28 The Battle Lines Are Drawn, Green vs Green

Costs vs. Benefits Climate and Energy Policy(as it relates to Agriculture and Forestry)
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This information is about a seminar I attended about the “25X’25 Carbon Work Group”. 25x’25 Carbon Work Group is a national alliance of agriculture, forestry, environmental, conservation and other businesses working together to advance the goals of securing 25% of our nation’s energy needs from renewable resources by the year 2025.

I was late and missed the first two speakers that began with “The Mechanics of Climate and Energy Policy”. They were Read Smith – 25X’25 Steering Committee and Christopher Galik – Nicholas Institute/Duke University. Both speakers had said we were on the path to a low carbon energy future and the best thing we can do is to arm ourselves with facts. The next section of the seminar, at which I was present, was entitled “Renewable Energy Opportunities and Mechanisms to Manage GHG(Green House Gas) Emmissions. The first to speak in this section of the seminar was Terry McCullers on biofuels. He essentially said that soy beans had become the crop of choice, for many reasons, including favorable economics, ease to grow and rotate and soy bean oil was “very usable” in bio-diesel. He stated that the biofuel industry would be greatly boosted by implementing a $1 per gallon subsidy.(understandably). The next speaker was Jim Wimberly on biomass energy crops. The first and overiding question that Jim proposed was “What amount of energy crops are used to produce liquid fuels?” He stated that it takes 850,000 acres of cotton to produce 1.28 tons of biomass. Another factor influencing the economic consideration of biomass is the “haul” factor. That is how much fossil fuel is used just to transport to a processing facility. Other factors to be considered included were tons/acre/year, BTU/KWhours, BTU/acres/year and more. The next speaker in line was Matthew Pelkki, who’s expertise was in forestry management. He spoke on the”why?, what?, when?, where? and how much of an effect can we control with forestry management. The final speaker in this section was Karen McSpadden, with Winrock International talking about “offsets”. Under a “cap and trade” system, she discussed how to create a trade “offset”. 1)Identify the carbon reducing opportunity; 2)Form “aggregator”(co-op group) of small entities, to give the small carbon users a viable voice; 3)Establish a standard, such as 1 metric ton of CO2 equivalent or existing standard and 4)Submit the project description. Current market prices reflect between $5-$20 per metric ton. There were other noteworthy speakers featured and in attendance of the seminar. I’ll make reference to them in future posts. I gained some more knowlege of another aspect of renewable energy but as far as I’m concerned, the “jury is still out” on whether global warming is man-made or in earth’s natural cycles. My common sense leads me to believe that global warming is a combination of both. You can’t spew millions of tons of GHG’s into our atmosphere day after day, year after year and decade after decade without there being some consequence, however the earth’s natural cycles of warming and cooling have been happening for eons, without the interference of mankind. I don’t beleive that any one person, government or even the whole global society have that answer but I believe we can each do our part to help, not harm our environment. My wish for the new year, 2010, is that we can work together to find some answers and solutions for these many questions. You can view more on the 25X’25 initiative at their website – http://www.25X25.org and hopefully gain a more complete and better understanding of their perspective. Wishing you a Happy New Year and God Bless You Tim Please leave any comments, questions or suggestions by clicking on the “comments” link immediately following this post.

Tags: 25X'25, biomass, Carbon Workshop Group