November Ethanol Production Steady, Imports And Consumption Down

Ethanol production in November remained steady at pretty much the same level since August. Imports for the month dropped by over 50% and consumption fell by almost 50 million gallons from the number posted in October to the lowest level since August.

The numbers are skewed downward somewhat since November has only 30 and October has 31. Daily production in November was 668,000 barrels per day versus 647,000 barrels per day in October.

Ethanol Production Numbers in Gallons
	Production	Imports	Stocks	Consumption
November 2008	842,268,000	11,676,000	639,534,000	852,474,000
October 2008	842,016,000	25,830,000	638,064,000	901,530,000
September 2008	806,274,000	103,572,000	671,748,000	863,142,000
August 2008	842,478,000	81,102,000	625,044,000	852,348,000
July 2008	799,764,000	57,120,000	553,812,000	819,840,000
June 2008	736,848,000	65,982,000	516,768,000	791,910,000
May 2008	778,806,000	36,372,000	505,848,000	793,968,000
April 2008	708,456,000	60,942,000	484,638,000	763,182,000
March 2008	730,674,000	15,456,000	478,422,000	707,238,000
February 2008	631,050,000	20,286,000	439,530,000	660,114,000
January 2008	664,356,000	20,790,000	448,308,000	679,308,000
December 2007	636,762,000	8,904,000	442,470,000	674,352,000

Source: - Energy Information Administration

Japan Airlines Conducts Biofuels Test Flight

Japan Airlines successfully conducted a test flight today of an unmodified Boeing 747-300 aircraft with one engine running on a 50% biofuels and 50% aviation jet fuel.

Tokyo, January 30, 2009: Today, Japan Airlines (JAL) became the first airline to conduct a demonstration flight using a sustainable biofuel primarily refined from the energy crop, camelina. It was also the first demo flight using a combination of three sustainable biofuel feedstocks, as well as the first one using Pratt & Whitney engines. The results of the flight are expected to conclusively confirm the second-generation biofuel’s operational performance capabilities and potential commercial viability.

The approximately one and half-hour demo flight using a JAL-owned Boeing 747-300 aircraft, carrying no passengers or payload, took off from Haneda Airport, Tokyo at 11:50am (JST). A blend of 50% biofuel and 50% traditional Jet-A jet (kerosene) fuel was tested in the No.3 engine (middle right), one of the aircraft’s four Pratt & Whitney JT9D engines. No modifications to the aircraft or engine were required for biofuel, which is a ‘drop-in’ replacement for petroleum-based fuel.

The JAL cockpit crew onboard the aircraft checked the engine’s performance during normal and non-normal flight operations, which included quick accelerations and decelerations, and engine shutdown and restart. A ground-based preflight test was conducted the day before the flight to ensure that the No. 3 engine functioned normally using the biofuel/ traditional Jet-A fuel blend. Captain Keiji Kobayashi who piloted the aircraft said, ‘Everything went smoothly. There was no difference at all in the performance of the engine powered by the biofuel blend, and the other three engines containing regular jet fuel.”

The biofuel mixture was produced from 84% camelina, less than 16% jatropha, and less than 1% algae feedstocks. The camelina feedstock was supplied by Sustainable Oils, Inc., the jatropha by Terasol Energy, and the algae by Sapphire Energy.

Source : Japan Airlines Release

Is Ethanol Responsible For High Milk Prices?

Over the last year ethanol has been blamed for the high price of milk along with a number of other food cost increases. There is an article in the news today with a quote from dairy farmer Brian Getty that provides some insights into what has pushed milk prices up.

“The only thing that kept milk prices high for ’08 was exports,” he said. “Last year was a record year for exports.”

This isn't really any big surprise as I wrote in a post over a year ago that export demand was what was pushing dairy prices higher. But it is good to hear it coming from a dairy producer.

Source : The Record News

Cornell Professor David Pimentel Releases New Study Critical Of Biofuels

Cornell professor David Pimentel has just published another study critical of ethanol and other biofuels. Pimentel has published several studies over the last several years that have all come to the same conclusion that it takes a lot more energy to produce ethanol than the finished ethanol contains. And these studies always get a lot of press and are quoted by every ethanol critic as being the gospel but he has had a habit in the past of using old data and questionable substitutions for co-product values to arrive at his conclusions. In this study he concluded that basically no biofuels are worth the effort.

Their paper then looks at the efficiency and costs associated with converting a range of crops into energy and shows that in each case more energy is required for this process than they actually produce as fuel. The research finds a negative energy return of 46 percent for corn ethanol, 50 percent for switchgrass, 63 percent for soybean biodiesel and 58 percent for rapeseed. Even the most promising palm oil production results in a minus 8 percent net energy return. There are also a number of environmental problems linked to converting crops for biofuels, including water pollution from fertilizers and pesticides, global warming, soil erosion and air pollution.

So far all I have been able to find is the summary posted by the journal that the study was published in. Hopefully over the next few days I will be able to see the full study and find out the data he used to come up with his conclusions.

Source : ScienceDaily

WIND ENERGY GROWS BY RECORD 8,300 MW IN 2008

The U.S. wind energy industry shattered all previous records in 2008 by installing 8,358 megawatts (MW) of new generating capacity (enough to serve over 2 million homes), the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) said today, even as it warned of an uncertain outlook for 2009 due to the continuing financial crisis.

The massive growth in 2008 swelled the nation’s total wind power generating capacity by 50% and channeled an investment of some $17 billion into the economy, positioning wind power as one of the leading sources of new power generation in the country today along with natural gas, AWEA added. At year’s end, however, financing for new projects and orders for turbine components slowed to a trickle and layoffs began to hit the wind turbine manufacturing sector.

The new wind projects completed in 2008 account for about 42% of the entire new power-producing capacity added nationally last year, according to initial estimates, and will avoid nearly 44 million tons of carbon emissions, the equivalent of taking over 7 million cars off of the road.

The amount that the industry brought online in the 4th quarter alone – 4,112 MW - exceeds annual additions for every year except 2007. In all, wind energy generating capacity in the U.S. now stands at 25,170 MW, producing enough electricity to power the equivalent of close to 7 million households and strengthening our national energy supply with a clean, inexhaustible, homegrown source of energy.

Source : American Wind Energy Association