Australian Television

Australian Broadcast Corporation Studio

During a recent work trip to Australia, I ended up being interviewed for a few television and radio broadcasts. There is a lot of interest in the potential for biofuels for the airline industry, and the sponsors of my trip saw to it that there was press coverage of all the related activities around the Australian International Air Show. The United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney made all of my arrangements, and saw to it I arrived at the right times, or was ready to receive calls when scheduled.

United States Studies Centre Website

For all of the effort arranging an interview at the Australian Broadcast Corporation's Plant America, the timing was such that my interview did not show up when intended - such it is. It was fund going through the exercise and was good practice for the two radio and one more television interviews. The second TV interview was at the air show, and ended up being a business news report. I heard that my grand kids picked up my voice right away when my son showed them Grandpa on TV. The report can be view by clicking here. The United States Study Centre has been compiling the reports from the different interviews (click here).

ABC interview setting

It was impressive how prepared the reporter was - she rattled through a series of questions for the five of us that were interviewed. Each person was queued in a different place so the background varied for each of us. No make up here - plein air style - unlike back at the ABC Studios the week before. For all the tape time recorded, it is amazing how such edited short sound bites end up telling a pretty good story of what all of this is about. Same as the link above, the view of the interview is found here, and other information is posted about the activities at the United States Study Centre. The radio interviews were done over the phone - like a conversation across the table, just without eye contact. You can listen in on the interviews with Radio 2GB Sunday Business and ABC Radio National Breakfast. 

Teddy Roosevelt Would Have Said, "Bully"

Big ships on the sea

A number of months back, I heard a radio program PolitiFact feature that reports the truthfulness of political debate topics the previous week. The PolitiFact truthfulness ratings range across: True – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing; Mostly True – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information; Half True – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context; Mostly False – The statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression; False – The statement is not accurate; Pants on Fire – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim.

Navy ship refueling at sea

Most of the time, I may know something about the subject, but rarely would I even attempt to make believe that I have extensive first-hand knowledge - know for sure with some degree of certainty that my competency exceeds my confidence. For the past couple of years my work has been focused on biofuels, and in particular, an emphasis on the development of drop-in fuels for the commercial air transportation industry and the military. The realization of widespread use of biofuels is coming closer to reality, and it is satisfying to have a front-row seat to history as it unfolds. United Airlines, Boeing, and others recently announced an initiative to create a source of aviation fuel from Midwest U.S. farms, and earlier this week the Navy continued preparations for the demonstration of biofuels by a strike group during the upcoming RIMPAC exercises in July.

F76 renewable diesel fuel

The past month or so there have also been political challenges to government-sponsored activities, particularly the Navy, to help push the emerging advanced biofuel industry forward. It is interesting to read the accounts of the arguments made for and against biofuels, and to check the facts against what is said. It has also been fascinating to see the press responses that are being printed in a wide range of publications: The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, Wired, and others - quite a cross section of the political spectrum. I checked PolitiFact earlier in the week, but hadn't found any scoring on the matter of recent developments regarding biofuels - maybe soon there will be some.

Following are excerpts with links to full reports from a recent smattering of articles about moves to block the Navy from testing biofuels. I will leave it up to you to make your judgments about the facts - maybe a PolitiFact score could be used to keep track of the debate. 

Airforce And Navy Turn To Biofuels. The Pentagon's hunt for an alternative to petroleum has turned a lowly weed and animal fat into something indistinguishable from jet fuel, and now the military is trying to kick-start a new biofuel industry. [Continue reading here.]

Navy Sails To Greener Future. Next month, in naval exercises off the coast of Hawaii, five U.S. warships will make history: They will be the first to use biofuels to power their huge turbines, as well as the jet planes screaming off a carrier's deck and helicopters hovering overhead. The flotilla—powered by a mixture of cooking grease and algae oil—is the centerpiece of the U.S. Navy's efforts to shake off its centurylong dependence on petroleum. But now it has become the center of a political storm. Lawmakers in both houses of Congress last month voted to stop the Navy from buying any more of the still-pricey alternative fuel and to keep the Pentagon from investing $170 million in new biofuel refineries. [Continue reading here.]

Don't Scuttle The U.S. Navy's Biofuels Program. Last month, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to restrict the Department of Defense’s biofuels buying power. Jointly the Department of Energy, Department of Defense and U.S. Department of Agriculture have committed to investing $510 million during the next three years to advance biofuels production. Now, as a part of the Defense Department’s fiscal budget review, the House and now Senate Armed Services Committee have banned it from buying alternative fuels priced higher than fossil fuels. If the budget passes in the full Senate, early biofuels investment and testing by the Defense Department will be effectively squashed. [Continue reading here.]

United, Boeing, Honeywell UOP Join Big Push For Biofuels. If there are still any doubts that biofuels are ready for the big time, last week’s announcement by United Airlines, Boeing, and UOP (a Honeywell company) should put them to rest. The three industry heavyweights have joined with the Chicago Department of Aviation and the Clean Energy Trust to form the Midwest Aviation Sustainable Biofuels Initiative. [Continue reading here.]

Biofuels Could Bolster Nation Security, Leaders Say. A top British envoy says the U.S. and the U.K. could collaborate more on the development and use of biofuels in the military to boost both nations’ security and energy interests and cut greenhouse gas emissions. [Continue reading here.]

The Navy Plays An Important Role In Biofuel Procurement. The military’s FY2013 budget is playing out to be a hot-bed of debate over the role of government in supporting clean energy innovation. Both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate Armed Services Committee passed Department of Defense (DOD) budgets that bans the department from developing or purchasing advanced alternative energy fuels that cost more than traditional fossil fuels. While most of the resulting media focus has been on weighing the possible advantages associated with biofuel use relative to its cost, too little attention has been paid to the important role the DOD can play as a technology-first adopter. [Continue reading here.]

Senate Cuts Off Navy's Biofuel Buys. The Navy’s ambitious renewable-energy plans aren’t sunk quite yet. But they took a major hit Thursday, when the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to all-but-ban the military from buying alternative fuels. [Continue reading here.]

McCain Sees Another Solyndra In Navy Biofuels Spending. The Navy’s push to develop biofuels to run its fleet of planes and warships could devolve into a “Solyndra situation” for the Pentagon, a top Republican senator said today. During Tuesday’s hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, ranking member John McCain (R-Ariz.) compared the now-bankrupt solar energy company, into which the White House sank $535 million in loan guarantees, to Navy-led efforts in alternative energy. [Continue reading here.] 

Hands Off Biofuels, Panetta Tells Congress. In yet another Washington fight over energy policy, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta pushed back Wednesday against Congressional efforts to curtail the military push into alternative fuels. [Continue reading here.] 

USDA's Vilsack Criticizes Senate Panel Biofuels Vote. This week an Obama administration official criticized a U.S. Senate panel for voting to block the Pentagon from buying more costly alternative fuels, saying a military biofuels program announced last year could help revitalize rural America. [Continue reading here.]

Why We Need A Greener Military. Killing a $12 million military program may seem like a paltry matter. The sum amounts to a mere 0.002 percent of the total defense budget. But the elimination of one such program this week by the House Armed Services Committee reveals—more brazenly than many larger tamperings—just how shortsighted, hypocritical, and beholden to special interests the custodians of national security can be. [Continue reading here.]
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The Navy's Greet Green Fleet is a contemporary throw back to the world tour by the Great White Fleet in the early 1900's that President Theodore Roosevelt used to demonstrate the U.S. military power, only now, demonstrating the modern capacity using renewable fuels that are technically the equivalent of petroleum-based ones and that will not be subject to price fluctuations.

A Small Contribution

Image on a laptop projected to the big screen

Last Friday the Navy, USDA, DOE, and DOT sponsored an Advanced Biofuel Industry Roundtable in Washington, D.C. to help interested companies understand opportunities for building partnerships and finding ways to resource their businesses. There was a good turnout, and so was the feedback from the attendees. I didn't have to speak, but was asked to provide a little bit of staff support for one of the speakers at the last minute. After a quick exchange of emails on the Blackberry, whipping out my MacBook Pro from the briefcase, some quick work on Powerpoint after editing an image in Photoshop, and then a transfer to a flash drive - voila': a big-screen backdrop for the speaker. (note the arrow in the photograph at the left showing the handy work as it appeared on projector's laptop.)

This week there have been major industry announcements by Boeing and United Airlines stating their intentions to promote and utilize renewable aviation biofuels. Not ethanol, but fuel that looks the same, burns in turbine engines, costs the same, but performs better than petroleum-based fuel. USDA thinks its a good idea, too. When reading comments to news reports about aviation biofuels, it is interesting the amount of misinformation that is out there.

15 Minutes of FAME - FSRL

A project I have been working on for more than a year came to an untypical conclusion this past week - an official ceremonial hand-off in front of a crowd. The event wasn't a calculated and showy production 

The FSRL Tool

intended to send stock prices through the ceiling, like a Steve-Jobs-new-Apple-product-roll-out at a technology showcase. It was just a simple signal that a work was completed, a commitment fulfilled, and its time to move on with the next steps that are needed over a long haul towards a commercial era for aviation biofuels. 

Below is a report from the Aviation Week periodical about the product that was sent by one of the co-developers on the team. The purple color represents Fuel Readiness Level (FRL) by way of the color of the jerseys worn by fuel technicians on aircraft carriers. The green represents the Feedstock Readiness Level (FSRL) and the natural origin of biomass from farms and forests. This is the kind of stuff that is a long ways from the farm.
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FAA-Led CAAFI Moves To Measure Readiness Of Biofuel Feedstocks
Aviation Daily Dec 02, 2011, p. 11
Graham Warwick
The FAA-led Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAAFI) has unveiled a tool designed to help bridge the gap between feedstock providers and fuel producers as it strives to develop a supply chain for sustainable aviation biofuels. 

Feedstocks from farms

Developed for CAAFI by the U.S. Agriculture Dept. (USDA) and modeled on NASA-pioneered technology readiness levels (TRL), the new feedstock readiness tool “will allow biorefiners to make quicker, easier assessments of feedstock opportunities,” says Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsak, addressing the CAAFI general meeting yesterday in Washington. The tool will enable industry “to look at where potential biomass sources are and what steps are needed to get them to the biorefineries,” he says.

The new feedstock readiness level (FSRL) is a companion to CAAFI’s established fuel readiness level (FRL) tool, which indicates where a specific process for producing an alternative jet fuel is on its development path. FSRL is an effort to bring some order to “the craziness of how many feedstocks are out there,” says Jeffrey Steiner of the USDA Research Service. “It’s a tool to bridge [the gap] between farmers and biorefiners.”

As with TRLs and FRLs, the FSRL tool ranks feedstock readiness on levels from 1 to 9, from concept to commercial-scale deployment. Levels 1-4 cover preliminary evaluation and small-scale experimental testing. These levels “precede any large-scale investment in growing millions of acres,” says Steiner. Levels 5 and 6 cover validation of the alternative-fuel production system, while 7-9 involve the final stages of commercial deployment.

Where green fuels will come from

Assessing feedstock readiness is more complex than technology or fuel readiness levels, as each level includes production, market and policy components plus a linkage to the readiness of the technology needed to convert a specific feedstock to jet fuel. “Farmers are used to growing crops for which there is a market already out there,” Steiner says. “But they can’t count on growing a crop and having someone come buy it and turn it into jet fuel. There is a close linkage.”
 
Efforts are now under way within CAAFI to extend the concept of fuel and feedstock readiness levels to encompass the work required to ensure that the sustainability of aviation biofuels complies with regulatory frameworks for renewable fuels.

My Day Job - Evenings, And Some Weekends, Too

For a long time, my family would tell folks who asked what I do, "Oh, he works with seeds." It was for quite a while after I had moved onto other research areas that everyone caught on that I hadn't worked with seeds for a long time - career paths change. A little over two years ago, I was asked to work for the office of an appointee in the Department of Agriculture - my task, provide technical advice for developing biofuels policy. The first comments made by the person interviewing me were: "How would you like to have a career change?"

I attend a meeting or give a presentation to various groups about every week or two about some aspect of agriculture and aviation biofuels. I was asked earlier this year to write an article for an on-line magazine, and it just appeared this past week. For me, being in agriculture and 

Inspecting JP-8 Jet Fuel

having a work-connection to the military is satisfying since we have one son who served in the Army, and a second who is training to be a naval aviator. Because of that connection, when I was sitting on a panel at a conference several months ago waiting my turn to speak, I came up with a thought that became a part of my opening remarks. With a picture of a Navy Aviation Boatswain’s Mate inspecting a sample of jet fuel up on the screen (1), I commented: "There is a commonality between agriculture and the military that I hadn't thought of before. For both, less than two percent of the U.S. population are involved in production agriculture and are in active military service." The rest of the panel members, an Air Force and an Army Lt. Colonel, a couple of civilian Defense Department employees, and an aviation trade association lawyer involved in biofuel testing, procurement, and advocacy nodded - recognizing the disconnect of these two sectors from the rest of the much broader population as a whole. That thought ended up becoming a part of the introduction to my article - the result of knowing how disconnected agriculture is from the general population in a largely industrialized nation, and being a dad of two kids connected to the service - a military family greatly disconnected from most families in the U.S. as well. I don't know if I would have drawn that link between the number of people who defend our country and grow our food - if not being connected to both - that fact would have likely been overlooked - remained unconnected otherwise.

An editorial in yesterday's Washington Post written by a veteran discussed his dealing with what he perceived as that disconnect between those who serve in the military, and the wider population that doesn't - how he processed through a simple thing like strangers saying, "Thanks for your service." It is worth reading and thinking about. Another Post article looks at the same idea from an outsider's perspective - the disconnected. For more information describing differences in well-being of active service and veterans, see the link here.
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(1) An interesting fact is the color-coding of the uniforms worn on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. Those with jobs dealing with fuels were purple - thus are referred to as grapes. More about this is found by clicking here. My aviator-in-training son mentioned "grapes" to me while we were visiting the USS Lexington while visiting Corpus Christi a couple of months ago.