EE News: Military budget emphasizes energy efficiency and biofuels

EE News: Military budget emphasizes energy efficiency and biofuels

15 February 2012.

The Department of Defense budget request for fiscal 2013 maintains strong support for clean energy, despite reductions in military spending and little support from both sides of the political spectrum.

President Obama's budget allocates approximately $1 billion for energy conservation, retrofits and renewable energy projects -- up from $400 million in 2010. It also includes $150 million for the Energy Conservation Investment Program and $32 million for an energy technology testing program, designed to facilitate commercialization.

DOD would see $486.9 billion in cuts over the next 10 years under the president's plan, but military leaders reaffirmed their commitment to the development and use of sustainable energy.

Navy budget officer Rear Adm. Joseph Mulloy said this week that spending on green energy initiatives would remain fairly steady, calling the programs significant for "tremendous tactical reasons."

"Everything you can do to [reduce] energy use and drive the same tactical output ... is important," said the admiral in a press briefing this week. Minimizing fuel transport and refueling operations means reducing risk for the Marines, Mulloy added.

By continuing to invest in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the fiscal 2013 budget maintains support for military research on aviation biofuels. It also offers strong funding for biotech research through the Department of Energy, and incentives for biomanufacturing industries.

The commitment dovetails with the announcement made last summer by the Navy and the departments of Agriculture and Energy to spend $510 million on advanced biofuels over three years.

"The U.S. military is as vulnerable to fuel price spikes as any consumer -- and all Americans continue to be hit hard by oil and gasoline prices," said Brent Erickson, executive vice president of the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), in a statement yesterday. "Rapid development of alternative advanced biofuels should be a national security priority, and we thank President Obama for recognizing this in the budget proposal."

More good than harm?

An important part of the president's State of the Union address was his pledge to support clean energy. He announced that DOD "will make one of the largest commitments to clean energy in history -- with the Navy purchasing enough capacity to power a quarter of a million homes a year."

Michal Rosenoer, biofuels policy campaigner with Friends of the Earth, said Obama's definition of clean energy does not coincide with that of her organization, however. She said, regarding advanced biofuels, that funding the military's program means promoting practices that are "absolutely environmentally destructive."

"Greenhouse gas reductions are not the only thing we need out of biofuels," said Rosenoer. "Clean energy needs to be clean not just for climate, but for the environment as a whole. We shouldn't be sacrificing water quality and air quality for greenhouse gas emissions alone."

Further, she said, it's unclear whether DOD's focus on advanced biofuels is improving America's energy security, since only a small amount of the renewable fuel is commercially available.

"We shouldn't be subsidizing it and the military shouldn't be buying it until we're sure these biofuels are doing more good than harm," she said.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) had a similar criticism of Obama's clean energy plan following last month's State of the Union speech.

"Right now, we're investigating a scandal where the U.S. military is buying this bio-jet fuel at a huge premium," said Issa. "In other words, we as taxpayers are paying far more than the market price just to make the point."

Issa's spokesman, Frederick Hill, confirmed that the House committee has been investigating green energy programs, saying the committee had found "huge expenditures" and that the goals were "far from being met."

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EE News: Think tank offers a new way to measure carbon capture and storage

15 February 2012.

An environmental think tank released a first-of-its-kind framework yesterday for measuring emission reductions from carbon capture and storage projects.

The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, formerly known as the Pew Center for Global Climate Change, said the blueprint should inform policymakers grappling with whether to incentivize carbon capture and storage (CCS), a concept that envisions grabbing carbon dioxide from industrial facilities or coal plants and storing the gas underground.

The new framework compiles existing formulas from various sources for measuring the greenhouse gas reduction benefit of CCS and provides them a central hub. "You can't manage what you're not measuring," said Janet Peace, vice president of markets and business strategy at the center.

Previously, CCS developers had to look at formulas from U.S. EPA, the International Organization for Standardization and other sources to gauge how much carbon dioxide would be removed from using a carbon capture system, added Mike McCormick, an analyst at the center. By putting everything in one place, it makes things less complicated, he said.

The new framework includes formulas for measuring emissions reductions associated with capturing a greenhouse gas, transporting it and storing it underground.

The emissions reduction of a system might change from the capture point to the storage point, he explained, since energy is burned to run equipment along the way. In other words, 50 metric tons of captured CO2 may not result in the same level of emissions reduction once the gas is stored, since energy is burned to operate injection equipment and things such as compressors that keep gas at a stable pressure in transport pipelines.

The formulas take all those dynamics into account, said McCormick.

A solution facing growing financial challenges

CCS on coal plants has never been proven at commercial scale. It also is increasingly envisioned for use on natural gas plants and is currently being used on industrial facilities such as fertilizer plants. According to a "blue map" scenario from the International Energy Agency, carbon capture and storage should supply 19 percent of emissions cuts by 2050 if greenhouse gas levels are to be cut in half by that year.

The industry faces ongoing financing challenges. Last year, American Electric Power pulled the plug on a major initiative to retrofit a coal plant out of cost concerns. Last week, the head of an alliance overseeing FutureGen 2.0 said that project was six to seven months behind schedule, partially because of financing issues related to one of the companies participating in the project (ClimateWire, Feb. 9).

The federal budget released this week also included a 15 percent cut in carbon capture research programs at the Department of Energy (ClimateWire, Feb. 14).

Research is moving ahead with existing DOE money.

This week, Duke Energy announced a three-year agreement with the China Huaneng Group calling for an engineering study to determine the feasibility of installing the Chinese company's capture system on Duke Energy's largest power plant in Gibson County, Ind. The company emphasized it would not make any modifications to the 3,145-megawatt plant at this point.

"Our assessment will help put this technology in context with other options," said David Mohler, chief technology officer at Duke Energy, in a statement.

Funding for the Duke initiative would come from the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center, a 2009 coalition announced by U.S. President Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao in November 2009. Half of its $150 million, five-year budget comes from the United States, with more than a fifth of that from the Department of Energy, in addition to private dollars.

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