Renewable Energy’s Mountain of Death
What makes renewable energy different from many other technology-based industries, however, is not just the valley of death which is common to many technology-based industries, but more the “mountain of death,” or specifically the amount of capital and time required to take promising but nascent energy technologies to widespread deployment. The energy industry tends to be an asset-based industry, and those assets are usually expensive. Early stage private capital tends to shun capital intensive businesses, and unlike information technology, for example, the energy industry does not generally provide some highly desirable “must-have” new capability, but simply supplants an existing commodity, be it the flow of electrons, or a transportation fluid, or whatever.
Unfortunately, even in good economic conditions, there is limited funding available for pilot and demonstration phases for scaling renewable energy technology. Add to this the lack of resources required to create and implement commercialization roadmaps and it becomes clear why half-hearted attempts at developing this industry have stalled.
Given the uncertainty, costs and times frames involved in overcoming the mountain of death, there needs to be a very strong enabler in order to stimulate renewable energy commercialization on a large scale. Absent regulation, market signals (like pricing carbon), or specific incentives, there are simply no compelling economic reasons in the short term for the incumbent industry leaders to switch from existing feedstocks to renewable sources. As mentioned above, in other technology-based industries, early-stage capital funds innovative disrupters, but there is simply not enough equity financing available to stimulate the early stage energy companies in such a capital intensive industry, and start-ups simply do not have the balance sheet strength typically required for project finance and other sources of financing.
The renewable energy industry is different from other technology-based industries. Granted, it is slowed by the valley of death, but widespread deployment is truly hampered by the mountain. If we are committed to the potential of renewable energy as a solution to many of our climate, economic and national security concerns, we need to recognize the need for strong federal and state support for commercializing renewable energy technologies or we run the risk of looking back on this period and wondering why (to paraphrase Rahm Emanuel) we wasted a crisis.
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I agree with the new governor of Utah. I also think small nuclear plants made by Hyperion will be the best source for clean energy.Oil is more evironmentally safe done in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world. We need to bring the petro dollars home as we wean ourselves off of oil. Natural gas should be used more also. Only the free market should decide whether solar and wind can survive as alternatives. Don’t become Spain-18%unemployment.
Rick-While I agree that the private sector can play a huge role in alternative energy–I write a blog about for-profit green and social ventures, http://trueslant.com/annefield–I think it’s ludicrous to take a free-market-only position.
There are areas that are vital to our economy and future — solar, wind and other alternative sources being some of them – and they need a boost and support from government. That doesn’t mean they’re owned by government. That means we have decided they are too important to leave to the vagaries of the free market.
And, excuse me, since when has the oil industry been solely a creature of the free market?
Finally–Spain’s unemployment rate? What does that have to do with this topic? Spain got caught in the global financial real estate mess and that’s what’s caused its current problems.
Spanish company touts process to turn urban waste into biodiesel
By Ron Kotrba
A group of Spanish developers working under the company name Ecofasa, headed by chief executive officer and inventor Francisco Angulo, has developed a biochemical process to turn urban solid waste into a fatty acid biodiesel feedstock. “It took more than 10 years working on the idea of producing biodiesel from domestic waste using a biological method,” Angulo told Biodiesel Magazine. “My first patent dates back to 2005. It was first published in 2007 in Soto de la Vega, Spain, thanks to the council and its representative Antonio Nevado.”
Using microbes to convert organic material into energy isn’t a new concept to the renewable energy industries, and the same can be said for the anaerobic digestion of organic waste by microbes, which turns waste into biogas consisting mostly of methane. However, using bacteria to convert urban waste to fatty acids, which can then be used as a feedstock for biodiesel production, is a new twist. The Spanish company calls this process and the resulting fuel Ecofa. “It is based on metabolism’s natural principle by means of which all living organisms, including bacteria, produce fatty acids,” Angula said. “[It] comes from the carbon of any organic waste.”
He defined urban waste as “organic wastes from home like food, paper, wood and dung,” and added that any carbon-based material can be used for biodiesel production under the Ecofa process. “For many years, I wondered why there are pools of oil in some mountains,” he said, explaining the reasoning behind his invention. “After delving into the issue, I realized that [those oil deposits] were produced by decomposing organic living microorganisms.” This, in Angulo’s mind, sparked the idea that food waste and bacteria could be turned into fatty acids that could react into biodiesel. Two types of bacteria are under further development by Biotit Scientific Biotechnology Laboratory in Seville, Spain: E. coli and Firmicutes. The Ecofa process also produces methane gas, and inconvertible solids that can be used as a soil amendment or fertilizer. “There is a huge variety of bacteria,” Angulo said. “Currently, [biodiesel producers] receive a fat that must be processed through transesterification into biodiesel, but we are also working on other types of bacteria that are capable of producing fatty acids with the same characteristics as biodiesel.” He said this would eventually allow producers to skip the transesterification step.
Ecofasa may avoid the ongoing food-versus-fuel debate and its expected successor, indirect land use, with its Ecofa process. “It would not be necessary to use specific fields of maize, wheat, barley, beets, etc., which would remain for human consumption without creating distortions or famines with unforeseeable consequences,” the company stated in a press release. “This microbial technique can be extended to other organic debris, plants or animals, such as those contained in urban sewage. You can even experiment with other carbon sources, and this opens up a lot of possibilities. It is only necessary to find the appropriate bacteria.”
The company created its name by combining the term “eco-combustible” with F.A., the initials of the inventor.
“Today we feel that we can produce between one and two liters [of biodiesel] per 10 kilograms of trash,” Angulo said. That’s a little more than one-fourth to one-half of a gallon for every 22 pounds of trash—or between 24 and 48 gallons per ton of urban waste. “We are working to improve that,” he said.
BHO will not want to tell the persons it will cost double for being environmentally friendly prior to November.