[Biofuel] Gateway can’t go ahead without full safety plan, Enbridge told
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/gateway-cant-go-ahead-without-full-safety-plan-enbridge-told/article11143741/ Gateway can’t go ahead without full safety plan, Enbridge told NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE Last updated Friday, Apr. 12 2013, 2:03 PM EDT Enbridge Inc. must put in place all of its of voluntary spill and tanker safety plan, fund heavy oil spill research and hold nearly $1-billion in liability coverage if it builds its controversial Northern Gateway project, a federal panel has determined. On Friday morning, the National Energy Board released a lengthy list of potential conditions for Gateway. The list does not constitute approval of the project – that decision is not expected until later this year. But the board said Friday “the publication of potential conditions is a standard step in the hearing process that is mandated by the courts.” The 199 conditions, which stretch over 45 pages, set out the terms under which Enbridge will have to abide if it gains approval for Northern Gateway, which proposes to carry oil sands crude to the British Columbia coast for export. They include requirements that the company file reams of paperwork on First Nations employment, have hefty financial resources at the ready in case of a large spill, fund a research program on heavy oil spills and begin construction by Dec. 31, 2016. They make clear the NEB’s interest in gathering very specific data on the safety of the pipeline, down to advance reports into the pipeline steel that will be used and the techniques that will be employed to weld it. In an interview, Enbridge spokesman Todd Nogier said the early release of the conditions will “provide ample and appropriate opportunity for all regulatory participants to provide their comments before the final argument hearings in June. This is a demonstration of just how inclusive this process is to all participants.” Mr. Nogier noted that it is “pretty standard” for pipeline to face lengthy conditions, but that Enbridge intends to provides its comments on them “directly to the joint review panel when our review is complete.” By comparison, the NEB attached 264 conditions to its support of the Mackenzie Valley natural gas pipeline – but just 22 to its decision on the Canadian portion of TransCanada Corp.'s Keystone XL pipeline. By the Keystone XL measure, the proposed Enbridge conditions are nearly an order of magnitude more numerous, and far more stringent. For example, the NEB asked TransCanada to simply file "a list of pipe that was received from the pipe supplier” before it began pumping oil. With Gateway, the NEB wants Enbridge to provide numerous bits of documentation, including a full engineering report on the steel it intends to use – and that report must be filed three months before the pipe is manufactured. Critics, however, are skeptical, pointing out that the potential conditions make no reference to oil sands expansion, a key concern among environmental groups. In addition, Cabinet must approve the conditions – and has shown a willingness in the past to excise some. “The NEB can suggest all the conditions it wants, but it is up to the minister to make them part of the licence,” said Keith Stewart, a campaign co-ordinator with Greenpeace Canada. “What we have seen in the past is that the NEB makes many recommendations, which are then abandoned or watered down when Cabinet gives its approval,” he added, pointing to the Mackenzie process. Under the draft conditions, Enbridge would be required to: maintain $950-million in liability coverage, including $100-million in “ready cash” that can be accessed within 10 business days of a large spill to pay for cleanup costs help fund a heavy oil spill research program that examines “the behaviour of heavy oils spilled in freshwater and marine aquatic environments.” The program must be developed in consultation with governments and First Nations abide by specific requirements on inspecting its pipeline, including a requirement that it “investigate all dents greater than two per cent of pipe diameter to ensure they are free of gouges and not associated with a weld not load oil tankers until it has installed a substantial spill response and marine safety system. use a “three-layer composite coating or High Performance Composite Coating for the entire pipeline” file a comprehensive “Pipeline Environmental Effects Monitoring Program” and a “Marine Environmental Effects Monitoring Program” within a year of approval notify the NEB within two weeks of any attempt to hire temporary foreign workers give the NEB, three months before it manufactures its pipe, a detailed report of the performance of the materials it intends to use, “summarizing the loading and dynamic effects considered during final design and which confirms that the pipeline has adequate strength to resist these l
[Biofuel] New biodiesel book
Hello all I just finished the job I've been working on. Here it is: The Biodiesel Bible, by Keith Addison, Journey to Forever, 342 pages, 217 illustrations. Learn how to make top-quality biodiesel that will pass all the quality standards requirements every time. We haven't had a failed batch for 11 years! (But if you do have a failed batch we tell you how to rescue it - and how to improve your processing so it won't happen again.) Anyone can learn how to make their own biodiesel. You don't need to be a chemist or an engineer, all technical issues are clearly explained in easily understood terms. There's a lot to learn, but it's a smooth learning curve, you won't go wrong. The idea isn't that you should blindly follow the instructions and do what you're told, but that you should understand what you're doing and why you're doing it. Then you'll be empowered. This is the ONLY book that thoroughly covers the entire subject of making your own biodiesel. There's much more in it than at the Journey to Forever website. It's a pdf e-book. Copy it onto a CD, take it to your local print-shop and have them print it out. It doesn't have to be in colour (you can check colour images on-screen if you need to). Ask for double-sided printing and have them put it in a ring-binder, ideal for your workshop - it won't matter if it gets a little smudged. On-screen, you can use the search commands to find whatever you might be looking for much faster than with a printed book. The many blue underlined hyperlinks in the text are "live": click on them and your browser will take you online to sources of chemicals and equipment, and resources on the Web that will make the whole job of making and using your own biodiesel fuel easier. Web usage researchers have found that reading on-screen is more difficult and more tiring than reading print on paper. For real reading you need a real book. If you send the pdf to a print-on-demand printer, you'll get a real book back, the same as you'd buy in a bookstore. To buy The Biodiesel Bible, pay US$38.50 to my PayPal account and I will email you a download link within 24 hours. Make sure to clear the email address ke...@journeytoforever.org in your spam filter, and add it to your address book. All best Keith ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
[Biofuel] Enzymes from horse feces could hold secrets to streamlining biofuel production
http://phys.org/news/2013-04-enzymes-horse-feces-secrets-biofuel.html Enzymes from horse feces could hold secrets to streamlining biofuel production April 11, 2013 Stepping into unexplored territory in efforts to use corn stalks, grass and other non-food plants to make biofuels, scientists today described the discovery of a potential treasure-trove of candidate enzymes in fungi thriving in the feces and intestinal tracts of horses. They reported on these enzymes—the key to economical production of biofuels from non-food plant material—at the 245th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). Michelle A. O'Malley, Ph.D., explained that cellulose is the raw material for making biofuels from non-food plant materials. Cellulose, however, is sealed away inside a tough network of lignin within the cell walls of plants. To produce biofuels from these materials, lignin must be removed through an expensive pretreatment process. Then, a collection of enzymes breaks cellulose down into sugars. Finally, in a process much like production of beer or wine, those sugars become food for microbes to ferment into alcohol for fuel, ingredients for plastics and other materials. "Nature has made it very difficult and expensive to access the cellulose in plants. Additionally, we need to find the best enzyme mixture to convert that cellulose into sugar," O'Malley said. "We have discovered a fungus from the digestive tract of a horse that addresses both issues—it thrives on lignin-rich plants and converts these materials into sugars for the animal. It is a potential treasure trove of enzymes for solving this problem and reducing the cost of biofuels." The digestive tracts of large herbivores like cows and horses, which can digest lignin-rich grasses, have been a well-trodden path for scientists seeking such enzymes. But in the past, their focus has been mainly on enzymes in bacteria, rather than fungi, which include yeasts and molds. The goal: Take the genes that produce such enzymes from gut fungi and genetically engineer them into yeasts. Yeasts already are used in time-tested processes on an industrial scale to produce huge quantities of antibiotics, foods and other products. That proven production technology would mean clear sailing for commercial production of biofuels. O'Malley explained that several genes from gut fungi are unique compared to bacteria, since the fungi grow invasively into plant material. Also, they secrete powerful enzyme complexes that work together to break down cellulose. Until now, however, fungi have largely been ignored in the search for new biofuel enzymes—and for good reason. "There was relatively little scientific knowledge about fungi in the digestive tracts of these large animals," O'Malley explained. "They are there, but in very low numbers, making it difficult to study. The low concentrations also fostered a misconception that fungi must be unimportant in digestion of cellulose. And it is extremely difficult to isolate and grow these fungi to study their enzymes." O'Malley's research group at the University of California, Santa Barbara, collaborated with researchers at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. They worked with a gut fungus isolated from horse feces and identified all the genetic material that the fungus uses to manufacture enzymes and other proteins. This collection of protein-encoding material—the fungus's so-called "transcriptome"—led to the identification of literally hundreds of enzymes capable of breaking through that tough lignin in plant cell walls and the cellulose within. The team now is shifting through that bounty to identify the most active enzyme and working on methods for transferring the genetic machinery for its production into the yeast currently used in industrial processes. More information: Abstract Anaerobic gut fungi are attractive lignocellulose-degrading microbes, yet the enzymatic mechanisms responsible for fungal hydrolysis remain unknown. To discover novel biomass-degrading enzymes and characterize their coordinated expression in fungi, we have implemented methods to sustain an anaerobic fungus in batch culture and analyze its transcriptome via RNAseq under several growth conditions. A new species of gut fungus from the Piromyces genus was isolated from the digestive tract of a horse, and its proliferation was monitored via fermentation gas production. Fungi exhibited high enzymatic reactivity against cellulosic and lignocellulosic substrates (filter paper, reed canary grass), which was repressed in the presence of simple sugars. Through strand-specific RNAseq and use of the TRINITY assembly platform, we were able to assemble novel cellulase genes de novo from >27,000 transcripts without the need for genomic sequence information. We will discuss the coordinated regulation patterns observed for important e
[Biofuel] Biofuels are not the problem
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-a-environment/293427-biofuels-are-not-the-problem Biofuels are not the problem By Jeff Lautt, CEO, POET 04/12/13 10:15 AM ET You’re paying more for gasoline. The oil industry’s pocketing the profits. And they don’t want you to know it. Complaints about biofuels this year are the latest shiny ball for the oil industry, meant to distract the public from what’s really biting into their household budgets. Refining margins this year have been at record levels. Oil companies are making more money, even as gas prices for February and March were the highest in history. If you want to know why you’re paying more at the pump, look no further than oil executives’ pockets. How they keep a straight face while espousing concern for American drivers is beyond me. I have no problem with an industry making money. Oil is a business, and they have every right to profits. What I object to is them pretending their substantial profits don’t exist while they point the finger at renewable fuel as the cause of higher prices. They need to own up to where our extra money spent at the pump is going. Expect to see more of the same misdirection from the oil industry through the rest of 2013. This year is pivotal for that industry because starting in 2014, they will have to begin offering consumers the option of ethanol blends such as E15 (15 percent ethanol) in order to meet the country’s renewable fuel targets. Rather than help America make a transition, they have spent their money on lobbying, press conferences, lawsuits, “research” and similar tactics to block consumer choice. In much of America, drivers can choose between 90 percent gasoline or 100 percent gasoline. And that’s how the oil industry wants to keep it. E15 offers an additional option, one that threatens to further erode oil companies’ gasoline market share as it ushers in a new kind of biofuel from sources such as crop residue, grasses and wood waste. Those opposed to E15 do not have to use it. But those who want to use it should be allowed to do so. This is the most tested fuel component in history, approved by the EPA for use in vehicles 2001 or newer. The time to start offering it has come. This transition to making higher biofuel blends available is important. In 2005 our nation imported 60 percent of its oil. By 2011, that was down to 45 percent. And while new oil production gets the headlines, the truth is biofuel growth led the way toward that reduction. Our country’s farmers now provide energy for America. Their work – along with new and improving biorefinery technology – will lead the way toward an even better future. To get there, we need to see through the smokescreens and distractions. Biofuels are not the problem. An over-reliance on petroleum is the problem, one that that leaves us vulnerable to escalating prices at the pump. The solution is diversity of fuel and consumer choice. And that is exactly what biofuel provides. ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
[Biofuel] Elizabeth Warren Accuses Regulators Of Protecting Banks Over Homeowners
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2013/04/elizabeth-warren-banking-hearing-regulators-homeowners.php Elizabeth Warren Accuses Regulators Of Protecting Banks Over Homeowners By Sahil Kapur April 12, 2013, 11:38 AM [On-line article contains video] Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has once again used her perch on the Banking Committee on Thursday to publicly chastise federal regulators — this time for allegedly protecting financial institutions against homeowners who have been victimized by them. In just four months as a senator, the former Harvard law professor and consumer advocate has repeatedly seized opportunities to highlight questionable banking practices and ostensibly lax regulatory responses, in a chamber frequently criticized for its coziness with Wall Street. In the latest instance, Warren accused two top regulators at a Banking subcommittee hearing of withholding information they said they possessed about improper foreclosures or other abusive financial practices from victims of those practices seeking recourse in court. The regulators — Daniel Stipano of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and Richard Ashton of the Federal Reserve board of governors — said they haven’t made a decision about what information they will provide. They didn’t elaborate. Warren asked, “So you have made a decision to protect the banks but not a decision to tell the families who were illegally foreclosed against?” “We haven’t made a decision about what information we would provide the individuals,” Ashton responded. Stipano agreed. “So I just want to make sure I get this straight,” Warren said. “Families get pennies on the dollar in the settlement for having been the victims of illegal activities or mistakes in the banks’ activities. You now know individual cases where the banks violated the law and you’re not going to tell the homeowners — or at least it’s not clear yet whether or not you’re going to do that?” The regulators maintained that they haven’t decided what to tell the homeowners. The video of the exchange was posted to YouTube by Warren’s office. Notwithstanding her eagerness to publicize her consumer protection bona fides, Warren has been press-shy about issues outside her policy forte. Her handlers don’t expect that to change. Unlike many senators, who thrive on the attention, she tends to avoid reporters in the Capitol. As her aides see it, her aim is to learn how to use the tools at her disposal to have the most impact. ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
[Biofuel] Can We Kiss Internet Privacy Goodbye?
https://inthesetimes.com/article/14853/cyber_police_return/ Can We Kiss Internet Privacy Goodbye? April 11, 2013 BY Ian Becker [Multiple links in on-line article] The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act is moving swiftly again–and this time, Obama’s veto is less certain. The “new” version poses the same threats to privacy rights that alarmed the White House a year ago. When the House introduced the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) in 2011, purportedly to help prevent cyber threats to national security, the measure was criticized heavily by Internet policy watchdogs and civil liberties groups, who argued that the bill would likely encroach on internet users’ Fourth amendment rights. The bill passed the House in the spring of 2012 but died in the Senate under threat of a White House veto. Now CISPA is back, reintroduced in the House by its original author, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.). By all accounts, the “new” version poses the same threats to privacy rights that alarmed the White House a year ago. In an unusual secret session on Wednesday, the House Intelligence committee passed the bill without additional privacy protections proposed by Jan Schakowsky (D.-Ill.). The measure could be up for a full House vote as soon as next week. This time around, it remains to be seen whether the president will issue a veto. In January, Obama unilaterally enacted a major provision of the bill when he signed an executive order directing federal agencies to share “cyber security” information with private companies. CISPA opponents are as vocal as ever. As part of a “week of action” in March, thousands of websites including Craigslist and Reddit broadcast an “action tool” that invited users to send an automated statement of opposition to Congress, and a WhiteHouse.gov petition gathered more than 100,000 signatures—enough to earn a response from the administration, which is forthcoming. You can sign a petition or find further actions at the websites of the ACLU, Demand Progress, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. ___ Sustainablelorgbiofuel mailing list Sustainablelorgbiofuel@lists.sustainablelists.org http://lists.eruditium.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel
[Biofuel] Digital Disconnect: Robert McChesney on "How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy"
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/15692-digital-disconnect-robert-mcchesney-on-how-capitalism-is-turning-the-internet-against-democracy Digital Disconnect: Robert McChesney on "How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy" Friday, 12 April 2013 09:05 By Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez, Democracy Now! | Interview and Video [On-line article includes video and links] Longtime media-reform advocate Robert McChesney looks at how the future of American politics could be largely determined by who controls the Internet in his newest book. Digital Disconnect talks about the difference between the mythology of the Internet, the hope of the Internet, that it would empower people and make democracy triumphant, versus the reality, which is that large corporate monopolies and the government, working together, are taking away the promise of the Internet to suit their interests," says McChesney, the co-founder of Free Press and the National Conference for Media Reform. His book begins with a simple claim: "The ways capitalism works and does not work determine the role the Internet might play in society." TRANSCRIPT: AMY GOODMAN: We are on the road in Denver, Colorado, at the first day of the National Conference for Media Reform, where close to 2,000 people have gathered, broadcasting from Denver Open Media. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, in a moment we’ll be joined by Robert McChesney, co-founder of Free Press, the organizers of the National Conference for Media Reform. He is just out with a new book called Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy. The book begins with a simple claim, quote: "The ways capitalism works and does not work determine the role the Internet might play in society." Before Bob joins us, I want to play a comment from another media activist who also dedicated much of his life to the Internet and democracy: Aaron Swartz. Aaron committed suicide in January. At the time of his death, he was facing up to 35 years in prison and a $1 million fine if convicted for using computers at MIT to download millions of academic articles provided by the nonprofit research service JSTOR. He was 26 years old. Attorneys for the late Internet freedom activist have filed an ethics complaint over his federal prosecution. His death prompted an outpouring of frustration and anger over his prosecution. On Capitol Hill, Democratic Representative Zoe Lofgren of California introduced a bill dubbed "Aaron’s Law" to modify the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by decriminalizing violations of "terms of service" agreements. This is Aaron Swartz speaking in 2010 at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He spoke just about JSTOR. AARON SWARTZ: I am going to give you one example of something not as big as saving Congress, but something important that you can do right here at your own school. It just requires you willing to get your shoes a little bit muddy. By virtue of being students at a major U.S. university, I assume that you have access to a wide variety of scholarly journals. Pretty much every major university in the United States pays these sort of licensing fees to organizations like JSTOR and Thomson and ISI to get access to scholarly journals that the rest of the world can’t read. And these licensing fees are substantial. And they’re so substantial that people who are studying in India, instead of studying in the United States, don’t have this kind of access. They’re locked out from all of these journals. They’re locked out from our entire scientific legacy. I mean, a lot of these journal articles, they go back to the Enlightenment. Every time someone has written down a scientific paper, it’s been scanned and digitized and put in these collections. That is a legacy that has been brought to us by the history of people doing interesting work, the history of scientists. It’s a legacy that should belong to us as a commons, as a people, but instead it’s been locked up and put online by a handful of for-profit corporations who then try and get the maximum profit they can out of it. Now, there are people, good people, trying to change this with the open access movement. So, all journals, going forward, they’re encouraging them to publish their work as open access, so open on the Internet, available for download by everybody, available for free copying, and perhaps even modification with attribution and notice. AMY GOODMAN: That was Aaron Swartz speaking in 2010. He committed suicide in January. For more, we’re joined here at the Free Press’s National Conference for Media Reform by one of its founders, Bob McChesney, professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, author of a number of books on media and politics. His latest is called Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy . You can read the first chapter at our webs
