Researchers: bioenergy market depends on state, federal policy

By Carlton Purvis

Until federal or state policy mandates that portions of energy be obtained from renewable resources, the market for bioenergy is likely to stay nonexistent, re-searchers at the S.C. BioEnergy Summit at the Clemson University Pee Dee Research and Education Center said Thursday.

Until federal or state policy mandates that portions of energy be obtained from renewable resources, the market for bioenergy is likely to stay nonexistent, re-searchers at the S.C. BioEnergy Summit at the Clemson University Pee Dee Research and Education Center said Thursday.

The summit brought together researchers from across the region along with representa-tives from energy companies and U.S. agencies to share the latest news and trends in bioenergy.

Many energy companies already are using renewable resources for portions of their en-ergy production, but large-scale use of bioenergy from crops like switchgrass and corn may not happen without a push from lawmakers.

“One of the things we desperately need in our state is clear governmental policies that encourage the use of renewable fuels,” CEO of Agri-Tech Producers LLC Joe James said. “In North Carolina they have a statute that requires the utilities to have a certain percent of energy come from renewable fuels. That has stimulated utilities to do things in North Carolina that South Carolina is currently not doing.“

Agri-Tech is the South Carolina-based company that developed a torrefaction system that converts wood and plant material to a dry, energy-dense fuel similar to coal, but cleaner burning. It is working toward financing the construction of its first plant, which could specialize in switchgrass torrefaction. Switchgrass is native to South Carolina and grows in areas that are often too harsh for planting other kinds of crops.

Many call it the “chicken and the egg” problem. Farmers are interested in growing crops for renewable energy, but they want to make sure there’s a market for it first. The utility companies want to wait to make sure there is enough being produced to provide a reliable source of energy and have concerns about the increased cost of burning fuels like torre-fied switchgrass.

Companies like Agri-Tech are looking for funding to help produce the systems that will help out both sides. A commercial torrefaction system would help farmers convert the material onsite. The material could be transported to the utility companies the same way they receive coal.

“Coal has been the mainstay of our energy here in South Carolina for producing electric-ity and for heating purposes. Biomass is going to have to be very similar to coal in price in order for the utility companies to switch over and use switch grass or wood,” said Dr. Jim Frederick, director of the switchgrass project at the research center. “That’s going to take the federal government to provide legislation saying they have to use biomass be-cause its renewable and can bring down carbon emissions, or its going to take some kind of financial incentive from the federal government so the utilities would voluntarily switch over to using biomass instead of coal.“

In his weekly address Saturday, President Barack Obama said the clean energy industry has the potential to create jobs and a stronger economy.

“We think we could create hundreds, maybe even thousands, of jobs in South Carolina focused on developing renewable fuels and other things that we bring from outside the state,” James said.

“In South Carolina we could have literally a half-dozen of these plants all across the state — the Pee Dee certainly being one of those areas,” he said.

Agri-Tech plans to look at old lumber yards and processing plants that have been closed down and areas with access to rail spurs because customers are likely to be utility com-panies that are used to having coal delivered to them by train.

Frederick said a mandate would certainly help move things along. He hopes to have a torrefaction system at the Pee Dee Research and Education Center by sometime next year.

---

SCNOW © Copyright 2009 Media General Communications Holdings, LLC. A Media General company.

 
  

Torrefaction Next Step in Bio Energy

http://www.opinion250.com/blog/view/17736/1/torrefaction+next+step+in+bio+energy?

  

Look Ma! No Foresters!

The 10 American Industries That May Never Recover

by Douglas A. McIntyre
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
http://247wallst.com/

It has become clear that jobs in some industries may never come back, or if they do it will take years or decades for a recovery.
24/7 Wall St. examined the Bureau of Labor Statistics' "Employment Situation Summary," and a number of sources that show layoffs by company and sector. The weakness in these sectors will make it harder for the private industry, even aided by the government, to bring down total unemployment from 9.6% and replace the 8.3 million jobs lost during the recession. The losses in these industries have to be offset by growth in others before there can be any net increase in American employment.
Some of the industries are obvious. Detroit will never employ the number of people it did five years ago. Domestic car sales hit 16 million in 2005 and 2006. That number will be closer to 11.5 million in 2010. More cars and light vehicles are made overseas now, in places like Mexico, to keep labor costs down.
Home construction is another industry that will almost certainly not recover. Home inventories are still extremely high, and home prices have fallen to the levels where they were in 2004. Prices in some markets, which include Las Vegas, Florida and parts of California, have dropped 60% to 70%. New construction in those markets will not begin again in the foreseeable future.
Here is the list of the 10 job categories that will not recover, based on 24/7 Wall St. research:
1. State and Local Government Jobs. The level of unemployment in this sector continues to rise. Budget imbalances in a number of states have already caused mass layoffs as tax receipts have dropped sharply. A recent report by the National Governors Association and the National Association of State Budget Officers found that 22 states furloughed employees and 25 laid off workers during fiscal year 2009-10. As an example, California slashed its workforce by tens of thousands -- some were laid off permanently and some are out of work and may be recalled. Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, who is running for governor of California, said she will cut the state workforce by another 40,000 and sharply cut pensions for new workers. Forty-six states face budget shortfalls that will total $112 billion for the fiscal year ending next June, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Municipalities face similar difficulties as property taxes plummet.
2. Construction. Nationwide construction unemployment was 17% in August, up from 16.5% in the same month last year. Over the course of the summer, government statistics have shown sharp drops in the construction of new homes and apartments. Building permits are also down. Most large housing markets have more than 12 months of unsold inventory on hand. There is also a "shadow inventory" of unsold homes -- those that have gone into foreclosure but have not been put on the market by banks. Foreclosures and defaults are expected to rise another 3 million to 3.5 million this year.
3. Installation, Maintenance and Repair. A set of industries related to housing and commercial construction and maintenance will also not generate new jobs. This is the employment sector the government calls "installation, maintenance and repair." Jobs in this sector are dependent on real estate. While many of the workers in these industries, such as plumbers and electricians, are relatively well paid and many work on homes and commercial buildings, some are mechanics who work on industrial equipment, aircraft and plants. These industries will be more crowded as people with training in related work leave the armed forces with the drawdown in troops in Iraq, which will put downward pressure on wages.
4. Automotive Manufacturing. General Motors has cut over 100,000 people since the beginning of the recession in December 2007. Ford has cut over 20,000 and Chrysler 15,000. This does not include foreign car companies with workers in the U.S. By some estimates, every car company worker layoff leads to three more layoffs in related industries that supply the car and light truck manufacturing business. That includes hundreds of car dealerships that have been closed in the last two years.
5. Pharmaceuticals. This industry has bled workers for three years, and that trend is likely to continue. The largest companies in the sector, such as Pfizer and Merck, have a number of blockbuster drugs that have lost their patent protection in the last decade. They have other pharmaceuticals that will lose that protection in the next decade. Sales of most of these drugs will move to generic companies that will sell them for far less, and erode critical revenue sources for the huge pharma firms. Most companies in the industry admit that they cannot replace the drugs that go off patent fast enough to keep their revenue high. The other reason employment in the sector will stay down and may drop further is that big drug companies are merging to save costs, and most of those costs are people. Pfizer has cut 30,000 people since the start of the recession. Merck has cut 25,000, and these companies and their peers expect that they will have to bring down costs even more.
6. Big Telecom. AT&T, Sprint-Nextel and Verizon have passed their peak employment levels. Employment in the sector will not recover and could shrink for two reasons: (1) The landline business is falling rapidly as home phone users move to VoIP, and (2) Increased adoption of cell phones. The cellular subscription business has been damaged by price wars meant to gain market share in the wireless industry -- one that has stagnated due to a 90% market penetration in the U.S. Sprint made substantial cuts as it posted three years of losses. The most recent was 2,500 people in November last year. In 2008, AT&T said it would lay off 12,000 people. Verizon recently said it would fire 13,000 employees from its land line business.
7. Newspapers. The layoffs in newspapers began in the 1980s as presses became more automated and tens of thousands of pressmen lost jobs. More recently, the changing habits of news consumption have increased Internet readers and hurt print, which has caused more job losses in press rooms. Reporters and editors have lost work as print subscribers have stopped paying for what they can get online for free. One recent study claims that the newspaper industry employee base fell from 767,000 jobs in 1998 to 619,000 jobs in 2008. The U.S. Department of Labor has forecast another 120,000 newspaper layoffs over the next 10 years.
8. Airlines. The number of pilots, flight attendants and ground crew workers is shrinking as consolidation and the recession have hurt the industry badly. Mergers in the last two years, between Delta and Northwest and United's merger with Continental, have decreased the number of large carriers in the U.S. by half. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported that the number of airline employees in the U.S. has fallen by 25% since 2001. And the latest merger firings have not yet been announced. Jobs for pilots and flight engineers fell by 30.4% in the third quarter of 2009 to 96,000 from 138,000 jobs in 2008, according to the BLS.
9. Realtors. The National Association of Realtors reports that there were 1,370,758 realtors in October 2006 -- the peak of the market. By the end of 2007, the figure was below 1.2 million. The number is below 1.1 million today and has continued on a downward trend. Home prices have dropped so far and so few homes are sold, that the ability to make money in the business disappears by the day.
10. Bank Tellers. Long before the recession, personal banking had begun to become automated. Over the last decade, banks have provided increasing access to banking accounts online, through call centers and at ATM kiosks. This technologically driven shift has been and will continue to be the chief cause of bank teller layoffs. According the the FDIC, since 2008, at the beginning of the recession, there have been 283 banks closed. Compared to the period 2000 to 2007, when only 27 banks closed, that's nearly 10 times as many bank closings in less than half the time. And as of Aug. 20, state and federal regulators had closed118 banks this year, making it on pace to exceed the 140 banks closed in 2009. Although nearly all of these banks have been acquired by other financial institutions, bank branch closings still occur -- employees and locations are consolidated. The single largest employee group at bank branches are bank tellers, and they will bear the brunt of the continued cost-cutting.

5 No-Nos When Working at Home

By Liza Porteus Viana

Thursday, September 02, 2010 

FOXBusiness

Working at home may seem like a dream to many, but in reality it takes strong dedication and often restraint from being drawn into the many potential distractions that come with it.

Here are five things NOT to do when trying to be a productive home-office worker.

No. 1: Cleanliness is Next to Productiveness
Do NOT keep your office and desk space a mess – it’s a major distraction and the clutter will just provide an excuse for you to clean instead of work.

No. 2: Don’t Do “Home Work”
Do NOT get distracted by household chores, personal errands, etc. It can be so easy to get dragged into washing the dishes in the sink, doing the laundry or cleaning up the kids’ toys instead of returning work phone calls, but give those chores a certain time of day to get done. Don’t let it cut into your valuable work time.

No. 3: It’s Not Social-Networking Hour
As valuable as Facebook and Twitter may be to building your brand, do NOT fritter away your work time hunting down old flames, a former nemesis or others on such sites. That goes for getting caught up on personal e-mails, as well.

“You need every minute of your office hours and you have no time to waste on distractions and disruptions,” said Heather Allard, founder of TheMogulMom.com who started three businesses out of her home since 2001.

Added Leslie Truex, author of The Work-At-Home Success Bible and founder of Workathomesuccess.com: “Shuffling papers, reading e-mail and posting on Facebook have a part in running a business, but if not managed will waste time and money.”

No. 4: Location, Location, Location
Do NOT place your office in the middle of your house. While some may say working from the kitchen table works for them, most work-from-home experts agree that a separate room with a door is necessary if you plan to be productive.

No. 5: Make Plans to Make Time
Do NOT work without a plan – that includes routines and schedules just as importantly as a business plan. Plans also help avoid having the personal life bleed into the work one, and vice versa. A daily plan should include when to go out for lunch or throw the laundry in.

“Extra time to ‘work’ doesn't magically appear. People who work-at-home need to make time for work and for play,” Truex said.

  

Ninth Circuit Holds NPDES Permit Required for Logging Roads

8/18/2010

On August 17, 2010 the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that a National Pollution Discharge Elimination System ("NPDES") permit is required for stormwater runoff from logging roads. In NEDC v. Brown, No. 07-35266, three judges decided a case involving two long-existing public roads that enter the Tillamook State Forest and are used for logging, among other things. NEDC asserted that the defendants should be required to obtain an NPDES permit for stormwater runoff from the roads because the sediment in the stormwater is a pollutant under the federal Clean Water Act ("CWA").

The CWA requires an NPDES permit for the discharge of any pollutant to any navigable water from any point source. The CWA distinguishes between point source discharges of pollutants and non-point source pollution. Non-point source pollution, which is not defined in the CWA, includes any source of water pollution not characterized as a point source discharge. Since 1973, rules promulgated by the Environmental Protection Agency ("EPA") have distinguished between point source and non-point source pollution. Included in these rules is the so-called Silvicultural Rule found at 40 C.F.R. § 122.27(b)(1), which has remained stantially in its current form since 1976. The Silvicultural Rule specifically defines timber "harvesting operations, surface drainage, or road construction and maintenance from which there is natural runoff" to be "non point source silvicultural activities" excluded from NPDES permitting requirements.

NEDC argued that the ditches and culvert system associated with the forest roads constitute point sources that discharge into forest streams and rivers. The U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon held that the discharges of which NEDC complained were exempt from permitting under the Silvicultural Rule. The Ninth Circuit disagreed, holding that stormwater runoff that is collected and channeled in a system of ditches and culverts before being discharged into streams and rivers constitutes a point source, and that EPA lacks authority to promulgate a rule to the contrary.

The defendants had also argued that no permit is required for forest road stormwater runoff pursuant to EPA's rules promulgated under section 402(p) of the CWA. Section 402(p) requires EPA to promulgate stormwater runoff permitting requirements in two phases. In phase I, EPA promulgated rules for permitting stormwater runoff discharges from industrial activities and certain municipal systems. EPA's rule defines "industrial activity" and specifically excludes activities described in the Silvicultural Rule. 40 C.F.R. § 122.26(b)(14). The Ninth Circuit rejected this EPA definition of industrial activity and found that logging is an industrial activity as that term is used in section 402(p). EPA's rules apply the stormwater permitting requirements to "immediate access roads and rail lines used or traveled by carriers of raw materials, manufactured products, waste material, or by-products used or created by the facility." 40 C.F.R. § 122.26(b)(14)(ii). For guidance on the meaning of "immediate access roads" the Ninth Circuit looked to EPA's preamble for this rule, which indicates that immediate access roads means "roads which are exclusively or primarily dedicated for use by the industrial facility." 55 Fed. Reg. 47,990, 48,009 (Nov. 16, 1990). The court then concluded that logging roads fall within this description because, but for logging, the roads would not have been built (note that the district court never made such a factual finding or even heard evidence relevant to such a finding). On this basis, the Ninth Circuit held that logging sites are industrial facilities and that logging roads are immediate access roads subject to the NPDES permitting rules under section 402(p) of the CWA and that "EPA is not free to create exemptions from permitting requirements for such activity."

The court's decision has potentially sweeping implications. First, combined with the Ninth Circuit's opinion in League of Wilderness Defenders/Blue Mountains Biodiversity Project v. Forsgren, 309 F.3d 1181, 1184 (9th Cir. 2002), this opinion appears to leave the Silvicultural Rule with little potency. Second, if broadly read, this opinion would require NPDES permits for every road in the country that is served by ditches or culverts that eventually discharge to natural surface waters and that is not already regulated by the CWA.

The court's opinion also leaves many critical questions unanswered. Even if the opinion were limited to logging roads, what constitutes a logging road? Contrary to the court's assumptions of fact, many forest roads, including the roads at issue in this case, are not dedicated to logging. Who is responsible for obtaining the necessary permits? The defendants in this case sued the Oregon State Forester and the individual members of the Oregon Board of Forestry in their capacity as administrators of the state's forest roads, but they also sued four timber companies that had purchased timber from the state from areas served by the roads. The court did not address whether the permit obligation rests with the owner of the roads or every entity that transports logs on the roads, or even those using the roads to access the forest for recreation. Clearly this opinion requires EPA and the states to adopt rules to provide for permitting discharges from logging roads, but the court does not provide any guidance on how discharges from existing roads should be managed in the interim before permits can be issued. Unlike some activities subject to CWA permit requirements, discharges from existing roads cannot be stopped while waiting for a permit. The court also ignores the extraordinary work that may be necessary to bring existing roads into compliance with such permits. So once again, the Ninth Circuit has turned our understanding of the CWA upside down, and left EPA and the public to sort it out again.

If you have any questions about the issues of this update, please contact:

Greg Corbin at (503) 294-9632 or gdcorbin@stoel.com
Louis Ferreira at (503) 294-9412 or laferreira@stoel.com
Mark Morford at (503) 294-9259 or jmmorford@stoel.com
Per Ramfjord at (503) 294-9257 or paramfjord@stoel.com

Related materials:
U.S. Court of Appeals 2010 Opinion
Northwest Environmental Defense Center Opening Brief
Natural Resources Defense Council Amicus Curiae Brief
U.S. Amicus Curiae Brief
Northwest Environmental Defense Center Reply Brief
Oregon Forest Industries Council Response Brief
State's Response Brief

Biomass Credit Update: A Look at BCAP’s Past and Future Impact

http://www.palletenterprise.com/articledatabase/view.asp?articleID=3200

From outer space, a new dilemma for old-growth forests

By LES BLUMENTHAL - McClatchy Newspapers

Published Mon, Aug 30, 2010 08:09 AM

WASHINGTON A new study using laser pulses shot from satellites has found that the world's tallest forests are those along the Pacific Northwest coast.

Though the findings shouldn't shock anyone who grew up in the region, they offer another indication of how important these ancient trees eventually could become.

The temperate forests of Douglas fir, Western hemlock, redwoods and sequoias that stretch from northern California into British Columbia easily reach an average height of more than 131 feet. That's taller than the boreal forests of northern Canada and Eurasia, tropical rainforests and the broadleaf forests common in much of the United States and Europe. The only forests that come close are in Southeast Asia, along the southern rim of the Himalayas and in Indonesia, Malaysia and Laos.

As scientists try to unravel the mystery of missing carbon, increasing attention is focused on these forests.
From 15 percent to 30 percent of the 7 billion tons of carbon that are released globally every year is unaccounted for, government scientists say. About 3 billion tons remain in the atmosphere, and the oceans absorb 2 billion tons. Vegetation, including the forests, probably absorbs the remaining 1 billion to 2 billion tons, but no one knows for sure how much and where.

Scientists suspect that the forests with the biggest trees store the most carbon, and the Northwest forests are probably among the largest carbon sinks in the world. However, they also say that while slower-growing older trees store more carbon, younger trees also absorb more carbon as they grow rapidly.

That sets up a debate about how forests should be managed, particularly whether older trees should be cut to make way for younger ones or whether they should be protected to store the carbon they contain.

"It's a hot topic," said Elaine Oneil, a research scientist at the University of Washington's School of Forest Resources and the executive director of a consortium that's been studying the issue. "We can't afford a one-size-fits-all solution. We can't lock it all up, and it's not feasible to cut it all for 2-by-4s."

Ongoing studies using the satellites and lasers may provide valuable information on how fast the forests are growing and how much carbon they store.

"All of the remote sensing is providing us with the ability to monitor changes in the environment in a way you might not see on the ground," said Michael Lefsky, an assistant professor in the department of forest, rangeland and watershed stewardship at Colorado State University. "We are expecting under global warming that the productivity of the forests will change."


Lefsky used data from a laser technology called LIDAR that's capable of "capturing vertical slices" of surface features on Earth from satellites. It's the same technology that geologists are using to map earthquake faults in western Washington state.

With the help of computers, Lefsky put together a global forest height map based on data from 250 million laser pulses collected during a seven-year period.

LIDAR measures the height of forest canopies by shooting laser pulses and measuring how much longer it takes for them to bounce back from the surface than from the top of the forest canopy. The pulses can penetrate through the canopy to the ground.

"It's like an echo," said Lefsky, whose findings were published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Overall, LIDAR offered direct measurements of only 2.4 percent of the Earth's forested surfaces.

"This is really just a first draft and it will certainly be refined in the future," he said.

Lefsky, who previously had done forest research at Oregon State University, said he wasn't surprised that the temperate conifer forests of the Northwest coast had the tallest canopies. While the Northwest forests include the world's tallest trees - redwoods and sequoias - they represent only a small fraction of the region's timberlands, he said, but there are thousands of acres of other tall trees.

In contrast to the Northwest stands, the boreal forests of mostly spruce, fir, pine and larch have canopies that are typically less than 66 feet tall. Relatively undisturbed tropical rain forests have canopies of 82 feet, and the broadleaf forests of oak, beech and birch in much of the U.S. and Europe have roughly the same canopy height.

Trees absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and convert it using water into sugar and oxygen. Much of the sugar becomes cellulose, the key ingredient in wood. From 45 percent to 50 percent of a tree's wood is carbon-based.

The trees and soil in national forests in Washington state, Oregon and southeast Alaska store 10.8 billion tons of carbon, according to a Wilderness Society analysis of U.S. Forest Service data earlier this year.
The analysis also found that of the 120 national forests, the 10 with the highest carbon density were in Washington, Oregon and southeast Alaska.

Oneil's group, the Consortium for Research on Renewable Industrial Materials, suggests that rather than leaving all the tall trees in place, where they could be susceptible to bugs and fires, they be cut and used for wood products such as building materials.

The carbon in those wood products would be stored permanently and their use would reduce the need to manufacture cement and steel, a process that produces greenhouse gases. In addition, the leftovers from milling the logs, such as chips and sawdust, can be used for everything from bark mulch to biofuel for power plants.

Carbon absorption by trees in the Northwest slows when they reach 30 to 70 years of age, Oneil said. By no means, Oneil said, is her group arguing that all the old-growth forests in the Northwest be cut. The stands have other important uses, such as providing habitat for wildlife and recreational opportunities, she said. However, she suggested that the forests, particularly on private lands, could be managed to absorb even more carbon.

"If you don't pick the carrots, you can't plant the next crop," she said.

Environmentalists said cutting the tall forests wasn't the answer, because that could release up to 60 percent of the carbon that was stored in trees and the soil.

"We need to preserve the old growth for existing (carbon) storage," said Mike Anderson, a senior resource analyst with The Wilderness Society in Seattle. Anderson didn't rule out using private lands to increase carbon storage.