Bio

• Ethanol's not just for the midwest anymore - Green Car Congress brings tidings of the east coast's first ethanol plant, which will be constructed next year in North Carolina. The $150 million plant will produce 114 million gallons of ethanol per year, making it one of the larger ethanol plants in the country, and will be able to use both corn and sorghum as a feedstock.

• The US Agricultural Research Service is looking to utilize enzymes produced by Shiitake mushrooms to improve the efficiency of the production of ethanol and other biofuels. Scientists have successfully located and isolated the gene responsible for the production of xylanase, a key enzyme used in the fungus's digestion of wood, and are working on enhancing and transferring its function for use in biorefineries.

• Treehugger points to a story from a couple months ago that's worth a late link - Coors is using its beer-brewing waste, including spilled beer, to produce 1.5 million gallons of fuel-grade ethanol a year. This is particularly welcome news since, let's face it, peak oil etc aside there's nothing more wasteful than spilled beer.

Electricity

• Toyota is accelerating its efforts to develop an economically viable lithium ion battery for its hybrid cars. Lithium ion batteries provide double the power density of the best nickel metal-hydride (NiMH) batteries currently in use, and Toyota hopes to maintain its leadership in hybrid technology by being the first to deploy them in its cars.

Fossil Fuels

• There's a lot in the news about high natural gas prices in the US, and there'll be a lot more as we go deeper into winter. This long piece from the US News and World Report, "The Big Chill," is particularly worth your time to read, looking at both the causes of high prices and the effects already evident in different sectors of the economy (via The Cost of Energy). The Engineer-Poet believes that home cogeneration of electricity and heat could have turned this crisis into a yawn, and discusses why in a good post + comments (including an exchange with Heiko, who has a new blog on energy issues that's well worth a read).

• The US Department of Energy (DOE) is researching microhole technology, a suite of technologies used to drill oil and gas wells less than 4.75 inches in diameter. DOE estimates that this technique could lower the cost of drilling shallow to moderate depth holes, reducing exploratory drilling costs by as much as a third and cutting development drilling costs in half. Via Peak Oil Optimist, who sadly called it quits at the end of the month. Thanks Rob - the energy blogosphere will be poorer for your absence (maybe slightly less poorer if you e-mail me interesting tips you come across in the future...)

• DOE took the opportunity of all the 'attention' given to the US during the recent UNFCCC meeting in Montreal to announce a formal agreement reached between DOE and a private sector consortium for the construction of FutureGen, a prototype coal-fueled power plant that will produce electricity and hydrogen with zero emissions. FutureGen, a Bush administration initiative first announced in 2003, will combine coal gasification and carbon sequestration, will cost nearly $1B, and is planned to be fully operational by 2012. (More information is available on DOE's FutureGen website)

• Leading Fischer-Tropsch coal- and gas-to-liquids company Rentech has announced a new patent for an 'Integrated Fischer-Tropsch and Power Production Plant with Low Carbon Dioxide Emissions', which will generate synthetic vehicle fuel and electricity from coal in a combined cycle while sequestering most of the CO2. While none of the component technologies are new, Rentech would be the first to integrate them in a single plant. Happy 80th birthday, Fischer-Tropsch fuels - you're looking spry!

• A German company is constructing a pilot plant for the production of synthetic fuel oil and diesel fuel from waste materials including waste oil, scavenge oil, and plastics. While details on the plant are scarce, the company claims that their technology could produce diesel for about 30 percent less than its current cost at the pump.

• Norweigan oil and gas company Statoil believes that there are three trillion tonnes of (currently unrecoverable) coal reserves located beneath the seabed off the coast of Norway. For some perspective, the IEA currently estimates that the world has 'only' about one trillion tonnes of economically recoverable coal reserves. While these underwater reserves are currently not recoverable, economically or otherwise, there is hope that improvements in coal gasification techniques currently used to extract gas from shallow onshore coal deposits in former Soviet countries might be used in the future to harness this enormous resource.

Hydrogen

• A new project in Saskatchewan will be the world's first to pull off a particularly green triple play: producing hydrogen fuel using captured landfill gas (LFG) as a feedstock in a process powered by solar thermal power. The Engineer-Poet takes a closer look, and finds the concept 'worth thinking about'.

• Geneticists have determined the complete genome sequence for a microbe that consumes poisonous carbon monoxide and water and produces hydrogen gas as waste. Isolated from a hot spring on a Russian volcanic island, the microbe could assist with the future bioproduction of hydrogen, and may yield insights into the functioning of other extremophilic microbes.

Nuclear

• South Africa has awarded a contract to Mitsubishi to help build a demonstration pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR) at an existing conventional nuclear facility near Cape Town. PBMR uses an advanced reactor design that is smaller, simpler, safer, and less expensive than conventional designs, and has attracted significant attention from South Africa, China, and other developing countries. Via NEI, who also links to a good explanation and discussion of the technology over at the Energy Blog.

Solar

• A U.S. Army housing community in Hawaii is set to become the world's largest solar-powered residential community. 3,000 new homes on sunny Oahu will be powered by a total of 7 MW capacity of thin film PV cells.

• New Jersey's infamous Meadowlands may become home to one of the largest photovoltaic solar projects in the country, as the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission has approved a study on the feasibility of installing 5 MW of PV panels on remediated landfill sites and warehouse roofs in the area.

• Honda has announced a plan to begin mass production of its proprietary thin film solar cell in 2007. With the production of its copper, indium, gallium and selenium (CIGS) cells, Honda will be the first automotive company to enter the PV market.

• Dwelling still within the realm of solar-car convergence, Green Car Congress notes a new must-have for environmentally conscious drivers looking to make a statement: solar panel kits for your hybrid car. Two conformable solar panels added to the roof of your Toyota Prius can boost fuel economy by 10%, although they aren't likely to ever pay for themselves at a cost of $2,200 for a kit. Still, it may be a small price to pay for the added green cred visibility, and future versions of this technology may become much more cost effective.

Water

• Construction has restarted on China's ginormous Xiluodu hydroelectric plant, which will generate 12.6 GW of electricity when completed in 2015 - second only to the 22.4 GW Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest. The Xiluodu project, located on the Yangtze River, had been temporarily halted due to environmental concerns.

• Meanwhile, back in the US, the mountaintop reservoir for a 440 MW capacity hydroelectric plant in Missouri was breached for (currently) unknown reasons, resulting in serious flooding. 1.5 billion gallons of water were released just 30 minutes, destroying homes and forcing the evacuation of the area. Fortunately, there were no reported deaths.

• FuturePundit notes a CSM piece on a big wave of mini-hydro projects in the US, as high energy prices as well as tax incentives and regulatory relief from the 2005 energy bill have resulted in a surge of proposals for small hydroelectric plants. While most of the 104 proposed plants will probably never be built, they represent 2.4 GW of potential added hydropower capacity. Perhaps even more intriguingly, the article notes federal research indicating that a potential 17 GW of generating capacity could be added by converting more hydropower plants to produce electricity.

• The European Marine Energy Center (EMEC) in Orkney, Scotland has been officially certified for the performance verification of wave energy devices. The first- (and-only-) of-its-kind research center will accelerate the development of wave energy technology by providing four underwater testing berths (two of which already seem to be spoken for) connected to transmission cables and monitoring devices that will allow new devices to be tested under a wide variety of sea and weather conditions.

• The Christian Science Monitor has an interesting story about a former jeweler-turned-inventor who is getting some attention for his underwater electric kite, essentially a free-floating underwater turbine anchored to the river floor. While he has only built small projects based on the concept so far, he has designed prototypes for use in New York's East River, Alaska's Yukon, the Caqueta River in Colombia, and a river in Zambia.

• Researchers in Norway and the Netherlands have each developed devices that generate electricity where the river meets the sea, by taking advantage of salinity differences between fresh water and salt water. The devices use different types of membranes which are all currently too expensive to be produced profitably, but the inventors - and the EU, who is funding the Norweigan research - believe that the technology may be competitive in 5 to 10 years.

Wind

• This month saw a huge 257-turbine, 360.5 MW capacity wind farm go online in Iowa. The project, one of the largest in the nation, raised the renewable portion of owner MidAmerican Energy's electricity portfolio to 9 percent of its total capacity, similarly one of the highest proportions in the country.

• Last month we noted efforts by American Indian tribes to attract funding for wind energy projects on tribal lands from US cities looking to meet renewable energy quotas. This month we're happy to note the opening of the largest wind farm on American Indian lands to date, the 50 MW-capacity Kumeyaay Wind project on the Campo Indian Reservation near San Diego, California. The 25-turbine wind farm will generate revenue for the 300-member Campo Tribe from the lease of the land and from royalties for electricity generated, and the electricity itself will go to San Diego Gas & Electric and help it meet California's renewable energy portfolio requirements.

• The Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management plans to significantly expand its wind energy program for public lands. The completion of a new environmental impact statement includes changes in land-use plans in nine western states to allow for the installation of over 3,200 MW of wind energy capacity - more than a third of our current nationwide total of 9,200 MW capacity (via The Cost of Energy)

• Treehugger takes a look at a Canadian company's innovative new design for an an airborne wind turbine, and scores an interesting interview with the inventor. The Magenn Air Rotor takes advantage of stronger air currents at higher altitudes (400'-1000' above the ground), yielding output levels almost double that of conventional turbines. 4 kW residential units will be available in the spring of 2006, and the inventor hopes that the device will eventually find applications in emergency and disaster relief situations.