Monthly Archives: August 2011

Funding for renewable energy on the farm

Posted on August 30, 2011 by

From Bloomberg:  Barclays Forms $163 Million Renewable Energy Fund for U.K. Farms In response to farmer demand, the large UK bank Barclays has just devoted several hundred million dollars towards financing small-scale renewable energy projects.  Most of the projects apparently … Continue reading →

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EPA targeted for more legislation

Posted on August 29, 2011 by

7 out of the 10 programs discussed here are EPA programs, and targeted by Eric Cantor as “job killing”. http://majorityleader.gov/blog/2011/08/memo-on-upcoming-jobs-agenda.html What he fails to mention is that most of these also try to minimize pollution which is “people killing”.  So … Continue reading →

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Everything you ever wanted to know about error bars- and more!

Posted on August 29, 2011 by

Confused about confidence intervals? Stymied by standard error?? For all of you out there crunching data and polishing paper drafts, check out this invaluable little publication on error bars and the basics of the underlying statistics: Cumming, G., Fidler, F. … Continue reading →

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Industry responds to EPA / Howarth on natural gas / fracking emissions

Posted on August 25, 2011 by

IHS CERA is a consulting company that works with the natural gas industry. In this report they have some counterpoints about estimated methane emissions from fracking operations. See the report here: http://www.ihs.com/images/MisMeasuringMethane082311.pdf what I surmise from this is that while … Continue reading →

Posted in climate change, energy, policy | Tagged | 3 Comments

cellulosic ethanol targets: what should we do?

Posted on August 22, 2011 by

So the EISA RFS targets were too high.  Most of us who don’t work in the PR department of a struggling alternative energy company probably knew that. So what should we do? Reduce the targets or maintain them? On one … Continue reading →

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CSU researchers receive DOE grant to study bioenergy feedstocks

Posted on August 18, 2011 by

Some more local news at Colorado State!  My lab as part of a larger collaboration was awarded a pretty large DOE/USDA grant for translational research on bioenergy feedstocks. We’ll be using rice as both 1) a model for other grasses … Continue reading →

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California leads, New England follows, then maybe the rest of the country..

Posted on August 16, 2011 by

California leads, New England follows, then maybe eventually after federal policy based on regional policy, the rest of the country will come along: http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/08/15/15greenwire-northeast-states-considering-low-carbon-fuel-r-10915.html?ref=earth

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general intro to biofuels

Posted on August 15, 2011 by

Really nicely done and well rounded general introduction to biofuels http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/89/8933cover.html

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Roger Pielke Jr. on blogging and paper readership

Posted on August 11, 2011 by

Dr. Pielke down at CU Boulder has an interesting post on how science blogging can increase readership of scientific papers (or at least scientific paper abstracts).  He cites an ongoing study by World Bank personnel which concludes that 1-4% of … Continue reading →

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US vs Brazil ethanol

Posted on August 10, 2011 by

Ha, saw this on biofuelsdigest today: Ironically, with expanded demand for low-carbon fuels next year under the RFS, it is entirely possible that the US will import Brazilian ethanol because of the low carbs, and Brazil will import US ethanol … Continue reading →

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