The continuing quest for advanced biofuels based off of synthetic biology has made an important advance with researchers at the Joint BioENergy Institute (JBEI) — based at the Lawrence Livermore Lab — announcing that they have bio-engineered a combination of two microbes, a yeast and a bacteria, which working together can produce a viable bio-sourced drop-in replacement for D2 diesel fuel.
Talks about a sobering scenario, called Oil Shock Wave played out at the National Summit on Energy Security that simulated a cabinet level crisis meeting following an oil supply disruption that illustrated the profound dependence of our society to imported crude oil and all the vulnerabilities that result from that unhealthy dependence.
To shift the global economy from fossil fuels to renewable energy will require the construction of wind, solar, nuclear, and other installations on a vast scale, significantly altering the face of the planet. Can these new forms of energy approach the scale needed to meet the world’s energy demands?
Many people would love to obtain a green MBA, but are put off by the high costs. This is the second in a series of post that explain how to get financial aid for attending a green MBA program. This post tells readers where to look for scholarships, fellowships, and other types of financial aid, as well as how to create a strategy that will dramatically increase their chances of success at winning not just one source of financial aid, but multiple sources. The first post, I Want a Green MBA, But How Do I Pay for It?, includes information on calculating the costs to attend; how to start cutting costs before you attend; how to get organized for the coming onslaught of admissions and financial aid activity;financial aid forms; and working with financial aid offices at the schools you are thinking about attending.
Yesterday, at the White House, President Obama announced the award of $2.3 billion in Recovery Act Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credits for clean energy manufacturing projects across the United States. The 183 projects in 43 states will generate more than 17,000 high quality clean energy jobs and the domestic manufacturingof advanced clean energy technologies including solar, wind, and efficiency and energy management technologies. This investment will be matched by as much as $5.4 billion in private sector funding likely supporting up to 41,000 additional jobs.
President Obama is faced with some of the same challenges former President Eisenhower faced when he was confronted with a patchwork of county and state highways that impeded interstate commerce. History is repeating itself. President Obama’s goal of securing 25 percent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2025 is restricted by state regulators who fail to cooperate on interstate goals. President Eisenhower granted the Bureau of Public Roads authority to plan and place the new, interstate highways and Steinberg is advocating for the Obama administration to extend the same authority to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in order to update the grid.
Last week, Secretary Chu announcen nearly $300 million in Clean Cities grants to support clean fuels, vehicles, and infrastructure development. The projects are designed to create jobs, limit pollution, and reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil.
The excitement surrounding the biofuels market opportunity has been tempered somewhat by its many challenges, which include ethical questions of food versus fuel, limited availability of inexpensive feedstocks, petroleum price volatility, overcapacity of production and the global recession. However, a two recent reports from both Pike Research and Bio Economic Research Associates forecast that, despite these significant challenges, the combined biodiesel and ethanol markets will reach $247 billion in sales by 2020, up from just $76 billion in 2010. Total job creation, accounting for economic multiplier effects, could reach 123,000 in 2012, 383,000 in 2016, and 807,000 by 2022.
In a presentation before national policymakers and analysts recently, leading clean energy venture capitalists, academics and CEOs unveiled the “Gigaton Throwdown,” an assessment of the nation’s clean energy potential that identifies seven industries capable of creating 5 million clean energy jobs and reducing CO2 emissions by 5-7 gigatons by 2020. The report, a collaborative effort between leading researchers at UC Berkeley, MIT, University of Michigan, Stanford, and Drexel University, and clean tech leaders, challenges Washington policymakers to remove obstacles that keep billions of capital investment dollars sitting on the sidelines.