Telephone poles to biofuels

When we think of feedstocks for biofuels, generally we think of harvesting something (corn, switchgrass, etc.) that we grew in a field. But there is cellulose in all kinds of things, from newspaper to banana peels to, that’s right, telephone poles.

Canadian biofuel company Enerkemis looking for a plentiful, cheap, and interesting source for its cellulose, and they’ve decided that telephone poles might be a good bet. In fact, telephone poles are what biofuels companies are starting to call “negative cost feedstocks” or anything that you get paid to take away.

Enerkem has a thermo-chemical process that turns wood into ethanol. And though old telephones are less ideal than new wood, because they contain various treatment chemicals, they’re perfectly suitable for the process.

The plant will be turning old telephone poles into about 1.3 million gallons of ethanol per year after it goes online in a couple of months.

Of course, these negative cost feedstocks are only going to last so long, and won’t be useful on a significant scale. But for helping cellulosic ethanol companies get their start and begin to scale up their solutions, they’re perfect.

Via Earth2Tech

Climate Change News - Report: Colorado gaining ?green collar? jobs
Report: Colorado gaining “green collar” jobs Associated Press: A group that promotes solar energy research says the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries provided more than 91,000 jobs — from janitors to engineers — in Colorado in 2007. The American Solar Energy Society released a report Thursday that said "green" industries generated $10.3 billion […]

Good Explanations Are Not About You

Explainist (yay! they're back) has a new post about Explanatory Filenames and how to think about the person on the other end. Quote:

But think about the guy on the other end who receives proposals from 10
different candidates on the deadline day, all with the same filename.
The first thing he has to do is rename each of them. If you re thinking
about your audience, you d save the proposal with your company s name
in the filename e.g. TomCo-Annihilatrix_Proposal.pdf.

I think the key point is about the perspective of the explainer. As I wrote in a comment, it s this awareness of the other person and their needs that helps so
much with explanation - being able to put the idea in the other
person s context.

Another example is giving driving directions (before Google Maps anyway). I bet that good explainers are also good at giving directions. When I've been lost in the past, I could see that the person giving directions had a hard time understanding what it was like to drive from A to B for the first time. Good directions account for the driver's perspective and context just like good explanations account for the learner's perspective and context.

Edublog Awards: Common Craft Needs Your Vote

This is coming a bit late, but The Common Craft Show has been nominated for an Eddie - An Edublog Award in the category of Best Educational Use of Video/Visual. The polls close tomorrow - we're hoping for a late-breaking victory. Thanks!

Update: Thanks so much everyone. We came in second, which makes us proud. You can view the results by clicking "view result" on the poll. It wasn't even close really, Steve Spangler's Blog, which focuses on science education, got the lion's share of votes. Congrats Steve!

Smaller Gifts for Whomever
These little gifts are perfect for stocking stuffers or people you don’t know as well (like your Secret Santa at work or your child’s teacher.) Wrap-N-Mat - $6.95 - Great for students and co-workers, Wrap-N-Mat eliminates the need for always packing that sandwich in a ziploc bag. The Bubble Roome Goodness Bar - $7.00 - Choose from […]

Energy companies competing for desert land

Not since the Gold Rush has there been such a stampede to stake out land in California and surrounding states, except this time, solar energy is the prize. The Bureau of Land Management has been swamped with applications for solar projects across millions of acres of desert since July.

The bureau has seen a 78% increase in applications, now totaling 223. The applicants are all looking to capitalize on desert land in California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado, with California leading with 107 applications alone. All of the projects are 10 MW or larger, with many proposing hundreds of megawatts. All together the projects would take up 2.3 million acres of land and would generate many, many gigawatts (the 75 projects listed on the BLM website total 51.6 GW and that’s only a third of the applicants).

Out of the 223 applications, only 2 projects have progressed to the stage of environmental reviews, the real “make or break” when it comes to issuing permits (one is a 400 MW solar-thermal plant proposed by BrightSource, the other a 750 MW solar-thermal plant proposed by Stirling Energy). This is partly because many projects don’t ever get past the application, but largely because the BLM is understaffed for this kind of demand and the bureau can’t keep up. The BLM is looking to the new administration to increase their budget so more employees can be hired to process these requests.

This is a great example of where the new administration could back up their “green jobs” agenda. Not only would the BLM be hiring, but imagine the jobs created by these large solar projects that would likely take years to get up and running. If even a few of these projects end up getting approved, this could mean lots of jobs and lots of new solar energy.

via Greentech Media

Speech in Poznan
To all of you who have worked here in Poznan and to the many of you who have worked at conferences throughout this process, thank you for your extraordinary efforts and for your remarkable achievements.

Climate Change News -
Another year, another Vanity Fair ‘green’ issue. This time, the cover features rock-amazon-godess-like Madonna as she balances a boulder on her back. Looking strong never looked so sweet. And if you subscribe to Vanity Fair this month, you’ll even receive the ‘Green […]

My Remarks at the Democratic National Convention, August 28, 2008
One of the greatest gifts of our democracy is the opportunity it offers us every four years to change course.

MC: ?We Have 10K Advertisers?
I stand corrected. In a post yesterday about Yodle’s funding I said “Merchant Circle said previously it had around 5K advertisers.” Apparently that number has doubled. According to a post by CEO Ben Smith yesterday, MerchantCircle “has over 10,000 advertisers.”