Thread on Bio Fuels ?

[Jolie Rouge]

I know we had a thread on "bio-fuels" ... I wish the search feature worked .... :

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[Jolie Rouge]

U.S. Navy ordered to buy $59 a gallon BIO-FUEL from big Democratic contributor to Obama and others. Navy didn't just buy a few gallons.....but $12 million in biofuels to test the ability of Navy ships to run on the stuff for an entire day! Petroluem per gallon today? $3.60..but who's counting pennies!!!

FROM BREITBART.COM: "As it turns out, one of the venture capital funders behind Gevo Inc. is Vinod Khosla. Since 1996, opensecrets.org reports that Mr. Khosla has made $474,534 in campaign donations, 86 percent of which went to Democrats.

There’s more.

As Reuters reports: Khosla's firm owned a 27 percent stake in Gevo as of the company's March federal filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Khosla also has close ties to another venture capital firm whose team includes Al Gore, the former vice president and Democratic presidential candidate in 2000.

Mr. Khosla is no stranger to failed biofuel projects involving taxpayer monies. He was the chief backer of Range Fuels, a biofuels company that received a government-guaranteed $64 million loan only to later go bust and leave taxpayers holding the bag."

[Jolie Rouge]

Obama’s algae racket
By Michelle Malkin • March 21, 2012 09:03 AM

Pond scum stinks. And so do the Obama administration’s enormous, taxpayer-funded “investments” in politically connected biofuel companies. While the president embarks on a green rehabilitation tour this week to quell growing public outrage about big green boondoggles, the White House continues to cultivate a cozy algae racket. http://michellemalkin.com/2012/03/19/obama-keystone/

Obama’s promotion of algae as a fuel source at a campaign speech in Miami last month caught the nation’s attention. But algae companies have been banking on administration support from Day One. In December 2008, when the White House announced the nomination of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, the CEO of Florida-based biofuels startup Algenol, Paul Woods, exulted to Time magazine: “You see this smile on my face? It’s not going away. Everyone is really excited by this.” http://www.time.com/time/health/arti...866682,00.html

The next year, Woods and Algenol — dubbed “Obama’s favorite algae company” by Forbes magazine http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcma...algae-company/ — racked up $25 million in federal stimulus grants from Chu. Say cheese. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/o.../message/11982

Yet another algae-based biofuels developer, Sapphire Energy, http://www.sapphireenergy.com/ has absorbed $105 million in stimulus funds and loan guarantees even as doubts about the practicality, efficiency and viability of pond-scum fuels multiply. Sapphire’s CEO, Jason Pyle, has donated exclusively to Democratic campaigns, candidates and committees — and his company’s website reads like a satellite White House communications office: http://ns1.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_...LE&first=JASON

– “President Obama Announces $14 Million Funding Opportunity To Develop Transportation Fuels from Algae”;

– “President Obama’s Secure Energy Blueprint — Industry Reaction”;

– “Obama Defends Energy Policy, Hitting Back At Presidential Candidates.”

Another prominent DOE recipient in the world of blue-green sludge? San Francisco-based Solazyme. The manufacturer of algae-based renewable fuels has scooped up more than $21 million in federal stimulus grants and contracts. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/navy...ra-critics-say Solazyme’s ties to the White House and the Democratic establishment in Washington are myriad. As blogger J.E. Dyer at HotAir.com http://hotair.com/archives/2011/12/1...r-16-a-gallon/ (which I founded in 2006 and sold in 2010) reported in December, Solazyme’s “strategic advisers” include TJ Glauthier — a member of the Obama presidential transition team who just happened to work “on the energy-sector portion of the 2009 stimulus bill.”

Andrew Stiles of the Washington Free Beacon writes that Glauthier: http://freebeacon.com/algae-alimony/

“serves on the board of EnerNOC Inc., a company that provides demand-response services to electric utility firms. EnerNOC won a $10 million contract with the Department of Energy Resources in 2010 despite being underbid by competitors, the Boston Herald reported. Glauthier also served on the board of SunRun, a solar financing company that received a $6.7 million federal grant in 2010.”

And in total, Glauthier adds, “Solazyme officials including Glauthier have contributed at least $360,000 to Democrats since 2007.”

Wait, that’s not all. The head of Solazyme’s Washington lobbying office is Drew Littman, former chief of staff for Democratic Sen. Al Franken. Littman’s old pal, entrenched D.C. lobbyist and Obama appointee Michael Meehan, feted Littman earlier this year and bragged that “we couldn’t be more thrilled to be working on a daily basis with Drew and the Solazyme team.” [NOTE: Michael Meehan e-mailed this afternoon: "I am not and never have been a registered lobbyist...VennSquared Communications does do PR work for Solazyme, we just don’t lobby."]

Thanks to one of President Obama’s executive orders, Solazyme secured a $12 million contract with the U.S. Navy to unload hundreds of thousands of gallons of biofuel — priced at an estimated four to seven times the normal cost of regular jet fuel. http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=48175

This self-sustaining crony ecosystem, powered by administrative fiat and wealth redistribution, gives new meaning to the phrase “green crude.”

http://michellemalkin.com/2012/03/21...-algae-racket/


The latest green energy experiment to receive taxpayer dollars is…
By Doug Powers • April 25, 2012 03:28 PM

Regular readers here know all about the Obama administration’s vision for algae. Truth be known, this entire blog is powered by algae — that and electricity generated by burning coal. However, the greens in government who are handing out taxpayer money, forward thinkers that they are, like to avoid putting all of their egg whites in one biodegradable basket. Enter spinach: http://campaign2012.washingtonexamin...-source/501851

The EPA awarded a $90,000 grant over the weekend to Vanderbilt University students “who designed a biohybrid solar panel that substitutes a protein from spinach for expensive silicon wafers that are energy intensive to produce, and is capable of producing electricity.”
[...]
They won the grant despite “nagging doubts about how the slight power from the panel would convince the judges,” one Vanderbilt professor explained.

When I was a kid my mother would make me eat spinach and then try to harness the power of my projectile vomiting to run the sewing machine, but could never quite master the technology. If only there were “green” grants back then we might have been able to develop it further — or at least gotten rich off taxpayers for producing nothing of any particular use in the real world. A win-win either way.

The Vanderbilt students only got $90,000? They should have focused on designing and manufacturing an energy efficient $50 light bulb and they might have been awarded $10 million. http://michellemalkin.com/2012/04/17/l-prize-bulb/

Possibly coming soon to an Obama spinach-promoting green energy speech in the near future: “Popeye discovered the value of spinach as fuel a long time ago. It’s how he weaned himself from his dependence on Oyl.”

Steven Chu :rimshot:: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Frd53vbCHLg

http://michellemalkin.com/2012/04/25/spinach/


comments

It just ain’t meant to wean dependence on oil, but to make somebody near to this admin or the dem party richer for the bogus effort…..and if it does prove successful, strain the food supply chain for the masses. Starving people tend to be more compliant.

Hmmm, lessee, what other food source plants can we find to use for alternative fuels to run our vehicles and reduce food consumption for poor people?

...

So the GOP subsidizes ethanol (corn fuel), the Obama wants to subsidize algae fuel and now the Dems want to subsidize spinach fuel. Of the three, Obama’s plan is the only one that doesn’t drive up the cost of food.

All three are very bad ideas if the game is to wean us off of oil. At least algae has some useful applications but is a small solution that fails to address a big problem.

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Much like corn ethanol: If it can’t compete in the free market without the massive subsidies, it isn’t viable.

[Jolie Rouge]

Imagine if Bush - with his oft disparaged ties to "Big Oil" - had ordered the Navy - by executive orders - to honor a multi-million contract held by one of his big donors >>

U.S. Navy ordered to buy $59 a gallon BIO-FUEL from big Democratic contributor to Obama and others. Navy didn't just buy a few gallons.....but $12 million in biofuels to test the ability of Navy ships to run on the stuff for an entire day! Petroluem per gallon today? $3.60..but who's counting pennies!!!

Thanks to one of President Obama’s executive orders, Solazyme secured a $12 million contract with the U.S. Navy to unload hundreds of thousands of gallons of biofuel — priced at an estimated four to seven times the normal cost of regular jet fuel.

Jet-Fuel Gate
By: John Hayward 12/15/2011 12:05 PM

Investors Business Daily has an amazing editorial that demonstrates the spirit of Solyndra lives on in the Obama White House. http://news.investors.com/article/59...green-scam.htm There have been a long string of Solyndra-type payoffs rolling out of this Administration. The latest one has national security implications on top of the cheap Chicago-style corruption and “green” fanaticism, as we learn the U.S. Navy was forced to purchase thousands of gallons of biofuel from a stimulus-receiving company that has ties to the White House… at an astonishing four times the price of normal jet fuel.

JP-5 marine jet fuel costs less than $4 per gallon, but the Navy was ordered to buy $12 million worth of fermented algae biofuel from, among several sources, a company called Solazyme, at whopping $26 per gallon. This was mixed with oil products to produce a 50/50 blend of real fuel and green horsefeathers worth $15 per gallon.

As Fox News reported in early December, http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011...ls-for-fleets/ the purchase was “authorized by an executive order under the Obama Administration’s ‘We Can’t Wait’ campaign.” Furthermore, “Administration officials gave no indication why they’re not going through Congress, instead using a program that was established to promote rapid job growth by bypassing congressional debate.”

Oh, I think we can come up with a few reasons why. But first, let the IBD editors explain why this is an incredibly dangerous 50/50 blend of Obama corruption and ideology:

We heard the ludicrous excuse last week from Obama Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, as quoted in the National Journal, that “we are doing this for one simple reason: It makes us better fighters” because “our use of fossil fuels is a very real threat to our national security and to the U.S. Navy ability to protect America and project power overseas.”

What about the “very real threat” to the Navy of not having enough money for the ships, fighters and ammunition it needs to protect America? President Obama’s assault on the Pentagon could scrap 60 of the Navy’s ships, including two carrier groups.

The biofuel will be used next summer by — we’re not making this up — “the Great Green Fleet Carrier Strike Force” in exercises near Hawaii. Mabus painted the picture of America’s great naval force advancing from sails to coal to diesel to nuclear, and now finally to biofuels. But if we keep starving the Navy, it may soon not have enough loose change to repair the sails on Old Ironsides.

As we have seen time and again, the actual functionality of any given Obama program is entirely secondary to ensuring the right special interests are pleased, and the right people get paid, in accordance with the correct dead-end environmental radicalism.

The IBD editorial builds upon the outstanding detective work of J.E. Dyer at Hot Air, who provides extensive details of Solazyme, and how it came to score this incredible deal to rake in millions at the expense of both taxpayers and military readiness. The tale is not difficult to summarize: http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives...r-16-a-gallon/

1. Solazyme “strategic advisor” T.J. Glauthier worked on the energy part of Obama’s trillion-dollar “stimulus” bill.

2. Surprise, surprise! Solazyme gets a sweet $21.8 million grant of taxpayer loot from the stimulus bill.

3. Solazyme uses this money to open the largest biofuel plant in North America, located in Geismar, Louisiana.

4. Obama abuses an executive order to buy millions of dollars of biofuel from the plant he forced taxpayers to spend millions of dollars building.

Combined with heavily subsidized commercial purchases of biofuel, this swirling toilet of graft will be used to argue that “green energy” programs are wonderful and profitable. You can save the Earth and make money too! Provided you have the right political connections to get your hands into taxpayer wallets, of course.

According to Wired, http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/navy-biofuels/ the “Green Fleet” brings Secretary Mabus “much closer to his promise of obtaining half of the Navy’s fuel from alternative sources by 2020. And the often-struggling biofuels industry will be a lot closer to proving its viability.” Also, “the Obama administration recently announced that the Navy, along the Departments of Agriculture and Energy, will spend as much as $510 million to develop the country’s biofuel production infrastructure, and to buy up more gas.” That’s an awful lot of politically distributed cabbage. Make those campaign donations quickly, CEOs!

Well, at least some jobs were created by the stimulus payoff to build that biofuel plant, right? You bet! According to Biodiesel Magazine, http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/art...early-complete “the plant cost more than $150 million and more than 300 jobs are being created.” Divide $21.8 million stimulus by 300 jobs and you get about $73,000 of taxpayer subsidy per job created. That would get worse if you include the executive-ordered income from the Navy fuel purchase as part of the subsidy cost, although it would still be much better than the Obama “green energy” average, which is hovering somewhere around $5 million per job.

Besides the extremely disturbing questions of military capability raised by “green energy” graft in a time of Defense cuts, in the long term, Jet-Fuel Gate feeds into the fatal political fallacy of ignoring inputs while trumpeting carefully selected outputs. The other big biofuel providers in the Navy deal, Tyson Foods and Syntroleum, make their fuel from cooking oil. They were lured into the biofuel business with the usual combination of sanctimony and big-bucks subsidies. The idea of declaring any of these projects “profitable” is ludicrous – they’re national debt sinks, gobbling up billions in compulsory subsidies seized from taxpayers. We long ago ran out of the money to pretend they’re anything else, and we’re very close to being unable to borrow enough to keep the game running in overtime.

http://www.humanevents.com/2011/12/15/jetfuel-gate/

comments

By executive order. "I order you to spend 28 million dollars to benefit my friend" . . . and it happens with no checks and balances. This is not the American system as designed.

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The price for the biofuel itself in this contract is actually $26 per gallon ($12M for 450K gal) and is more than 8 times the current rate for conventional JP-8 jet fuel and F-76 diesel oil (both less than $3 a gallon to the military in bulk). Even so, this price is a huge deception. DOE is separately subsidizing Solazyme for the algae fuel to the tune of $21 Million. USDA is also pumping in money via subsidies and loan guarantees. To get an idea of the real price, Honeywell UOP just won a DOE contract for $1.1M to produce 100 gallons of fue sometime in 2012--that's $11,000 a gallon. The Navy previously paid $430 a gallon for Solazyme algae diesel oil for its recent ship stunts and $149 a gallon for algae kerosene for its recent airplane stunts--I say "stunts" because that is what RAND said in its Jan 2011 study that said the US Military is wasting vast sums of money duplicating meaningless demonstrations that have already been done by industry for 55 different biofuel blends. The issue is not making the fuel, it's making it economically. To see how we are doing, consider that North America is already littered with failed ethanol biofuel enterprises that never delivered and closed up as soon as the subsidies dried up. America's fanciful mandatory ethanol policies have driven up the world-wide price of food 250% and resulted in the United States actually IMPORTING biofuel to meet federal mandates (look it up). How insane to spread starvation in other countries by enticing their farmers to fuel crop production instead of food production (e.g., Brazil), and to trade U.S dependence on cheap imported petroleum for a dependence upon expensive imported ethanol and biodiesel. This is how the Administration and the Navy are spending our tax dollars while carrying a $15 Trillion debt and cutting defense.

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Obama doesn't have to worry about the political embarrassment if this company fails. How could it? It has the power of the US Defense Department behind it. It's set up like a stealth bomber on America's radar screens. This isn't how anyone imagined the role of the military, to reward someones supporters, and create green opportunities for Tyson Foods.