Monthly Archives: July 2017

Published on July 25th, 2017 | by Tina Casey

July 25th, 2017 by Tina Casey

So, this is weird. In one corner, you have US President* Donald J. Trump talking up the fossil fuel industry and denying climate change, and meanwhile his Department of Energy is touting a breakthrough in biofuel production and dropping another $40 million on new research aimed at ramping up the bio-based economy of the future.

Yes, they use the b-word (bio-based). That sure sounds like US energy policy is aiming at decarbonization, despite the promises Trump made to coal miners during and after his successful bid for the White House.

CleanTechnica took a quick note of the new $40 million in funding last week, which was officially designated Made in America Week by the Trump Administration.

As has become his habit, Energy Secretary Rick Perry went off in his own direction during Made in America Week to make a rousing pitch for the US wind industry a growing manufacturing sector that somehow escaped Trumps celebration of all things made in the USA.

Perry also shared his agencys affection for the bioeconomy of the future during Made in America week.

The Department of Energy kicked the week off with a splashy announcement for the new $40 million funding program, which will go to three existing research consortia called the Bioenergy Research Centers,and to establish a new one, too.

The research centers aim at ramping up the efficiency of biofuel production and other bio-products:

The centers each led by a DOE National Laboratory or a top university are designed to lay the scientific groundwork for a new bio-based economy that promises to yield a range of important new products and fuels derived directly from nonfood biomass.

Science!

The $40 million is just seed money, btw. The Energy Department is planning on a 5 year funding program for the initiative.

Notably, Secretary Perry does not seem to be on board with the Trump Administrations fossil-friendly energy policy. Heres his pitch for the research centers:

The revolution of modern biology has opened up vast new opportunities for the energy industry to develop and utilize products derived from biomass as a sustainable resource. These centers will accelerate the development of the basic science and technological foundation needed to ensure that American industry and the American public reap the benefits of the new bio-based economy.

Yep, he said the b-word.

CleanTechnica has also noticed that Perry has been steadily building on Obama-era renewable energy initiatives some of which were launched even farther back and the new research centers provide yet another example.

The Energy Department makes this clear:

The current awards represent a follow-on phase to the original DOE Bioenergy Research Centers program, established by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research within DOEs Office of Science in 2007

That program established three Bioenergy Research Centers, credited thusly:

Over ten years, these three BRCs produced multiple breakthroughs in the form of deepened understanding of sustainable agricultural practices, major reengineering of plant feedstocks, development of new methods of deconstructing feedstocks, and reengineering of microbes for more effective fuel production.

With the addition of a fourth research center, expect more of the same, including patents (the original three centers produced 92) and license options (191 and counting).

The three existing centers are spearheaded by the University of WisconsinMadison in partnership with Michigan State University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

The fourth center will be led by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which counts using plants themselves as sustainable biofactories as one of its areas of expertise.

The Trump Administrations ramped-up commitment to the biochemical sector is an interesting development considering that Exxon and other fossil stakeholders appear to be depending on the US shale gas and petrochemical industries to make up for lost ground as renewables edge into their power production and transportation fuel turf.

The oil giants have been dropping billions on new petrochemical and gas-to-plastics facilities in Texas, taking advantage of the shale gas boom and access to shipping routes. Thats partly in anticipation of increased demand for plastic products among emerging economies overseas.

In the most recent example, petrochem giant LyondellBasell is planning to build a $2.4 billion plant in Texas, which will be the largest facility of its kind in the world.

So, what are they going to do with all these gigantic, expensive petrochemical plants when the bio-based economy of the future swings into full gear?

Possibly, re-fit them to process bio-based feedstock. Just a wild guess. If you have any thoughts on that, drop a note in the comment thread.

Low oil prices have thrown a monkey wrench into the biofuel market, but the good news is that the competition has made it more urgent for the biofuel industry to develop better, faster, cheaper ways to pump out its product.

Secretary Perry used the occasion of Made in America Week to spotlight his agencys latest contribution to technology breakthroughs in the biofuel industry, featured as the part of the EERE Success Stories series of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

The new breakthrough involves a type of biofuel production process that depends on high-tech membranes to perform a series of steps to separate carbon from algae and other liquefied biomass feedstocks. These steps can account for as much as half the cost of biofuel production, so getting costs down will have a significant impact on the final product.

In the conventional approach, the separation steps are based on different sizes of the pores in the membrane. The problem is that the steps with smaller sizes slow down the process.

The new membrane adds another twist:

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory set out to determine what could increase production speeds and improve the quality of biofuels and bioproducts. What they discovered is a new class of porous membranesa high performance architecture surface-selective (HIPAS) membrane technology.

ORNLs HiPAS membranes are innovative in that they do not rely solely on pore size to separate carbon. Instead, the new membranes use nanotechnology coatings to change the shape of the pores, allowing for 10-fold larger pore size with the same separation efficiency as traditional membranes.

ORNL has been working with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to figure out which applications show the best promising.

Commercial application is somewhere out in the future but so far the results are promising. The labs anticipate that a 12% drop in the cost of algae biofuel could be leveraged with the new membrane.

In addition to biofuel, the new membrane also has potential biochemical and pharmaceutical applications.

The petrochemical industry could also put it to use, so stay tuned.

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Image: US Department of Energy, This figure shows the selective permeability and higher throughput of HiPAS membranes in a biomass to bioproduct conversion process. In this example, the membranes separate water vapor from high value chemicals in the product stream.

*As of this writing.

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Tags: Bioenergy Research, Bioenergy Research Centers, DOE, Donald Trump, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Made in America, Michigan State University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, rick perry, Texas, University of WisconsinMadison

Tina Casey specializes in military and corporate sustainability, advanced technology, emerging materials, biofuels, and water and wastewater issues. Tinas articles are reposted frequently on Reuters, Scientific American, and many other sites. Views expressed are her own. Follow her on Twitter @TinaMCasey and Google+.

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US Energy Dept. Goes Rogue On Biofuel, Celebrates Bio-Based Economy - CleanTechnica

Ive been learning lately that among those who analyze and think about the environment and sustainability, I am considered an optimist. While I believe it is a useful analytic exercise to spin out worst case scenarios, I dont typically find them persuasive. Perhaps its because of the progress Ive seen in so many areas over the past several decades. The environment, civil rights, feminism, gay rights, the internet, the smartphone, the revival of my home city of New York, the career of Derek Jeter and the promise of Aaron Judgethose are all sources of hope. I do see the setbacks: money in politics, income inequality, terrorism, authoritarianism, the destruction of species and ecosystems and, of course, our current obsession, Trumpism. But I simply refuse to be defined by what is wrong and find myself far more interested in building on what is right.

The recent birth of my first grandchild reinforces my desire to believe that the world that she will inherit will be at least as good as my world, if not better. At the start of my graduate studies, I remember reading Robert Heilbroners, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect and its remarkable postscript, What Has Posterity Ever Done for Me? Heilbroner admitted there was no economically rational way to justify a concern for the distant future, but nevertheless believed that we would still somehow manage to care about it. In one version of this essay, published in the New York Times in 1975, he observed that:

I am mindful of the short-sighted, self-centered approach to climate change and environmental protection pushed by Pruitt, Trump, the Koch brothers and all the boys in their school yard, but I think it is a dying view that is enjoying its final days in the sun. I could be wrong, but like Heilbroner, I believe that the images of a world in danger, now magnified by the world wide web and brought to every corner of the planet instantly, will provide the experience that Heibroner spoke of some four decades ago. I see many signs that this change is already well underway.

Heilbroner, along with many others reflecting the concepts of The Limits to Growth, spoke of the need to forgo the benefits of modern technology if we were to save the world. He thought we needed to return to a simpler, less consumptive, less technological time. The view in the last century was that through guilt, and possibly public policies such as taxes or regulations like Chinas one child policy, we could forcefully reduce human impact on the environment.

In the half century since the start of the environmental era I have seen no sign that reduced consumption was politically, economically or socially feasible. The progress we have seen has been through the application of technology to reduce pollution, plan family size, increase the efficiency of production and consumption, change consumption, and develop renewable resources. Why has reduced consumption been rejected? First, in the developed world, any absence of economic prosperity is rapidly translated into political pressure against the regime in power. Or, as Bill Clintons political strategists famously observed, its the economy, stupid. In the developing world, particularly in the internet era, people see the lifestyles in the developed world and want that lifestyle, if not for themselves, for their children.

In other words, people like this stuff. The food, the cars, the jet planes, the air conditioning, the entertainment, and all the accoutrements of modern life. We want it enough that once we achieve developed status, we are finding birth rates going down because children have proven to be expensive and we want to make sure we have sufficient money to buy the stuff we want. The absence of economic well-being in a developed nation or inadequate progress toward economic development in a developing nation is politically destabilizing. In a world where the technology of destruction is advancing rapidly, political stability is more prized than ever.

While the policy of consumption denial seems infeasible to me, there is another policy direction that seems feasible and enjoys growing support: encouraging the rapid development and diffusion of the technology needed for a renewable resource-based economy. The computer and communication revolution that has brought us inexpensive cell phone calls, Skype, Facetime, search engines, GPS, Bluetooth, streaming video, computer games and the sharing economy. These technologies and practices have demonstrated that economic consumption can increase while material consumption decreases. Data indicates that in the U.S., greenhouse gas production has been decoupled from GDP growth. Young people in America have a lower rate of auto ownership than those that came before them. Support for the development of renewable energy is growing.

It is true I am advocating what my environmental policy mentor and doctoral dissertation supervisor, the late Professor Lester Milbrath, would have derisively regarded as a technological fix. He thought we needed changes in environmental values coupled with reduced consumption. What weve seen instead is changed environmental values coupled with new forms of consumption. This is a source of hope. In particular, the idea that consumption can include experiencing culture, entertainment, social interaction and learning, and that the goal is experiencing the world, not owning it. Both technology and values are changing. But it is far too late for us to get back to the land and live as one with nature. There are far too many people on the planet and too little nature to live that way again. Sustainability in the 21st century will need to be achieved in cities. Fortunately, many cities have begun the long, slow process of reducing their environmental impact, and increasing their use of renewable resources.

I am also hopeful because for every Donald Trump, Scott Pruitt, or Rick Perry I see fighting sustainability in Washington, there are dozens of Jerry Browns, Mike Bloombergs, Angela Merkels, and Emmanuel Macrons driving sustainability globally. Even in Washington, the Presidents proposed draconian cuts to EPA and to federally funded science have already been rejected by Congressional budget committees. Although the budgets are still being cut, the reductions are incremental, not radical.

When I first started to study environmental policy in 1975, it was a small field of little importance in the political life of that time. Today it is at the center of our political, economic, social and cultural concerns. It has evolved in ways that no one would have predicted nearly a half century ago, when a handful of us sat around a seminar table in Buffalo, New York, pondering this field. When I first joined the faculty at Columbia University in 1981, I was persuaded not to teach a course on environmental policy because, no one comes to New York City to study the environment.

Today, I direct two masters programs with about 300 students studying environment and sustainability. My course on sustainability management enrolled 150 students last year. In the last 15 years, Columbia has developed an undergraduate major and PhD in sustainable development, along with masters programs in environmental science and policy, sustainability management, climate and society, and development practice. We even have a certification in sustainability finance and another in water management. Next year we hope to launch a new masters program in sustainability science. The presence of these dedicated, mission-driven, bright and talented students and the professional accomplishments of thousands of alums already graduated are my greatest source of hope in these troubled times. My granddaughter was born on Wednesday, July 12, and I am trusting her future to the sustainability leaders and professionals that have emerged during the first part of the 21st century. I believe it is a safe bet.

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Staying Hopeful In A Troubling Time - HuffPost

Baker McKenzies latest quarterly Cross-border M&A Index shows that there were 17 inbound M&A deals in Africa in the second quarter (Q2) of 2017. The 17 inbound deals reflect a 48% drop from 33 deals in Q2 2016. On a quarter-by-quarter basis, inbound deal volume also dropped by 45% from 31 deals in Q1 2017.

The total deal value for inbound deals amounted to US$780 million, decreasing by 83% year-on-year and 88% on a quarter-by-quarter basis. The second quarter of 2016 saw US$4.54 billion worth of deals. In the first quarter of 2017 US$6.38 billion worth of inbound deals were concluded in Africa.

Morne van der Merwe, Managing Partner of Baker McKenzie in Johannesburg explained, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in South Africa has decreased and this will continue until the local investment climate stabilises. Due to the credit ratings downgrades, the cost of raising capital for acquisitions has become more expensive, making deals more difficult. In addition, the Rand has been one of the most volatile currencies in 2017 and this volatility has suppressed deal appetite.

These factors, combined with recent political instability and uncertainty, have resulted in a perception in the market of increased risks of doing business in South Africa. Global players are finding more attractive investment destinations elsewhere.

Further, almost half the continents M&A activity flows through South Africa, so recent South African developments have had a negative knock-on effect in Africa. Political uncertainty in other jurisdictions on the continent, such as the current election in Kenya, has also made investors wary of African deal making in the short term, although we expect this to change once stability returns to the region.

The top target industry by volume and value in Africa was mining, which accounted for 23% of total deal count and US$312 million or 40% of total value.

In terms of outlook for the mining sector in South Africa, van der Merwe said there is widespread agreement that the Mining Charter in its present form will severely impact the mining sector in South Africa. In addition, the recent proposal, published in the South African Government Gazette for comment, regarding a possible moratorium on mining and prospecting rights and the granting of applications in terms of section 11 of the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act is cause for concern. If these measure come into effect, they will have a detrimental impact on transactions in the South African mining space.

Looking at the technology sector, the M&A Index showed no inbound technology deals in Africa in second quarter of 2017. This is in comparison to the global results, which noted a high volume of technology deals in the first half of 2017. Globally, besides H1 2016, the number of cross-border technology deals was higher in H1 2017 than in any post-crisis half-year period.

Van der Merwe explained, Africa has several technology hubs, including one in Cape Town, South Africa and the development of technology in the banking and finance sector, for mass usage on the continent, is well advanced. A positive explanation for there being no inbound deals in this sector in Q2 2017, is that this is not due to lack of IT development in Africa, to the contrary, but because IT companies are structuring their operations in a way that allows them to enter into partnerships offshore and bring their operations into Africa through licencing arrangements.

The Index shows that South Africa was the top target country for inbound deals by volume and value, accounting for 29% of total deal count and US$ 422 million or 54% of total value in Africa. The top investing country by volume was Australia with three deals or 18% of total count. China deals had the highest overall value at US$324 million or 42% of total.

It is surprising that Australia was the highest inbound investor country by deal volume as one would expect it to be China or India. Australia is a resource-based economy, with the knowledge, know-how and asset base to attach to opportunities in Africa, so it does make sense that they would be investing heavily in African businesses, noted van der Merwe.

Asia Pacific and the European Union were tied as top investing regions by volume, each accounting for 35% of total deal count. By value, Asia Pacific outpaced the rest with US$487 million or 62% of total.

Cross border outbound deals painted a more positive picture. There were 15 cross border outbound deals in Africa for the second quarter of 2017, a decrease of 12% on a year-on-year basis, but an increase of 67% from the previous quarter. The second quarter of 2016 saw 17 outbound deals, while the first quarter of 2017 saw nine outbound deals. The total deal value, US$1.52 billion, fell by 28% from US$2.1 billion in Q2 2016, but more than doubled on a quarter by quarter basis from US$665 million in Q1 2017.

Technology tied with Business Services was a top target industry for Africas outbound deals by volume with a total of three deals for the quarter (20% of total). In terms of deal value, the Financial Services sector led slightly with US$535 million or 35% of total deals. Technology deals came in close second, accounting for USD 510 million or 33% of total outbound deals from Africa.

An increase in development in African telecoms industries, as well as the opportunities presented by a rapidly developing financial services sector, remain key drivers of outbound investment activity in Africa. The growing financial services sector has also seen domestic banks make significant investments in technology, including in offshore companies. As discussed, the increase in outbound deals in the technology sector also points to African technology companies looking to base their local operations offshore, he noted.

The Index also shows that South Africa outperformed other African bidders by volume and value for outbound deals, with eight deals (53% of total) amounting to US$821 million (54% of total). Top target regions for outbound deals were EU and Asia Pacific by volume, each with 40% share of total. The top target country from Africa by volume was India, with three deals accounting for 20% of total deal count.

Continued here:

Political uncertainty leads to drop in M&A deals in Africa this quarter - Namibia Economist