Recently in Data Category

The Alabama Forestry Commission has released a guide to help residential, commercial, and industrial consumers evaluate the opportunity to use woody biomass to fuel their energy needs. The guide illustrates the available woody biomass in Alabama and states that between 2001 and 2008 "Alabama's tree inventory increased by a net amount of 13.9 million tons annually or a 1.3% increase." The guide also lists helpful tools in evaluating woody biomass opportunities including the USDA Forest Service's fuel value calculator. The guide can be accessed here. 

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 4 in Atlanta is developing a database of researchers and research projects related to biodiesel and cellulosic ethanol for the Southeast Diesel Collaborative (SEDC) (www.southeastdiesel.org/).

The goal is to help make the southeast region the biofuels research capital of the U.S. by showing who's doing what kind of research with the hope that this will also lead to multi-university cooperation and collaboration .

If you are managing, working on or have completed a research project related to cellulosic ethanol or biodiesel and would like to be included in the SEDC research database, please send an e-mail to Paula Whiting with the information under "Continued reading" below.

Sandia National Laboratories - February 10, 2009

A new article published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology found that corn ethanol emits, on average, 51 percent less greenhouse gases than gasoline. The University of Nebraska study researched dry-mill ethanol plants that use natural gas. The research team stated that this was the first study "to quantify the impact of recent improvements throughout the corn-ethanol production process, including crop production, biorefinery operations and co-product use ... Previous studies, which found ethanol to have a much smaller edge over gasoline in GHG emissions, relied on estimates based on corn production, ethanol plant performance and co-product use as they were seven years ago." The press release can be found here.

A new report by the American Solar Energy Society and Management Information Services quantifies the revenue dollars and jobs in the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries in 2007. According to the report, these industries saw over a trillion dollars in revenues and constituted nearly 4 million jobs. The full report can be found here.

The University of Minnesota has cataloged the woody biomass policies now in place for each state in the U.S. The catalog can be accessed here. 

The Energy Information Agency (EIA) has released its 2007 inventory of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. The report found that total greenhouse gas emissions were up by 1.4% from 2006 to 2007 and that the increase was largely made up of carbon dioxide emissions. The agency attributes the increase to "unfavorable weather conditions, which increased demand for
heating and cooling in buildings; and a drop in hydropower availability that led to greater reliance
on fossil energy sources (coal and natural gas) for electricity generation, increasing the carbon intensity of the power supply." The full report can be found here.

EESI has released an updated fact sheet listing reports that studied job growth potential in the renewable energy and energy efficiency industry. The listed reports include studies focused on international, national, and state developments, as well as potential job growth from specific energy sources (i.e. biofuels, wind, solar). The full fact sheet can be found here.

Southern Company has released a report detailing a series of tests conducted on co-firing green wood chips from whole and from approximately needle free pine trees. The purpose of the project was to "determine what level of processing of whole trees is required to successfully co-fire the chips in a boiler, and to evaluate the benefits and costs of wood processing compared with the effect of the fuel on the power plant." The tests were performed at Plant Gadsden in Gadsden, Alabama. From the report, summary results are as follows:

• Green wood chips were successfully co-fired in blends with coal between 8% and 15%
  wood by weight. Of the input fuel energy, 2.8% and 5.5% was from wood, and represented about 2.0 MW to 3.8 MW biomass power.
  
• Sulfur emissions were reduced, and particulates were no higher with co-firing. At normal operating condition, carbon monoxide emissions were unchanged. The measured impact on NOx emissions was small.
  
• With 10% co-firing, boiler efficiency was about the same as coal alone, while there was a slight reduction in efficiency with 15% wood.
  
• Higher moisture losses due to high wood moisture were offset or nearly offset by reduced dry gas losses up the stack.
  
• High moisture of the wood coal mixtures resulted in low mill temperatures and high mill bowl under pressures. This caused a 5% load derate when co-firing 15%.
  
• The coal-wood mixtures had much lower fuel energy to volume ratio than the baseline coal. The issues appear to have been related to the installation of new automatic controls. Stability issues were corrected in subsequent tests by tuning the fuel-steam pressure automatic controls.

The project was initiated by Southern Company & Alabama Power, USDA Forest Service, Forest Based Economic Development Services, University of Alabama, and Auburn University.

The full report can be found here.

The Energy Information Administration of the Department of Energy has released 2006 data on green pricing and net metering programs across the U.S. According to the EIA, the number of "electric industry green pricing program participants increased from 442 in 2005 to 484 in 2006.  However, the total number of customers enrolled in green pricing programs decreased by almost 32 percent, falling from 942,772 in 2005 to 645,167 in 2006." EIA explained this decline in large part to the discontinuation of an Ohio-based green pricing program which lost 400,000 customers. The company running the program cited regulatory hurdles and unexpected transmission charges as reasons for the discontinuation.

The EIA also collected net metering data and reported that "the total number of electric industry participants increased from 188 in 2005 to 232 in 2006.  The total number of participating customers was 34,469 in 2006, an increase of 63 percent over 2005.  Of this total, 31,323 or 91 percent, were residential customers."

To view the full report and your state's individual data visit the EIA website here.