Biofuels have come into vogue this decade largely because of increasing evidence that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal are causing global warming.

Biofuel--“environmentally- friendly“ energy created from plants rather than oil--should not be seen as a threat to the world’s poor and may help increase food production, a UN food and energy expert said.
Fears over climate change have boosted the demand for alternative fuels in Europe and North America, but the rise of biofuel has been criticized by some who say it is not really “green“ and will put a squeeze on land needed for food.
However, the person in charge of energy policy at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said biofuel was getting a bad press and, rather than being a threat to the poor, it could boost food production as well as wealth.
“It’s probably the best opportunity there has been since the ’green revolution’ to bring really a new wind of development in rural areas,“ Gustavo Best told Reuters in an interview.
He was referring to the huge increase in food production in the developing world, aided in part by new plant technologies that came into vogue in the 1960s.
“If done well,“ he added. “If well managed, bio-energy production can bring new areas of development ... new investment, new jobs and new infrastructure that can also benefit the food industry,“ Best said on Monday.
That is a significant “if“. The FAO has highlighted the risk of increasing biofuel production for the world’s 854 million hungry people.
“Liquid biofuel production could threaten the availability of adequate food supplies by diverting land and other resources away from food crops,“ it said in a study issued last month.
Environmentalists have criticized Malaysia and Indonesia for chopping down forests to make way for palm oil plantations, and in Africa only intense lobbying prevented the Ugandan government from doing the same on an island in Lake Victoria.
Biofuels have come into vogue this decade largely because of increasing evidence that carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal are causing global warming.
Because plants like sugar cane, palm fruit, maize and rapeseed all absorb CO2 as they grow, their impact on the climate is considered far lower than that of traditional fuels.
Experts say if crude oil is trading at above $40 a barrel, biofuel can be a viable alternative. The last time crude was below $40 was January 2005.
Demand for biofuels could mean big opportunities for many tropical areas, including large parts of Africa, to grow crops like sugar cane and sorghum to make ethanol, Best said.
The International Energy Agency says biofuels now account for 1 percent of road-fuel consumption. It can also be used in power plants to generate electricity.
The FAO does not have definitive figures but Best estimated that, in all its uses, it accounted for 8-10 percent of global energy production, up from less than 5 percent 10 years ago.
Biofuels have a maximum potential of 20-30 percent of global energy production, he said, due to competing demand for land and water and continuing competition from fossil fuels and other sources.
“One figure one has to remember is that biofuels will never substitute 100 percent for gasoline or diesel,“ Best said. “It’s not the magical solution to substitute oil, no way.“
The European Union already requires a minimum of 2 percent of biofuels be blended with petrol and diesle, rising to 5.75 percent at the end of 2010, as part of its drive to meet greenhouse gas reduction targets under the Kyoto Protocol.
In the United States, which has not ratified Kyoto, concerns about the environment and energy security have boosted demand for ethanol from maize, something which has already had a knock-on effect on the food market, Best said.
“It has at least partially influenced corn prices in countries like Mexico and others. There are some indications that within the US market itself this could impact prices of maize for feed for animals and therefore raise the price of meat and milk.“

Organization of Gas Exporting Countries. OGEP has an interesting ring to it, doesn’t it?
Except for the organization part of the name; this is where the present limit exists and where 16 countries continued the conceptualization of such a body at the recent Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF) meeting. This editor doesn’t claim to understand all the details, but hopes that the following information will help the reader understand a bit more about this relatively new economic gathering.
GECF met first in 2001 in Tehran, Iran, when 15 countries gathered to discuss gas and economic issues in an oversupplied natural gas market. The countries have been meeting annually since that time, except for the 2006 meeting, which was rescheduled to Doha, Qatar, this April. This latest meeting raised angst among the consuming nations, particularly in the European Union. GECF will meet in Moscow, Russia, next year.
The membership of GECF has fluctuated, but members include Algeria, Bolivia, Brunei, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Indonesia, Iran, Libya, Malaysia, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Russia, Trinidad and Tobago, the UAE and Venezuela. Norway participates as an observer and other countries, including Bolivia, Indonesia, Libya, Oman and Turkmenistan, have been involved in the past. GECF serves as a way for these countries to sort out market forces and discuss legislative changes that affect their normal business practices and traditional contracting forms, Worldoil.com said.
To state the obvious, gas and oil are physically different and their infrastructures reflect those differences. While oil can be poured into and transported in any manageable-sized container, pressure containment is not usually an issue, except in pipelines. However, gas requires constant pressure containment in either pipelines or storage vessels, including salt caverns. One way around gas’ transportation constraint is to chill it to a liquid.
LNG technology allows gas to be safely tankered and transported in ways more similar to oil. But, infrastructure expense drives the gas market to long-term contracts and relationships, and requires price stability to service construction debt. LNG is a growing business and the potential for more market flexibility through a spot LNG market is evolving. According to the International Energy Agency, global LNG capacity was 8.6 Tcf/yr in 2005 and, by 2010, it could be as much 16.8 Tcf/yr.
OPEC and GECF have some similarities: GECF has some members in OPEC and the world’s known gas reserves are concentrated in a few countries. Russia is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas with reserves of 1,688 Tcf and 21% of world production, according to the BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2006. Other major reserves lie in Iran (943 Tcf), Qatar (910 Tcf), United Arab Emirates (213 Tcf) and Nigeria (184 Tcf). There are many other countries with smaller reserves and many stranded Tcf in resources across the globe.
The apparent fear among consuming nations is that GECF will become OGEP, an OPEC-like cartel, and attempt to set and raise global gas prices. While this is possible, it is unlikely to happen any time soon, because the political cooperation and the infrastructure to support market control haven’t yet been built. GECF countries have different economic agendas, a need for foreign technology and capital, contracts that are long-term and control the LNG trade (with a small spot market), and importing countries will resist cartel development.
In fact, this resistance has already been expressed. The EU banned territorial restrictions in gas contracts and made the ruling retroactive. This bollixed many GECF countries’ long-established contracts with EU countries and fouled the stable economics of exporters’ projects. The change opened the European market to more competition, but the loss of the destination clause, which prohibited gas reselling, put the exporting countries at a disadvantage. Low-cost gas from a long-term contract in the recent high-demand market handed the consuming countries an arbitrage opportunity and pulled value from the exporting countries, which they felt should have been theirs.
Either a greatly expanded LNG fleet or a host of pipelines between continents would be needed to create a reliable, trans-world delivery network that could control, trade and deliver gas.
By Victor Schmidt.
Drilling Engineering Editor

An epicenter of expertise and government incentives boosts the photovoltaic industry in France's Rhone-Alps region.

Near the French Alps in the southeast corner of the country’s hexagonal borders, the Rhone-Alps region has long been established as France’s center for nanotechnology and electronics research. Meanwhile, the region has quietly become a leader in solar energy research, production and applications.
The French government recently deemed the region and its surrounding areas as the “solar competitiveness cluster in France,“ going by the name of Tenerrdis, and has rewarded it with the strong incentive program. R&D programs in some areas of the region can benefit from local networking, various tax breaks and access to research staff free of social charges.
France’s competitiveness clusters are similar to trade associations, but kept in the same geographic area. For Tenerrdis, this area is a triangle of cities: ChambŽry, Grenoble and Lyon. The cluster works to stimulate the partnerships of R&D between companies, public and private research centers, and economic and institutional businesses to boost renewable energy projects and create new jobs.
Last year, a French state initiative to curb traditional energy consumption and encourage renewable energies changed the face of the French solar industry overnight. France’s former Prime Minister, Dominique de Villepin, doubled the feed-in tariff (FIT) for on-grid photovoltaic (PV) systems on private residential buildings from EUR 15 cents [$0.20 cents] per kWh to EUR 30 cents [$0.40 cents] per kWh.
The country’s current PV market is ever-more attractive to energy consumers thanks to the increased FIT and other regulations such as a regional subsidy for Rhone-Alps. But to ensure the cost of PV electricity stays competitive with other energy sources, continuous research needs to be conducted to keep PV’s various technologies current and economical.
The country’s National Solar Energy Institute (INES), located in the Savoie Technolac science park near the city of ChambŽry in the French Alps, hosts several R&D facilities working on current PV issues such as thin films and solar-grade silicon. INES, who attracted researchers to its facilities from about 15 locations, has doubled its work force since 2004 and has set a goal for 180 researchers by 2009--two-thirds of them in PV.
With an average PV cell getting a 15-percent conversion efficiency, the institute has also set itself a midterm goal of developing a multicrystalline silicon cell with 20-percent conversion efficiency.
In addition to the science park, the region also boasts the top players in France’s PV industry focusing on the industry’s hottest issues:
¥Rhone-Alps has a test facility that has been operating since 2005--the Restaure platform. Funded in part by the French Atomic Energy Commission, it holds all the equipment necessary for crystalline silicon cells fabrication and is intended to serve everyone working in PV in France.
¥The company FerroPem is currently working on its “Photosil“ project in Savoie Technolac to develop a new, metallurgy-based method for producing silicon for the PV market. Launched in the 2004, the project moved from the research phase to the operational phase just last year, with initial results expected sometime this year. The project ultimately aims to develop an industrial-scale version of the process for real-world use.
¥Tenesol, a sudsidiary of Total and ElectricitŽ de France (EDF) based in the city of La Tour de Salvagny, opened a module production facility last September that has the capacity to produce the equivalent of 220,000 m2 (about 2.3 million ft.2) of PV modules each year, an amount capable of producing 30 MW of PV electricity. It continues its vertical integration in the PV industry largely thanks to the Rhone-Alps region’s resources, says Roland Barthez, Tenesol’s managing director.
¥Photowatt International, France’s PV parts-producing leader and owned in part by Canada’s ATS Inc., adds that the region’s R&D facilities are a big bonus.
¥The SilPro (Silicium Provence) company opened a multicrystalline silicon factory in 2006 that, according to the company, is the first in the world entirely dedicated to producing solar-grade multicrystalline silicon for the PV industry.

Japan on Tuesday floated the idea of industry energy-saving benchmarks and urged households to do their bit as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged to lead the fight against global warming at this week’s Group of Eight summit.
Abe has proposed halving global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 but Japan is struggling to meet its own target of cutting emissions by 6 percent by 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol’s first phase ends.
“There is still some distance between the EU and the United States, and that is precisely why I think Japan should take the initiative toward a direction which all countries can basically accept,“ Abe told reporters before leaving for the summit on Tuesday, which is also World Environment Day.
But the battle against global warming is not going quite so smoothly at home, where Japan’s emissions were 14 percent above its Kyoto goals as of March 2006, Reuters reported.
Trade Minister Akira Amari told reporters on Tuesday that energy-saving targets should be set for business sectors but steered clear of specifics.
The Nikkei business daily said this meant numerical targets but Amari said the proposal was more likely to focus on non-binding benchmarks for industries to use as a guide, ENN.com said.
Japanese business groups have dragged their feet on previous energy proposals, such as a carbon tax, out of concern for their economic impact.
A trade ministry official said a committee would meet next week to set standards for measuring industry energy use but that targets were not on the agenda at this point.
“We are not setting a numerical CO2 (carbon dioxide) reductions or energy-saving target on the private sector,“ he added.
Given the reluctance of industry, the government is now looking keenly at households, whose CO2 emissions in 2005 were a worrying 28.8 percent above 1990 levels partly due to an increase in private computer use.
According to the 2007 environmental white paper issued on Tuesday, a four-person household could cut their CO2 emissions by up to 40 percent by switching to newer, energy-saving appliances.
Abe told the Nikkei in a recent interview that one of the government’s main short-term goals was making its citizens more aware of the issue and enlisting them to do all they can.
“We need to give people information on global warming in a way they can understand, make them sense that it’s a danger close to them,“ he was quoted as saying.
To get the message across, the government on Tuesday placed full-page ads in newspapers featuring Abe, in a casual shirt and slippers, changing a lightbulb to a more efficient model as his wife, Akie, looks on.
“One person, one kilo of CO2 reduction a day,“ the ad urges.