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1. High Summer Corn Prices to Squeeze Ethanol
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2. Blacklight Powers Up, Disses Quantum Physics
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3. Montreal Climate Exchange is Live
High Summer Corn Prices to Squeeze Ethanol
Stacey Higginbotham - 1
Woe to the ethanol makers out there, because higher corn prices this summer will mean even more shrinking profits for ethanol producers says a report from Texas A&M University. There’s also the potential for more variability in the price of corn this summer, because supply is relatively inelastic and worldwide demand is still high.
The rise in corn prices and volatility of such pricing will likely cause problems for those investing in ethanol plants such as AltraBiofuels, which plans to build an 84-million-gallon corn-ethanol plant or shareholders of Pacific Ethanol which recently said it would raise money after suspending plans to build another ethanol plant. The A&M report estimates that prices for corn this year will likely average $4.66 per bushel with 70 percent of the likely prices falling between $3.13 and $6.32 per bushel.
Given that current prices for ethanol are averaging about $2.20 per gallon in the Heartland and $2.30 on the West Coast, the expected average corn prices will be putting a squeeze on produces (see chart). Should a drought or other problem occur to lower yields ethanol producers might find themselves in the red. And that’s never a great place for a green company to be.
Blacklight Powers Up, Disses Quantum Physics
Craig Rubens - In the Lab
Cranbury, N.J.-based Blacklight claims that they can push an electron closer to the nucleus by way of a catalytic reaction and that the result is a huge amount of clean energy. The company describes the reaction as “somewhere between a nuclear and a chemical reaction” but without any of the messy nuclear fallout. Sounds far-fetched, but they’ve clearly convinced at least some people, as Blacklight says they've raised $60 million from “hedge funds and wealthy families.”
The only problem is, as far as quantum physics is concerned, almost none of this is possible. Indeed, Blacklight’s founder and CEO, Randell Mills, is proposing that we do away with much of pesky quantum mechanics and stick to simple Newtonian physics. Mills has been creating controversy for years with this theory, which he describes matter-of-factly as a classical take on quantum problems. He claims to be able to mathematically pinpoint the energy state and location of an electron, Heisenberg be damned!
Mills says they already have a prototype that they plan to scale to a 3 MW power plant within two years. Blacklight has wrangled with the Patent and Trademark Office over the scientific validity of some of the patents for which they’ve applied, but tells Earth2Tech that all of their IP is legally protected. If everything works the way it’s supposed to, Blacklight says they can use water as a fuel by electrolyzing it into hydrogen and producing hundreds of times more energy than hydrogen combustion would yield. Tehy say they can produce power from water for pennies.
While the company was mum about who their investors are, the Village Voice reported way back in 2000 that the likes of Eastbourne Capital Management, PacifiCorp and Conectiv have invested millions. Meanwhile, Blacklight’s board has some notable names, including Shelby Brewer, a former top Department of Energy nuclear official, and Aris Melissaratos, former director of Westinghouse’s Science and Technology Center. Update: Blacklight tells us that Aris Melissaratos left the company many years ago.
What Blacklight Power is proposing is truly revolutionary, if not impossible. They say they can do it, and they seem to have some credible people backing them. Now we’ll just have to wait and see if clean hydrogen energy really can scale — Mills promises that in 24 months, it will.
Montreal Climate Exchange is Live
Katie Fehrenbacher - Big Green
Canada’s first emissions trading market, the Montreal Climate Exchange, opened for business this morning, becoming part of the $64 billion global carbon-credit market. The exchange is a joint venture between the Montréal Exchange (MX) and the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), and participating companies can buy and sell carbon credits depending on how much they pollute.
At a launch ceremony Luc Bertrand, President and CEO of the Montréal Exchange, called the exchange “the first regulated environmental market in Canada.” Canada certainly needs to take some kind of market-based action, because, as Bloomberg notes, Canada’s emissions actually rose the fastest out of the Group of Eight industrialized nations from 1990 to 2004.
Reuters says “early volume was light,” on the exchange, which is to be expected. But Bloomberg says that could also be because some Canadian companies “have little interest in the market because the government is allowing companies to meet their emissions targets by paying into a fund, and is subsidizing equipment to trap carbon dioxide underground.”
Carbon markets have emerged in recent years, as governments worldwide are setting up regulations to put a cap on how much carbon companies can emit. The European Union has a mandatory carbon market, and in the U.S. the Chicago Climate Exchange involves companies that voluntarily join and pledge to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by about one percent annually.
Carbon trading and markets certainly aren’t without skeptics: Last March, Newsweek ran a story entitled ""The Carbon Folly,"" that claimed current efforts have done little to reduce overall carbon emission, particularly in the EU, where some argue governments were too lax with setting caps. Earlier this month the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a system whereby developed nations can earn certified carbon offset credits (CERs) by funding clean energy projects in the developing world, came under fire from two separate reports. Both accused the CDM of not adequately verifying that their credits are indeed being awarded to programs that would have otherwise not happened, an issue known as "additionality."
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