Tag Archives: panel
Video: Molly Dix of RTI previews the Open Innovation panel at Opportunity Green 2009
Posted on 02. Nov, 2009 by OppGreen Insights.
Molly Dix, Technical Team Manager at RTI, gives a preview to the Open Innovation panel taking place this Sunday at Opportunity Green 2009.
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The Future of Biofuels: Can This Green Energy Pay Off?
Posted on 31. Aug, 2009 by Ben Upham.
Opportunity Green was drawn to the Milken Institute yesterday to attend a panel entitled “The Future of Biofuels: Can This Green Energy Pay Off — and Save the Planet?” Biofuels, such as ethanol, made from corn, other plants, like switchgrass, and even from algae, have been both touted and trashed in the last couple years. Heralded as a way to “grow our gasoline”, thus reducing greenhouse gas emissions and securing energy independence, and denounced for perpetuating heavily subsidized industrial farming techniques that harm the environment and, allegedly, contribute to food scarcity.
The panel featured three guests, Roger Conway, director of the Office of Energy Policy and New Uses at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Daniel Gardenswartz, a founding partner of The Sage Group LLC, a Los Angeles-based boutique merchant banking firm, and Richard Hamilton, president and CEO of Ceres, a company that is developing dedicated energy crops for a new generation of biofuels.
A Convincing Argument for Biofuel
Given the business background of the three speakers, the panel was clearly biased towards the industry, and it showed in the presentation. One by one, the panelists attempted to knock down most of the traditional complaints about biofuel:
It is heavily subsidized. Well, so is oil, solar, wind — every major industry.
It causes food prices to rise, most noticeably in 2008. Actually, food prices rose in ’08 because of the rise in the price of oil (backed up with an accompanying slide).
We don’t have the land. There is more than enough unused “marginal” farm land to produce all the biofuel we need.
It uses up precious resources, like water. Most corn and switchgrass (Hamilton’s preferred crop) is rain-fed.
It adds to global warming. Switchgrass is carbon negative, because the plants suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.
By the end of the Q & A the panel seemed to have the audience in the palm of its hand, especially Hamilton, who is 6’6″ and bears a striking resemblance to Brian Williams.
…But on the Other Hand
Opportunity Green remains skeptical. These men have made a career out of deflecting questions about biofuel, and have a lot of practice. While they have valid points on all the issues raised here, the information they provided was selective. For more detailed analysis, check out these articles from the New York Times and Treehugger.
Plus, there are other objections that were not raised. For instance, biofuel is most viable when oil prices are high, but if they are, people are not going to be looking to find a cheaper (but still not free) substitute for gasoline — they’re going to be looking for a way to avoid the stuff altogether. Why pay for liquid fuel when you can get electricity for little or nothing?
Over the long run, we think biofuels will provide a stop-gap between current internal combustion technology and widespread adaption of a green technology like electricity or fuel cells. Biofuels also have a future in aviation and shipping, and possibly diesel trucking, where alternative energies are not cost-effective or simply not possible.
One biofuel that did get short-shrift from the panel was the so-called third generation fuel made from algae. Hamilton and Gardenswartz agreed that those processes were still too untested and expensive for commercial use. This opinion seems to jibe with current sentiment. There’s been a lot of excitement about algae-based fuels in the last couple years, but a lot of high-profile failures too.
Despite our skepticism, Opportunity Green left the panel with increased open-mindedness about this much-maligned fuel source. But we’re still waiting for our electric car.
