finds
Advantages and
Exaggerations
An independent assessment of
popular pellet stoves conducted
by the Alliance for Green Heat
(AGH) found that pellet stoves,
unlike most wood stoves, can
achieve low levels of emissions
in real world settings that are
in line with laboratory
results.
11/03/2015
Industry
Groups Comment on EPA's
Reconsideration of Boiler
MACT
Rule
The US Environmental Protection
Agency's (EPA) has completed
reconsideration of the Boiler
Maximum Achievable Control
Technology (MACT) rule.
11/03/2015
GE Completes
Acquisition of Alstom Power
and Grid
Businesses
GE has announced that it has
completed the €9.7B
(approximately $10.6B)
acquisition of French company
Alstom's power and grid
businesses, following
regulatory approval of the deal
in over 20 countries and
regions. 11/02/2015
Vertimass
Completes Technology
Validation With US Energy
Department
California based Vertimass LLC
has announced completion of
catalyst technology validation
verifying the benchmark
performance, initial process
design, and preliminary cost
information, and qualifying for
a new award of $2 million by
the US Department of Energy’s
(DOE) Bioenergy Technology
Office (BETO).
11/02/2015
The Week's Action
Items
Due
01/13/2016: Proposals to
USFS for Wood Innovations
Funding
The US Forest Service (USFS) is
requesting proposals to
substantially expand and
accelerate wood energy and wood
products markets throughout the
United States to support forest
management needs on National
Forest System and other forest
lands.
11/02/2015
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