American Great Lakes Corporation

Renewable Energy Comes of Age

Virtually all developed Nations have declared the need for renewable alternatives to fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas – to power homes and industry while reducing outputs of greenhouse gases. While some still dispute the role of fossil fuel combustion in climate change, the majority of scientists agree that it is a huge and potentially lethal problem that manifests itself in the gradual melting of the polar icecap, sometimes dramatically changing weather patterns and disastrous crop yields.

As the debate intensifies, the focus of interest on biofuels has turned up many flaws in the previously assumed paradigm of benefits to society. Corn ethanol for example has become widely spurned as a solution to greenhouse gas emissions, as it has been demonstrated to use almost as much (some even claim more) fossil fuel energy to produce as it is designed to displace. To make matters even worse, the process uses up valuable croplands, contributing to food shortages and upwards-spiraling food prices. On a global scale, environmentalists and a growing body of citizens and legislators have been shocked and outraged at the impact on crucial watersheds that have been laid waste to make room for crops such as oil palms used to produce biodiesel. Misplaced and poorly planned biofuels incentives have, many claim, caused a far greater negative environmental impact than the end product was designed to solve by displacing fossil fuels.

The previously unquestioned benefit to society of renewable fuels has been brought into serious doubt, even creating a revival of interest in nuclear energy, with its attendant issues of safety and disposal of wastes (3-mile Island, Chernobyl). However, standing out above the crowd of dubious alternatives is the energy potential represented by our new-found ability to harness the waste streams produced by the processing of crops and livestock into food. As the Effenberger Chart points out, there is tremendous potential energy in the wastes produced by agriculture and food processing. This will be achieved through our conversion of these waste streams into methane, for use in generating heat and power in a generator, and even locomotion in the form of a compressed biofuel.

What's Wrong With These Pictures?

In Europe today there are thousands of anaerobic digesters producing methane gas for heat and electricity. Some are directly hooked into the natural gas pipeline supply. In the USA, there are an estimated 110 units and in Canada just 12. In other words, the opportunity in North America is huge, and AmericanGreat Lakes will move quickly to harness it.

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However, wastes are not the only source of feedstocks. "Enegry Crops" such as miscanthus and sweet sorghum that can grow on otherwise unproductive land, offer plentiful feedstocks for digesters that do not comprimise the food chain and can greatly enhance methane gas production from animal manure.


Sweet Sorghum	Miscanthus

While we have focused here on the production and combustion of methane for the purpose of producing local (“distributed”) energy, there is also tremendous potential for reforming the methane into syngas (H2 plus CO), which can be further processed into liquid biofuels that could eventually replace a significant part of the liquid fossil fuels market. As the price of crude oil moves upward, such sustainable local solutions – growing our own energy – become more and more viable.

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