Category Archives: biofuel

The Day After Memorial Day – In all fairness to the Energy Conglomerates

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The US Military is the largest single user of carbon based energy in the World. When you toss in the other worlds militaries, if we just cut the militaries of the world to patrolling borders global warming would backup by decades. Not only that but the Energy Companies are pushed around by the military big time. No military and the pirates take tankers…No Iraq war no Iraqui oil…No defense against China they suck all the world’s resources up like a vacuum cleaner…Do I feel sorry for the Energy Companies or the Military? No they deserve each other I just don’t think we deserve them. GO AWAY.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/29925

I am not going to reprint the total article here…this guy did a lot of work on graphs and charts and things but it is interesting and he is not the only person to report on this. It is important to note that the Energy Bulletin has been adopted by the Post Carbon Institute (http://www.postcarbon.org/). Wonder when that happened?

Published May 20 2007 by Energy Bulletin
Archived May 21 2007

US military energy consumption- facts and figures

by Sohbet Karbuz

As the saying goes, facts are many but the truth is one. The truth is that the U.S. military is the single largest consumer of energy in the world. But as a wise man once said, don’t confuse facts with reality. The reality is that even U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) does not know precisely where and how much energy it consumes. This is my Fact Zero.

Below I give some facts and figures on U.S. military oil consumption based mostly on official statistics.[1] If you want to reproduce them make sure you read every footnote even if you need to put on your glasses. Also read the footnotes in this article.

FACT 1: The DoD’s total primary energy consumption in Fiscal Year 2006 was 1100 trillion Btu. It corresponds to only 1% of total energy consumption in USA. For those of you who think that this is not much then read the next sentence.

Nigeria, with a population of more than 140 million, consumes as much energy as the U.S. military.

The DoD per capita[2] energy consumption (524 trillion Btu) is 10 times more than per capita energy consumption in China, or 30 times more than that of Africa.

Total final energy consumption (called site delivered energy by DoD) of the DoD was 844 trillion Btu in FY2006FACT 2: Defense Energy Support Center (DESC) sold $13 billion of energy to DoD services in FY2006. More than half of it was to Air Force.

FACT 3: Oil accounts for more than three-fourths of DoD’s total site delivered energy consumption. Oil is followed by electricity (slightly more than 10%) and natural gas (nearly 10%). In terms of fuel types, jet fuel (JP-8)[3] accounts for more than 50% of total DoD energy consumption, and nearly 60% of its mobility[4] fuel.

FACT 4: Nearly three quarters of DoD site delivered energy is consumed by vehicles (or for mobility if you like). Only one quarter is consumed in buildings and facilities.[5]FACT 5: DoD consumed 97 million gasoline gallon equivalent in its non-tactical vehicles and for that it spent 238 million dollars.

FACT 6: In 2006, its oil consumption was down to 117 million barrels (or 320 thousand barrels per day),[10] despite increasing activity in Iraq and Afghanistan.

FACT 7: In 2006, for example, DESC reports in its Factbook that it sold 131 million barrels of oil (or 358 kbd) to DoD but DoD Federal Energy Management Report states that DoD consumed 117 million barrels (or 320 kbd).[12]

FACT 8: According to 2007 CIA World Fact Book there are only 35 countries in the world consuming more oil than DoD.

FACT 9: There exist no official estimates. Let me know if you see or hear one. According to my most pessimist estimates it is about 150 thousand barrels per day FACT 10: Whatever the true figure oil consumed by the U.S. military does not show up in world oil demand. See for more explanation under item #425 in October 2004 issue of ASPO Newsletter.

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For more of this incredibly insightful and well written article please go to the above website and see it..Even the Military is aware that it is seen as a BIG FAT energy PIG, but it is also aware that NO OIL = NO WAR

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/addressing-the-militarys-energy-efficiency/

Addressing the Military’s Energy Inefficiency

By John Lorinc

 

Report

The folks who gave the world the Hummer, the poster child of fuel inefficiency, want to spawn a new generation of eco-friendly military equipment with cross-over potential in the “civilian sector,” say a group of retired American military officers who released a sharply worded report on Monday calling on the Department of Defense to reduce its “carbon bootprint.”

“The American military gave you the Humvee, and now we’re taking it back,” said retired Adm. John Nathman, the former vice chief of naval operations and an adviser to President Obama, in a conference call on Monday. “You’re going to see some fairly dramatic movement by the Department of Defense in terms of public visibility.”

The report, “Powering America’s Defense,” was published by CNA Analysis and Solutions, a research group based in Alexandria, Va., that issued a previous study on defense and energy security in 2007.

In the new study’s preface, 12 retired military officers lay out the case for weaning the military — and the country — off oil:

Many of our overseas deployments were de?ned, in part, by the strategic decision to ensure the free ?ow of oil, to the U.S. and to our allies. Many of the troops we commanded were aided by air cover from high-thrust delivery systems that only an energy-intense society can provide. Many of these same troops were often burdened and imperiled by battle?eld systems that were energy-inef?cient. Some of the attacks on our troops and on American civilians have been supported by funds from the sale of oil. Our nation’s energy choices have saved lives; they have also cost lives.

As we consider America’s current energy posture, we do so from a singular perspective: We gauge our energy choices solely by their impact on America’s national security. Our dependence on foreign oil reduces our international leverage, places our troops in dangerous global regions, funds nations and individuals who wish us harm, and weakens our economy; our dependency and inef?cient use of oil also puts our troops at risk.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee ranking minority member chairman Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, told The Associated Press that he strongly agreed “with the stark conclusions” of the report, whose authors point out that fluctuating oil prices, dependence on foreign resources and an ailing electricity grid imperil national security both at home and abroad.

“Climate change is a threat multiplier,” said Vice Adm. Dennis V. McGinn, a retired officer and former commander of the Third Fleet.

Defense officials have previously described the American military as likely the world’s largest consumer of petroleum products, with an annual outlay in excess of $13 billion.

Each $1 per barrel increase in oil prices translates into $130 million of extra cost.

Calls for the military to address its environmental performance are not new. But in the past year or so, energy efficiency seems have become more of a priority, from a new solar wall installation at Fort Drum to the purchase of a large electric vehicle fleet for military bases.

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After all is said and done, are we safer with all this energy consumption? I think not:

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/05/19-9

Published on Tuesday, May 19, 2009 by Agence France Presse

US Energy Use a National Security Threat: Study

WASHINGTON – US dependence on fossil fuels and a vulnerable electric grid pose a perilous threat to the country’s national security, retired military officers warned Monday in a report.

The threat requires urgent action and the Defense Department should lead the way in transforming America’s energy use by aggressively pursuing efficiency measures and renewable sources, said the report by CNA, a nonprofit research group.

“Our dependence on foreign oil reduces our international leverage, places our troops in dangerous global regions, funds nations and individuals who wish us harm, and weakens our economy,” it said.

“The market for fossil fuels will be shaped by finite supplies and increasing demand. Continuing our heavy reliance on these fuels is a security risk,” said the report titled “Powering America’s Defense: Energy and the Risks to National Security.”

The authors, top ranked retired officers from the US Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, also point to the strained domestic electricity network as a possible hazard for US military bases.

“Our domestic electrical system is also a current and significant risk to our national security: many of our large military installations rely on power from a fragile electrical grid that is vulnerable to malicious attacks or interruptions caused by natural disasters,” it said.

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Archer Daniels Midland And Greenwash – They profess green but consistenly pollute

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We are going to trust these folks with our watershed?

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13646

Green Fuel’s Dirty Secret

by Sasha Lilley, Special to CorpWatch
June 1st, 2006

The town of Columbus, Nebraska, bills itself as a “City of Power and Progress.” If Archer Daniels Midland gets its way, that power will be partially generated by coal, one of the dirtiest forms of energy. When burned, it emits carcinogenic pollutants and high levels of the greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

Ironically this coal will be used to generate ethanol, a plant-based petroleum substitute that has been hyped by both environmentalists and President George Bush as the green fuel of the future. The agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is the largest U.S. producer of ethanol, which it makes by distilling corn. ADM also operates coal-fired plants at its company base in Decatur, Illinois, and Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and is currently adding another coal-powered facility at its Clinton, Iowa ethanol plant.

That’s not all. “[Ethanol] plants themselves – not even the part producing the energy – produce a lot of air pollution,” says Mike Ewall, director of the Energy Justice Network. “The EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) has cracked down in recent years on a lot of Midwestern ethanol plants for excessive levels of carbon monoxide, methanol, toluene, and volatile organic compounds, some of which are known to cause cancer.”

A single ADM corn processing plant in Clinton, Iowa generated nearly 20,000 tons of pollutants including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic compounds in 2004, according to federal records. The EPA considers an ethanol plant as a “major source” of pollution if it produces more than 100 tons of any one pollutant per year, although it has recently proposed increasing that cap to 250 tons.

Sulfur dioxide is classified by the EPA as a contributor to respiratory and heart disease and the generation of acid rain. Nitrogen oxides produce ozone and a wide variety of toxic chemicals as well as contributing to global warming, according to the EPA, while many volatile organic compounds are cancer-causing. Last year, Environmental Defense, a national environmental group, ranked the Clinton plant as the 26th largest emitter of carcinogenic compounds in the U.S.

For years, ADM promoted itself as the “supermarket to the world” on major U.S. radio and television networks like NPR, CBS, NBC, and PBS where it underwrites influential programs such as the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Now, as it actively promotes its ethanol business, ADM has rolled out its new eco-friendly slogan, “Resourceful by Nature” which “reinforces our role as an essential link between farmers and consumers.”

Despite the company’s attempts at green packaging, ADM is ranked as the tenth worst corporate air polluter, on the “Toxic 100” list of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts. The Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency has charged the company with violations of the Clean Air Act in hundreds of processing units, covering 52 plants in 16 states. In 2003 the two agencies reached a $351 million settlement with the company. Three years earlier, ADM was fined $1.5 million by the Department of Justice and $1.1 million by the State of Illinois for pollution related to ethanol production and distribution. Currently, the corporation is involved in approximately 25 administrative and judicial proceedings connected to federal and state Superfund laws regarding the environmental clean-up of sites contaminated by ADM operations.

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Even The Right Wing Doesn’t Like Archer Danieals Midland -How Often do I agree with the Cato Institute?

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To date once:
http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa-241.html

Archer Daniels Midland: A Case Study In Corporate Welfare

by James Bovard

James Bovard is an associate policy analyst with the Cato Institute. His most recent book is Shakedown: How the Government Screws You from A to Z (Viking, 1995).

Executive Summary

The Archer Daniels Midland Corporation (ADM) has been the most prominent recipient of corporate welfare in recent U.S. history. ADM and its chairman Dwayne Andreas have lavishly fertilized both political parties with millions of dollars in handouts and in return have reaped billion-dollar windfalls from taxpayers and consumers. Thanks to federal protection of the domestic sugar industry, ethanol subsidies, subsidized grain exports, and various other programs, ADM has cost the American economy billions of dollars since 1980 and has indirectly cost Americans tens of billions of dollars in higher prices and higher taxes over that same period. At least 43 percent of ADM’s annual profits are from products heavily subsidized or protected by the American government. Moreover, every $1 of profits earned by ADM’s corn sweetener operation costs consumers $10, and every $1 of profits earned by its ethanol operation costs taxpayers $30

One of the most politically charged debates in Washington revolves around business subsidies known as “corporate welfare.” A number of policy organizations have published studies examining the corporate welfare phenomenon: what qualifies as corporate welfare, how much it costs taxpayers, and how much it damages the economy. This study examines the dynamics of corporate welfare somewhat differently by investigating ADM as a classic case study of how those subsidies are obtained, how the welfare state encourages such “rent seeking,” and how such practices fundamentally corrupt the political life of a nation. Congress’s expressed desire to foster a free marketplace cannot be taken seriously until ADM’s corporate hand is removed from the federal till.

Introduction

ADM is certainly the nation’s most arrogant welfare recipient. And it is one of the few welfare recipients that spend millions of dollars each year advertising on Sunday morning television shows populated and watched by politicians. Chairman Dwayne Andreas’s and ADM’s success in farming Washington represents the rational result of contemporary government policies that turn elections into “an advanced auction of stolen goods,” as H. L. Mencken quipped. Thanks to its multi-million-dollar hustling in Washington, a company that lives and dies on the generosity of the American taxpayer has managed to get itself revered as a great public servant. Although ADM is not the only corporation with its hand out in Washington, it is easily one of the most successful beggars on the block.(1)

Andreas recently told a reporter for Mother Jones, “There isn’t one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians. People who are not in the Midwest do not understand that this is a socialist country.”(2) Andreas’s comment about “no free markets” is like the old joke about the son who murdered his parents and then asked for the court’s mercy because he was an orphan. ADM champions political control over markets and then invokes that control as an excuse for its continued political manipulation. Andreas has exerted his influence in Washington to ensure that the U.S. form of “socialism” resembles 1930s’ Italian corporate statism: the government plunders the citizenry for the benefit of politically connected corporations. And, though Andreas does not like to admit it, there are many markets in the world for agricultural products that are not controlled by politicians.

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I know it is from 1995 but what has changed in the past 13 years? They have gotten a whole lot bigger.

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If Evolution Is True Why Doesn’t ADM Evolve – (creepy voice) Because it’s not alive!

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http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16347-review-iwhy-evolution-is-truei-by-jerry-coyne.html

Review: Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne

10:16 05 January 2009 by Rowan Hooper

T he first “why” that struck me on seeing Why Evolution is True was why do we need yet another book on evolution? There are lots of good ones out there already and nothing less than a mountain of evidence to support the reality of evolution by natural selection.

But we do need another, insists Jerry Coyne, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the University of Chicago, because creationism is spreading.

And he’s right – creationism is all over the place, not just in the US, where it often gains huge amounts of publicity. In December, a UK poll found that 29% of science teachers thought that creationism should be taught in science classes alongside evolution; a state of affairs that Richard Dawkins called “a national disgrace”. It is also on the rise in Islamic countries.

Careful persuasion

Creationism, Coyne tells us in this wide-ranging, beautifully written account, is like a roly-poly clown that pops back up when you punch it. But he resists the temptation to punch. He seeks to persuade, by carefully leading the reader through the overwhelming evidence, that evolution is a fact.

The audience is those who are uncertain about explanations of life’s diversity. The book is not aimed at people who hold faith-based positions – Coyne considers them to be lost causes – but you have to wonder how many people who are “uncertain” will be won over.

Coyne describes, for example, giving a talk on evolution versus intelligent design/creationism to a group of rich Chicago businessmen. You would think that people in the business world might think that evidence for something is worth taking into account, but this was the response Coyne got from one audience member after his lecture: “I found your evidence for evolution very convincing – but I still don’t believe it”.

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So you would think that Archer Daniels Midland will evolve in this new Green World and “get it” that polluting the environment needs to stop. That their by-products as they call them must be put to a use. Like growing algae for a fuel source or making cement. But NO, they want to pump it underground. Like that’s not polluting. Why don’t they quit? Because as the man above said, “They don’t believe.”


illinois environmental protection agency

1021 north grand avenue east, P.O. Box 19276, springfield, illinois 62794-9276 -( 217) 782-3397 james R. thompson center, 100 west randolph, suite 11 -300, chicago, IL 60601 – (312) 814-6026

rod R. blagojevich, governor douglas P. scott, director


UNDERGROUND INJECTION CONTROL (UIC) FINAL PERMIT DECISION

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency provides notice pursuant to 35 111. Admin. Code 705.201(c) that a final UIC permit was issued to Archer Daniels Midland Company of Decatur, Illinois on December 23, 2008. The Agency’s response to comments, the Response Summary and Attachment 1, are available at the Illinois EPA web site at the following link: http://www.epa.state.il.us/public-notices/general-notices.html (Scroll l/3 of the way down the page to select documents posted concerning the Archer Daniels Midland project.)

Specific information must be submitted to the Agency as either permit modification requests or as supplemental information for review and approval prior to ADM’s use of the injection well. Please review the lists of these data requirements on page 2 of the Response Summary.

The applicant may petition the Illinois Pollution Control Board to contest this permit decision pursuant to 35 111. Adm. Code 705.212. Third parties also have appeal rights pursuant to 35 111. Adm. Code 705.212. Appeals must be filed within 35 days of the decision date. The deadline to appeal the Illinois EPA permit decision is January 27, 2009. For additional information on the permit appeal process, please contact the Illinois Pollution Control Board (312-814-3620).

To receive a paper copy of the final UIC permit for ADM or the Illinois EPA Response Summary and Attachment 1, please contact:

Mara McGinnis

Illinois Environmental Protection Agency 1021 North Grand Avenue East Springfield, Illinois 62704-9276

Mara.McGinnis@illinois.gov 217/524-3288

rockford – 4302 North Main Street, Rockford, IL61103 -(815)987-7760 • des PLAINES-9511 W. Harrison St., Des Plaines, IL 60016 – (847) 294-4000

elgin – 595 South State, Elgin, IL 60123 – (847) 608-3131 • PEORIA-5415 N. University St., Peoria, IL 61614 – (309) 693-5463

bureau of land- peoria-7620 N. University St., Peoria, IL 61614 – (309) 693-5462 • champaign – 2125 South First Street, Champaign, IL 61820-(217) 278-5800 springfield – 4500 S. Sixth Street Rd., Springfield, IL 62706-(217) 786-6892 • collinsville – 2009 Mall Street, Collinsvilie, IL 62234-(618) 346-5120

marion – 2309 W. Main St., Suite 116, Marion, IL 62959 – (618) 993-7200

printed on recycled paper

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Guess What? There isn’t a single environmental group in Illinois that is going to protest it.