I Wanna be an Oily Boy, just Once.

There have been a number of instances when the world oil consortia have declared that  we were running out of oil. From Titusville, Pa in the early 20 th century to peak oil doomsday scenarios, the story is always the same. It’s a finite resource and at our present rate of consumption it will be gone in 1920, 1946, 1972 and more recently. Surprisingly enough it seems to be one of those self defeating prophecies.

Oil people appear to be one of those races of people that require periodic swift kicks to get reenergized to greater efforts. This is endemic across the whole industry, for example geologists go out and discover new fields, drillers discover the joys of lateral drilling putting millions of barrels within reach, frackers brew up more toxic cocktails to allow residual oil to seep upwards and offshore platforms go miles below the surface to open one more pocket of crude. We, the renewable crew, are in awe.

Yes we are in awe of the unlimited resources, the brainpower, the political clout and the ignorance that makes all those West Texas barrels come alive all over the world at the drop of a political campaign. We ask ourselves, why them, why not us?

We have nothing to be ashamed of; our scientists are hard at work as we speak. Our victories are not as spectacular as say plugging a Gulf of Mexico blowout. Our oil spills bring in salad bar operators and gallons of vinegar, we search for answers in the sewers, waste treatment facilities and manure piles instead of the sands of Iraq. Yet, we are in the same business with lower expectations and billions less in support.

As my mother used to tell me, if you don’t see what you want it’s either not there or you need to adjust your glasses and sharpen your focus. Biofuels can do both because we are nowhere close to running out of our form of energy and our technology is still very crude, although we don’t waste as much as the petroleum boys, we could still do better.

The oil industry has a simple formula, wait until it becomes economically feasible, and then bring it on come hell or high water. Sometimes it catches them with their pants down, but mostly they get away with it because examples of slowing down are plentiful and scary. Long lines at the pumps are usually enough to get any issue resolved! We operate on the same principle, making biodiesel from virgin olive oil is quite expensive, so we marched into the soy fields and took them over amid cries of food or fuel, the price of the taco will go through the roof!

I cannot count the number of times I have presented a biofuel project to a roomful of eager investors only to have someone raise that scary specter of the starving farmer as we whip his pancake off the table. That is just window dressing on the oil company’s side of the table but when you run an ethical business based on saving the world you will be held to a higher standard.  Well we should and we should never forget it.

We have looked at some incredible sources for our feedstock all in the name of not causing problems, weeds like pennycress (better known as stinkweed), tobacco, jatropha with its slightly poisonous reputation in Australia, yes, even the poppy fields of Afghanistan have been touted and that is just the vegetable side of the biodiesel equation. Imagine rendering facilities, and Fischer Tropsch conversion of manure altered methane gas, we have just begun the fight to find cheaper and less invasive ways to cut down green house gasses, stop climate change and save the cities along the waterfronts of the world.

While biofuels and renewable are fighting the good fight, conscious of our role in the energy mix, we watch in awe and envy as our petroleum counterparts bury their scruples in the sands of time, along with a goodly number of the people who stood between them and the gas pumps of the world.

As they begrudge us the use of fallow fields to grow camelina and pennycress, they are planning to bulldoze whole forests in Alberta to scoop up the tar sands and extract sludge to send down a pipeline from Canada to Texas crawling over cities, towns, water tables, rivers, farmland and backyards.  They have an enormous amount of support to do this because just the thought of running out of oil is enough to suspend belief and credibility. As responsible citizens we pay our dues, accepting that sometimes things can go wrong and a fire will destroy a facility, or our product may clog filters. As responsible citizens they too have their ups and downs, sixteen people died in the Gulf of Mexico and the oil spill is still polluting the shores of the BP inland ocean. Exxon has yet to pay for the Exxon Valdez spill and the Enbridge pipeline has a daily total of crude lost that would power the trucks and buses of a small town, and we are the ones feeling the guilt?

We need the thicker skins that fly from Saudi Arabia to Houston on a daily basis, we need the subtlety of a Vladimir Putin, the discrete charm of Bob Dudley the CEO of BP so that we can charm a new customer base and be loved as only Saddam Hussein was before the crash.

We envy those people more than we should because they are essential, they are effective and they are oh so needed. Our most visible representatives are Al Gore and Willie Nelson and aint they a pair of troopers to rally behind?

Yes, you can make ethanol out of sour grapes and biodiesel out of humble pie, but it sure would be a treat to once, just once, be able to stick it to oily boys around the world. Because if we don’t sooner rather than later they will bury us.

HOW Green Are you?

We are seeing an inordinate amount of activity around the green house gasses topic. People from all walks of life claiming to not only care, but also to want to change the very air we breathe. They are of course laudable but sadly misled because what they are doing is called the Prius effect.

The Prius effect is the simple act of buying an overpriced piece of transportation because it puts you into a more acceptable consumer category. Let's leave aside for the moment all the pecuniary reasons for buying a Prius, from subsidies at purchase to lower cost at the pump, and concentrate on what has actually happened.

In the grand scheme of things, nothing, a large gas guzzler has been replaced by a lesser gas guzzler. What is significant is that the new Prius owner is convinced that he has made a difference and will not give up all the little things he used to do, like turning lights off, using his bike etc. It is a bit like buying a rocking chair because it gives the impression of going somewhere while standing still.

If you live in rural America, there is no reason to run your farming and transportation equipment on diesel, even if it is biodiesel. There are conversion kits that would allow the use of natural gas. No, not that fracked abomination we are shipping to China, but real NATURAL gas pumped out of the dairy farm methanizer all your neighbors have installed. That NATURAL gas which comes from letting manure sit for a week in a lagoon.

The natural gas the Germans have built 6800 digesters to collect and distribute, THAT natural gas which California produces from one of the 110 digesters they reluctantly have built over the last thirty years. Not the natural gas that is being pumped out of fractured shale in the new earthquake zones of Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and California.

When was the last time you drove by a dairy farm, feedlot or slaughterhouse and gagged at the stench of accumulated manure? That smell, my friend is the golden taste of natural gas going to waste, seriously. It is the stench of nitrates being allowed into the atmosphere instead of being captured and sold as fertilizer, it is liquid gold going to waste.

So how green do you think you are? Green enough to get back on a bicycle? Greene enough to convert to biodiesel? It's a tough question.

Yes, You Must Save This Planet, It Truly Is The Only One You Have!

Building So That Tomorrow Never Happens.

In Canada, and in some parts of the United States, newly minted engineers received an iron ring to wear on their pinky of their working hand. The was, by tradition a replica made of rings made from an iron beam from a Quebec bridge construction site that collapsed killing a number of workmen. The implication was to remind engineers as they progressed in their careers to be ever careful that their works not cause harm. The McGill Law School in Montreal has a motto over the entrance "Audite Alteram Partem", simply asking their aspiring attorneys to listen to the other side and the Hippocratic oath clearly states that all doctors should "Above all cause no additional damage". Those codes of professional ethics are based on experience from life ending mistakes. As we move further into our century and see that we have and are damaging this planet in serious ways, we should remind ourselves that we, the people, need to renew those vows.

The environment we are trashing in millions of ways is the only one we have. We may not suffer the consequences of our arrogance, but our children already are. From my son who can no longer drink the pure water of the Georgian Bay to the Nigerian tribes forced out of their ancestral fishing grounds. Our concern should not be for what is expedient and simple like using Roundup every week end rather than pulling the weeds and allowing our thin stream to become a roaring torrent of poison or insisting on our right to strip mine country-sized parts of the world to allow bigger and bigger cars to transport solitary commuters on carbon choked highways. Our concerns should center on asking ourselves in every way how we can actually make a small difference. Like that roaring river of Roundup headed down our rivers, these small efforts can also become such a torrent.

We must educate ourselves about some of the real dangers that we are facing. We must educate ourselves not to defend our positions but to see if maybe the other side has a point. When in doubt abstain and the Tar Sands are an area where legitimate concerns have been expressed and legitimate solutions have been proposed. These range from advanced monitoring systems to reinforced piping, shorter runs and immediate cutoff systems at the least hint of trouble.

I have no illusions that my silly little biodiesel facilities will turn the tide, we build 10 million gallon units at a time, and we are also under constant attack for starving the world. But we try to hear the concerns and offer less damaging solutions. In my world I can offer biodiesel plants that process waste water sludge, rendered animal fats, waste vegetable oils, algae, weeds like camelina, penny cress in Alberta, tobacco plants and even, according to an extensive study that I would gladly share, the vast fields of poppy seeds in Afghanistan. We are trying to push the boundaries of what is possible beyond the simple solutions of other industries.

We have discovered that if you bubble CO2 from power plants through cooling ponds, the pond scum becomes saturated with oils that and can produce biodiesel. We have also come up against some vicious vested interests that will do anything to protect their turf. In the US the legislation on biodiesel is complex and changes on an almost daily basis. Funding is promised and then blocked. In Canada vast amounts of promised grants, loan guarantees and support disappear and money flows towards specific areas.

Yet we persevere because there is a reason why replacing 10% of the petroleum diesel with biodiesel is a good thing. It is good for the planet; it is also amazingly good for the engine because the higher lubricity keeps the engine running longer and cleaner and mitigates the evil effects of ULSD. I can hear it now,” who cares, I drive a 300HP gas guzzling Escalade”. Well, that's OK, but in Europe the vast majority of cars are diesel powered, up to 60% of the fleet in France is diesel and all the diesel pumps in France have 5% biodiesel in them. Those little animals are routinely getting 40 to 60MPG with no loss in performance. They have a rail infrastructure that allows anyone to get on a train and get off within a public transportation ride from their destination. Here we have destroyed our rail system so everything has to move by truck. The port of Oakland is the focal point for incredibly high levels of childhood asthma, the West Oakland coalition is fighting it as hard as they can and our proposal to install a biodiesel facility there is gaining traction.

Imagine clean burning port infrastructures with all the cranes, lifters, even the ships that now use bunker fuel, as toxic as the tar sands idling to keep their systems going, imagine the ferries in BC, San Francisco and LA running on 50% biodiesel mix. It becomes a possibility if we could divert some of the billions going into mega projects like the tar sands into millions into a biofuel infrastructure. But that will not happen until we realize that there are people whose sole concern is the dollar they can make.

There are places in the world where economic necessities require building and using older and more polluting technologies, I can accept that. But those places do not include Canada where their strip mining will cover an area as big as Holland, those areas do not include China, one of the richest countries in the world and still installing coal fired electricity generating facilities when they could just as easily install nuclear power plants. In areas, industries and groups where they have the technology, the resources and the will to build systems that do not poison our air, our soil and our minds and yet they persist in doing so for whatever venal reasons, those people, companies and government are committing crimes against humanity. Where a simple law would alter the course of planetary degradation, not passing that law is a dereliction of a sworn duty and should be punished.

I am ashamed to say that my country is the second worst offender in the policy of buy what you cannot legislate. In case after case, the lobbyists are destroying our way of life, our environment, our very ethics. They provide false and misleading information that no science supports, they have dumbed down our debate to the point that a Sarah Palin can run for Vice President of the largest economy in the world. They have started wars and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people for what are basically oil interests. I will add with the tacit approval of other nations like Canada, the UK and others.

Yet, behind those atrocities lie good people who, if confronted with these accusations, will honestly say that they in no way support those goals. That their peculiar industry is not responsible for a Nigerian genocide or a life altering oil spill. In many ways they are right because very seldom can you point at one person and say you did this and you should pay. To me that is the reflection of the Citizens United decision that gave corporations the right to act and be treated like people. BP has the right under numerous laws that used to apply to citizens, not to answer questions about the full extent of their depredations in court, the Koch brothers have the right to lie about their activities.

When supposedly intelligent people like Bachmann are listened to as seriously as Nobel Peace Prize, winners then you realize that there is a serious flaw in our psyche. Idiots who nitpick discussions like the Sandy Hook pundits debating whether the gun used to assassinate those children was an automatic or semi automatic completely miss the point that children should not be used as targets. The issues are no longer semantic discussions over nomenclature; the issues are the survival of the planet. We have seen species destroyed because just a few things were altered. I am not talking about the carrier pigeon here where we deliberately went out and massacred every last one of them, but sea animals, insects, large furry beasts and small rodents gone because we took away their food or raised the temperature of their habitat.

The Calaveras County gold rush is an interesting area, the mines are still there, the Thompson water cannons can still be seen, but the damage to the area is also still visible many years after the gold diggers left. The coal hills of West Virginia, the slag heaps in Wales and around Marcinelle in Belgium are also still there so many years after the first blood sucking tycoons walked away to plunder other areas.

I can imagine that many years from now our grandchildren will shake their heads and say what were they thinking? Much as I do when visiting the battlefields of WWI. Why have we deliberately systematically done exactly the opposite of what could be a life enhancing moment in the history of mankind? We have the technology, we can rebuild this planet in a way that will not ensure our ultimate destruction and yet so many Neanderthals still insist that the ways of the past are still the only ways into the future and all they can offer are idiotic statement that whatever you propose is equally damaging and our need for money and jobs supplants the need for Nigerians to breathe.

So please build that pipeline as economically as possible, we should not in any way impede the path to destruction. I suggest using plastic hoses, they are cheap and will not deteriorate over the years. According to a recent Harris poll conducted by the oil industry 83% of the US population are in favor of this. That almost exactly corresponds to the number of people who supported George Bush's attack on Iraq. Because when dealing with stupidity of such massive scale fed by millions of dollars or PR and the wonderful situation of the Athabasca River so far away from prying eyes and the reality of what is being done, you can get away with almost any crime. It is an absolutely carbon copy of the Niger Delta and Canada is no different than that corrupt and oil sodden country. Companies like Suncor, Esso/Imperial, BP and others will never stand up in court to answer for their crimes against humanity and the world just like Bush, Cheney, Powell and Rice are immune from prosecution because whole countries and erudite and educated people stood beside them when the crime was committed.

I wonder how we will answer when our children ask us, Daddy what did you do in the war against our planet?