Category: Renewable Energy

Bioenergy has attracted substantial local investment in recent years as state lawmakers offer subsidies and favorable policies to promote big spending on infrastructure necessary to convert food waste, ag trimmings, dairy manure and even dead forest trees into cleaner-burning fuel whose environmental benefits can add up to be carbon negative. KEDC Vice President of Business Development Melinda Brown said the projects crossing her desk lately represent a variety of “green energy” technologies inspired by state mandates. Together, she said, they amount to a noticeable shift in interest in local manufacturing and industrial property. “They’re telling me this is all new industries” under development, she said Monday.

State legislation in 2016 targeted reductions in methane and other short-lived pollutants by forcing local jurisdictions to cut the amount of organic material they collectively send landfills by three-quarters. The best way to do that depends on the feedstock. Food and food-processing waste can be treated as dairy waste increasingly is, by fermenting it and refining the gas it produces into an easily stored fuel. Because that doesn’t work as well with waste such as vineyard prunings and almond hulls, another approach is to super-heat dry, fibrous, feedstock. That produces an energy-dense fuel and biochar, which can then be buried, or sequestered, to achieve carbon-reduction gains. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has estimated this technology could become a central tool for meeting California’s aggressive climate-change goals.

The executive director of the Bioenergy Association of California, Julia Levin, said Kern is “the perfect place for it,” not only because of the county’s large supply of ag waste but also its inventory of elected and appointed government officials who recognize the industry’s benefits, value and the opportunity it presents. Some environmental groups have actively opposed biofuels, in part because they usually entail emitting at least some pollution and older production techniques release relatively high levels of particulate matter. Many climate-change activists are pushing for an end to internal combustion altogether.

Levin said new technologies are much cleaner and that the alternative in much of the Central Valley is open burning. “You’re going to see a lot of growth in Kern County (bioenergy), but I think we’re going to see a lot of growth statewide,” said Levin. She added that significant government investment may yet be needed to meet California’s bioenergy potential.

The California Energy Commission said it has invested more than $27 million since 2007 in research and development in renewable natural gas, a common form of bioenergy that is basically methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas. The commission said it has given an additional $77 million in taxpayer money to biomethane projects. A number of dairies in Kern County have worked with Visalia-based California Bioenergy LLC to turn several thousand cows’ manure into biomethane. And on Millux Road, Denver-based Crimson Renewable Energy LLC has a refining plant making biodiesel entirely from waste such as used cooking oil.

Last year Torrance-based Global Clean Energy Holdings Inc. bought the former, 67,000-barrel-per-day refinery on Rosedale Highway and announced a $365 million project to reopen the plant by early 2022 with about 100 employees producing 10,000 barrels per day of biodiesel from cooking oil. It said the refinery will later make the product from a ground-cover plant called camelina. The head of 155-employee Kern Oil & Refining Co., which makes renewable diesel and other fuels at its 26,000-barrel-per-day refinery near Lamont, said leveraging conventional fuel production with market knowledge has helped the company emerge as a leader in renewable fuel production.

President and CEO Jennifer Haley said she encourages policymakers to cultivate a wide-ranging energy portfolio in the state. By attracting public and private investment, she said, Kern can demonstrate that “we can both address climate change and set the table for perpetual regional economic success.”

https://www.bakersfield.com/news/bioenergy-interest-heats-up-in-kern-county/article_643feeca-6a4b-11eb-9351-b704ef9a2543.html

Lorelei Oviatt, the county planner spearheading the effort, sees the carbon-management industry as being in its infancy, much as renewable energy was when Kern embraced that field and became a leader in the state through a focus on permitting efficiency. Since the county Board of Supervisors voted early this year to add the field to its list of industries worthy of subsidy supports, Oviatt has begun working to understand environmental impacts of such work and ways of possibly cushioning them.

Oviatt sees a wealth of opportunities, based on a number of local strengths — a workforce well-suited to industrial labor, chemical safety expertise and proximity to renewable energy in the form of eastern Kern’s solar and wind farms. Another advantage is Kern’s inventory of open land. “When it’s time to build it, are you building it in San Jose? Are you building it in Santa Monica? No,” she said. But Oviatt has also identified local competitive disadvantages. Technologies dependent on ample water access probably won’t work locally, she noted, and Kern’s biggest competitor, Texas, doesn’t have to deal with an expensive state environmental review process that takes a year and a half.

Having become somewhat disillusioned by solar projects that have yielded little revenue for county government and only modest employment opportunities, she said her goal is not simply to prioritize large investments. Rather, it is to attract good-paying jobs and tax income to help make up for economic and financial losses expected to result locally from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s anti-oil policies. Because of carbon management’s environmental promise, it’s possible Sacramento’s goal of making California “carbon neutral” by 2045 may yet be of some benefit to Kern.

A report released in January by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory concluded the state can achieve that goal by burying or offsetting 125 megatons per year of carbon dioxide. It also pointed to a significant role for Kern. In addition to outlining land management practices and waste material processing, Livermore recognized local oil formations’ vast geologic capacity for permanently storing carbon dioxide. One such project, California Resource Corp.’s “CalCapture” initiative, is scheduled for a county environmental review in the first quarter of next year. The company hopes to see it operational by mid-decade.

The project is not intended to vacuum CO2 out of the atmosphere — an expensive and energy-intensive process that may eventually figure into the local economy. Rather, CalCapture would remove a large share of the compound from the emissions stream of CRC’s 550-megawatt Elk Hills Power Plant in the Tupman area. Early estimates were that the project, one of nine to receive recent financial support from the U.S. Department of Energy, would process 83 percent of the emissions from the plant’s chimneylike flue. Of that, 90 percent of the CO2 would be captured, trapped deep underground, and be used to displace oil and extend the life of the prolific Elk Hills Oil Field.

CRC said by email CalCapture is expected to generate nearly 3,500 jobs statewide and more than $200 million in taxes during its three-year construction period, plus 150 permanent jobs and $200 million in taxes over 20 years. “We are excited to advance this pioneering project that will make Kern County and our state a leader in CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) technology,” the company said.

Expanding on what carbon management might ultimately mean for the county, Oviatt noted that farmland can be used to manage carbon, too. That may involve transitioning to different crops, she said, or working with agricultural properties that might have to be taken out of production because of upcoming groundwater restrictions. Local production of alternative fuels can be considered carbon management, too, and that’s already happening, with more to come.

At least two local refineries — Kern Oil & Refining Co. and Crimson Renewable Energy LLC — produce renewable diesel in significant quantities. Crimson makes a biodiesel that can be stored in conventional fuel tanks and releases 80 percent less carbon. Also, this year it was announced a Torrance-based company had bought the former, 67,000-barrel-per-day refinery on Rosedale Highway. It said it plans to spend $365 million reopening the plant by early 2022 with about 100 employees producing 10,000 barrels per day of biodiesel from cooking oil. Later, it wants the refinery to make the product from a ground-cover plant called camelina.

Hydrogen energy is another aspect of carbon management that Oviatt said might hold promise locally. It’s a complex technology that can take many forms, she said, with one important requirement that the energy involved come from renewable energy, which Kern makes a lot of.

One advantage Kern has in that regard is a new partnership between Bakersfield College and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which Oviatt said is on the very cutting edge of carbon management. That partnership, she said, represents an “absolute new future for us.” “To have them here gives us national and international exposure,” she said.

https://www.bakersfield.com/news/business/kern-looks-to-seize-economic-benefits-of-carbon-management/article_11f47012-199e-11eb-aebe-e7838e141d4a.html#:~:text=Under%20a%20proposal%20heading%20for,owns%20in%20the%20Tupman%20area.