september 2009 issue
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BAckgrounder
The State of Green Power
After false starts dating back to at least the 1970s, are energy solutions once considered absurdly impractical now becoming a reality? Yes they are, say participants in a workshop last spring in Regina
BY NATTALIA LEA, P.ENG.
PEGG Contributor
Over coffee break, while working in the lab as a second-year engineering student, I noticed how warm the columns were in a water treatment system using granulated coal beds. An ensuing bit of pondering and experimentation led to my charcoal bed solar cookie, which won me first place in the world’s first Solar Olympics.
Well, I was in Tech Heaven. The Vancouver Sun even wrote me up, and I signed my rights away in the office of the university’s patent lawyer.
Then reality kicked in. After his trip to New York, the lawyer informed me that a patent wasn’t in the cards — the opportunity to profit in the undeveloped solar market was just too farfetched.
Still, I continued with my undergraduate education in bioresources engineering. It introduced me to the possibilities of a sustainable world — one fed by aquacultures, and powered by the sun and gas from pig manure.
In 1979 I moved from Lotusland to Alberta. Serendipity led me from sewage treatment and environmental engineering to health and safety work to project engineering — and of course, to that inevitable magnet known as Fort McMurray and the world-famous oilsands.
I worked as the lead regulatory design engineer for health, safety and environment on a couple of oilsands projects, and even indulged in a short stint researching sustainable options for an upgrader project.
The year 2009 finds me in Calgary, with my environmental leanings very much intact.
Refreshingly Green
Despite global warming, my case of winter blues this year was worse than ever, precipitated by dismal oil prices, foundering financial markets and viral job losses. The mayhem drove me to seek a sunnier outlook elsewhere — and back to my green-tinged roots.
What would the proponents of alternative power sources have to say now, at the second Canadian Renewable Energy Workshop, March 10 -12 in Regina?
I wasn’t alone in my curiosity. Sponsored by green energy producers, government agencies and suppliers, the event attracted attendees from coast to coast and south of the 49th parallel.
Optimism prevailed among us believers. The basis for renewable energy technologies, after all, has been around for decades — bacterial, yeast or enzyme fermentation for ethanol, bacterial digestion for biogas, and transesterification for biodiesel.
Brazilian vehicles have been burning ethanol since the early 1970s. American vehicles were prematurely introduced to ethanol in the early 1970s, too, although this backfired when engines corroded and seals dried up. Then in the late 1990s, California mandated ethanol usage in gasoline.
Today, in Canada, renewable energy is also in the limelight again.
“What started biofuels was a political movement, but it’s ended up as something to fill the equation to meet the need for alternative energy, benefit the environment and access agricultural subsidies. This is an easy sell within government,” says Keith Wilson, P.Eng. He’s the ethanol and denaturant marketing manager for Elbow River Marketing in Calgary.
Consider legislation and government incentives. The Renewable Fuels Standard calls on all gasoline sold in Canada to contain an average of five per cent renewable content; all diesel, two per cent. Last December Alberta released the Provincial Energy Strategy, which recommends Alberta adopt the standard by 2010, reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about one million tonnes annually.
In addition to a credit program for renewable energy producers, the province has allotted $239 million to support the expanded production and marketing of bioenergy and biofuels.
The U.S. is busily building the industry, too. In the first quarter of 2009, the New American Energy Plan committed $150 billion to clean technologies over the next decade. U.S. legislation also demands that all new vehicles manufactured and sold be flex-vehicles by 2012, forecasting the U.S. demand for biofuels at 36 billion gallons per year by 2022.
That’s a huge jump. Consumption was about 450 million gallons in 2007, according to the National Biodiesel Board in the U.S.
Where Alberta Stands
The truth is that British Columbia, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario are a step ahead of Alberta in making green energy producers feel at home. “We’re perceived to be a bunch of cowboys here,” says Mr. Wilson. “The reality is that we have had cheap energy for a long time.”
Merlin Schmidt, P.Eng., president of Merco Products and Services of Beaumont, agrees. “You’re competing with gasoline. The price of ethanol now tracks the price of gasoline. To make this work, you need to look at the bio-refinery concept, where the biofuel is a byproduct or becomes part of a waste management process.”
Permolex of Red Deer runs Alberta’s sole ethanol plant, producing 40 million litres of ethanol annually. Permolex also produces flour and gluten. Husky’s ethanol plant, produces 130 million litres annually, while utilizing waste heat from its adjacent Lloydminster Upgrader Project and existing infrastructure.
Western Biodiesel of Okotoks, meanwhile, produces 20 million litres annually of tallow-based biodiesel. Its feedstock is waste from a Cargill Foods meat packing plant.
Beyond ethanol, Mr. Schmidt is betting on butanol. “It has higher octane than ethanol, it is not as corrosive and it can be easily integrated into existing fuel storage, transportation and distribution infrastructure, such as pipelines and tank farms.”
Mega-Green
For upcoming projects, the next wave calls for closed-loop energy systems, which could prove Darwinian with only the most efficient plants surviving. Highmark Renewables of Vegreville intends to be among those survivors, as Alberta’s first green energy megaproject.
Planned to include six ethanol plants at a total cost of $705 million, Highmark already produces one MW of power from cattle manure at its feedlot — enough to run the feedlot and light up 700 homes in Vegreville and Two Hills.
The wheat used in Highmark’s plants will be used four times. First, the starch will be used for ethanol production. Next, wheat leftovers will be used to feed the cattle. The cattle excrete waste, of course, and it will be converted into biogas to make electricity to power the ethanol plant.
Even the sludge from the biogas plant has a use. It can become fertilizer or be used for land reclamation by the oil industry. Any surplus power, meanwhile, will go to the grid.
Camelina, or false flax, and Alberta Research Council’s triticale are catching on as cultivated feedstocks. With an oilseed content ranging from 29 to 39 per cent, camelina looks promising to biodiesel producers. Not bad, considering the North American plant used to be considered a weed.
Triticale, with its higher biomass content than wheat, is being dissected for its sugars. These are considered an excellent alternative to polymers in such products as food wrap. Triticale fibres can be used in clothing.
Although it’s been 42 years ago since the research council lab bred triticale, that kind of long lead time is typical for new technology, says Ron Quick, P.Eng., principal of Sustainable Ventures Inc. in Calgary. “It takes time for people to change. With clean renewable technologies, the initial stuff is never going to be cheaper than the status quo.”
Shifting to wind, Mr. Quick notes that the cost of wind-generated electricity is almost on par to the cost of coal-fired electricity. “The problem with wind is that you can’t always produce it when you want it. By the same token, renewable energy isn’t going to replace coal. We’re going to need all the solutions to meet our energy needs.”
Extreme solutions have their drawbacks. “There’s the case for putting solar panels in the Mojave desert and that should be enough to power everybody,” says Mr. Quick, “but at what cost? And what about transmission?”
Towards a Smarter Grid
Mr. Quick foresees Alberta having a grid smart enough to accept everything from distributed generation to alternative and renewable energy. It will also need to manage the fluctuating power demands of users.
Can it be done? In Alberta, great things are possible, Mr. Quick says. “The opportunity’s got to be here in Alberta. We are the energy centre of the country.”
Take pig manure, for example. We may have smirked about producing gas from it in the 1970s. But today, Peace Pork in Grande Prairie has already put this technology into practice.
For the record, Canada is home to some of the world’s leaders in renewable energy — Iogen, GreenField Ethanol, Enerkem, Suncor, Lignol, BIOX, Rothsay and Canadian Bioenergy. These are all at the helm of cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel development.
What’s in the future? Think about this. Some types of green algae are known to double their weight every two hours and can be engineered with a lipid content of up to 50 per cent.
Perhaps there’s a mixed blessing to our recession, as the best minds turn to green energy. Imagine the possibilities. This is our chance, as professionals and Albertans, to create a more sustainable world.
And maybe the next engineering student hit with a green brainwave will actually see that patent happen — and throw something unforeseen into the new energy mix.
Nattalia Lea, P.Eng., a past contributor to The PEGG, became a LEED accredited
professional in 2008. LEED is the trademarked Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. She is the founder
of Sustainable Industrial Development for the 21st Century — a business-industry networking group that meets monthly in Calgary. Visit www.SID21C.com for more information on the group.
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