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Josh Tickell and the Veggie Van organization are distributing biodiesel to people and businesses in hard-hit Louisiana through their Biodiesel Katrina Relief Effort.



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National Clean Cities, working to promote alternative fuel infrastructure.

Fertile soil eroding faster than it can be replenished.

Tom Young, Business Green 

"Fertile soil is being lost faster than it can be replenished making it much harder to grow crops around the world, according to a study by the University of Sydney. The study, reported in The Daily Telegraph, claims bad soil mismanagement, climate change and rising populations are leading to a decline in suitable farming soil.

An estimated 75 billion tonnes of soil is lost annually with more than 80 per cent of the world's farming land "moderately or severely eroded", the report found. Soil is being lost in China 57 times faster than it can be replaced through natural processes, in Europe 17 times faster and in America 10 times faster. The study said all suitable farming soil could vanish within 60 years if quick action was not taken, leading to a global food crisis.

John Crawford, professor of Sustainable Agriculture at the University of Sydney, who presented the study, said: "It could be as little as 60 years and that is a scary figure because it is not obvious that we have time to reverse decline and still meet future demands for food," according to The Daily Telegraph. Over-ploughing is one of the chief culprits because it leaves topsoil open to erosion by wind and rain.

David Montgomery, author of Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations, advocates a wholesale change in farming practices to "no-till agriculture", currently used by about five per cent of the world's farmers. This method leaves crop stubble in the field to be mixed with the top layer of the soil and means less ploughing is needed. But such methods can lead to lower thresholds, making it harder to feed the world's population. Last year food prices rocketed as wheat stocks dropped to a 30-year low and countries started to bulk buy."

Source:  Business Green

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The future rests on the soil beneath our feet.

By Charles C. Mann

"On a warm September day, farmers from all over the state gather around the enormous machines. Combines, balers, rippers, cultivators, diskers, tractors of every variety—all can be found at the annual Wisconsin Farm Technology Days show. But the stars of the show are the great harvesters, looming over the crowd. They have names like hot rods—the Claas Jaguar 970, the Krone BiG X 1000—and are painted with colors bright as fireworks. The machines weigh 15 tons apiece and have tires tall as a tall man. When I visited Wisconsin Farm Technology Days last year, John Deere was letting visitors test its 8530 tractor, an electromechanical marvel so sophisticated that I had no idea how to operate it. Not to worry: The tractor drove itself, navigating by satellite. I sat high and happy in the air-conditioned bridge, while beneath my feet vast wheels rolled over the earth.

The farmers grin as they watch the machines thunder through the cornfields. In the long run, though, they may be destroying their livelihoods. Midwestern topsoil, some of the finest cropland in the world, is made up of loose, heterogeneous clumps with plenty of air pockets between them. Big, heavy machines like the harvesters mash wet soil into an undifferentiated, nigh impenetrable slab—a process called compaction. Roots can't penetrate compacted ground; water can't drain into the earth and instead runs off, causing erosion. And because compaction can occur deep in the ground, it can take decades to reverse. Farm-equipment companies, aware of the problem, put huge tires on their machines to spread out the impact. And farmers are using satellite navigation to confine vehicles to specific paths, leaving the rest of the soil untouched.

Nonetheless, this kind of compaction remains a serious issue—at least in nations where farmers can afford $400,000 harvesters. Unfortunately, compaction is just one, relatively small piece in a mosaic of interrelated problems afflicting soils all over the planet. In the developing world, far more arable land is being lost to human-induced erosion and desertification, directly affecting the lives of 250 million people. In the first—and still the most comprehensive—study of global soil misuse, scientists at the International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC) in the Netherlands estimated in 1991 that humankind has degraded more than 7.5 million square miles of land. Our species, in other words, is rapidly trashing an area the size of the United States and Canada combined.

This year food shortages, caused in part by the diminishing quantity and quality of the world's soil (see "Dirt Poor"), have led to riots in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. By 2030, when today's toddlers have toddlers of their own, 8.3 billion people will walk the Earth; to feed them, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimates, farmers will have to grow almost 30 percent more grain than they do now. Connoisseurs of human fecklessness will appreciate that even as humankind is ratchetting up its demands on soil, we are destroying it faster than ever before.

"Taking the long view, we are running out of dirt," says David R. Montgomery, a geologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. Journalists sometimes describe unsexy subjects as MEGO: My eyes glaze over. Alas, soil degradation is the essence of MEGO. Nonetheless, the stakes—and the opportunities—could hardly be higher, says Rattan Lal, a prominent soil scientist at Ohio State University. Researchers and ordinary farmers around the world are finding that even devastated soils can be restored. The payoff, Lal says, is the chance not only to fight hunger but also to attack problems like water scarcity and even global warming. Indeed, some researchers believe that global warming can be slowed significantly by using vast stores of carbon to reengineer the world's bad soils. "Political stability, environmental quality, hunger, and poverty all have the same root," Lal says. "In the long run, the solution to each is restoring the most basic of all resources, the soil."

Excerpted from National Geographic

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The National Farmers Union and Country Land & Business Association are a number of key organizations supporting the launch of the Energy Now Expo 2010, scheduled to take place on February 17-18, 2010 at the Three Counties Showground, Malvern, Worcestershire, UK.

Energy Now Expo 2010 is a two day exhibition and conference showcasing the latest renewable energy technologies and services available to farmers and landowners.

The event is designed to help farmers and landowners explore and further understand the opportunities available to them in wind, biomass, biofuels, biogas, ground source heating, hydro and solar energy. 

All farmers and landowners have valuable resources at their disposal, including crops, wood, waterways and land. Maximizing the benefits of these resources through renewable energy is not only financially sensible but demonstrates environmental responsibility. 

The exhibition will provide practical demonstrations of products and services and will feature 60+ exhibitors including EDF Energy Renewables, Forestry Commission, Good Energy, Envitec Biogas UK, The Co-operative Bank and Countrywide Farmers. The full exhibitor list can be found on the event web site detailed below. 

The conference & workshop program will focus on all aspects of renewable energy including funding, planning, legal and legislative topics. The speaker program will feature a number of high profile speakers including Dr Angela Karp � Centre for Bioenergy & Climate Change, David Williams - British Hydropower Association, Andrew Perrins � Department of Energy & Climate Change and the CLA�s Chief Surveyor Oliver Harwood. 

Special delegate rates for Enagri subscribers has been agreed with the show organizers to encourage attendance at the inaugural event.

For further information and tickets to Energy Now Expo 2010 please visit the event web site at www.energynowexpo.co.uk. 

Alternatively please contact:
Paul Davis Tel: 01293 854405

Email: paul@energynowexpo.co.uk.

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U.S. Renewable Energy Sector Outlook for 2009

By: John Gimigliano

In 1859, Charles Dickens famously penned the opening lines to “A Tale of Two Cities”:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…

Dickens was not, of course, referring to the outlook for the renewables sector in 2009, but he easily could have been. The outlook for the renewables sector is a remarkable juxtaposition of a rosy future and a grim present. On the one hand, the growing public and political consensus around the dangers of climate change coupled with the rousing endorsement from Congress in the broad renewables tax package enacted in October 2008 all bode well for the sector. On the other, the dramatic downturn in the financial sector suggests that obtaining project-level financing is going to be tough sledding throughout 2009.

This “best of times, worst of times” dynamic suggests the coming year may well be the year that the renewables sector proves its mettle to the market, showing remarkable resilience in the face of extreme financial uncertainty. To do so, it will need a little help from Capitol Hill— and Congress may well deliver.

Prospects for Climate Change Legislation in 2009

During the 2008 presidential campaign, President-Elect Obama endorsed a cap-and-trade program as the preferred approach to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. Likewise, both the House and the Senate are poised to resume consideration of various cap-and-trade proposals early in 2009. While many economists, including the Congressional Budget Office, prefer the simplicity of a carbon tax, most observers believe that a cap-and-trade system is the most likely political outcome.

If a cap-and-trade regime is inevitable, the next question to ask is when it might be enacted. The answer to this question depends largely on the health of the economy. Many believe that the Obama Administration will be reluctant to burden an already soft economy with the higher energy prices that a cap-and-trade program would almost certainly bring. If the economy remains mired in recession throughout 2009 and 2010, comprehensive climate change legislation could be shelved until a possible Obama second term.

Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency

If comprehensive climate change legislation is tabled for the short term, it seems likely that Congress and the Obama Administration will redouble efforts on more narrow policy goals or regulatory reforms that have long been at the forefront of environmental policy in the United States. Indeed, the appointment of Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior; Carol Browner as head of the newly formed National Energy Council; and appointments at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy (DOE), and other agencies all point to a determined effort to chart an aggressive course on environmental policy.

In particular, the likelihood for a federal renewable energy standard (RES) is enhanced by the convergence of large Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress and a Democrat in the White House. President-Elect Obama was supportive of a federal Renewable Portfolio Standard throughout the presidential campaign, and the House of Representatives passed a similar RES on several occasions. The Senate, long a stumbling block to this legislation, will have a decidedly greener point of view in the incoming Congress.

The most recent House version of an RES, in H.R. 6899 from the 110th Congress, likely represents the jumping- off point for legislative efforts in the 111th Congress. Interestingly, that version allows for energy efficiency measures to be treated as qualifying under the RES standard. This would bode well for energy efficiency technologies, particularly in the Southeast where other renewable resources appear to be less abundant.

Likely, other areas to be considered will be modified Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards for the automobile industry and new and more flexible tax credits for clean and alternative energy. Likewise, the incoming Obama Administration had pledged to invest billions of dollars in infrastructure including areas such as smart grid, biofuels pipelines, and mass transit. This infrastructure spending could be authorized quickly in 2009 in the promised economic stimulus bill currently under consideration by House and Senate leadership. The stimulus bill could also include large grants, tax incentives, and other authorizations for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects and technology.

The Future of Renewable Energy Tax Incentives

To date, the principal approach to encouraging renewables development in the United States has been through the tax code. The production tax credit (PTC) has helped fuel remarkable increases in U.S. wind generation in recent years. Likewise, the energy investment tax credit (ITC) is largely responsible for the current boom in the solar sector. The same can be said of renewable energy tax credits for biofuels, biomass, geothermal, fuel cells, hybrid automobiles, and so on.

This approach has worked well… until now. The rapid decline of the financial sector throughout 2008 has all but eliminated the erstwhile renewables financiers from the marketplace. Even those financial institutions that still have cash on hand often have current financial and tax losses, making tax credits all but useless. Without these traditional sources of project-level financing, many planned wind, solar, and other renewables projects may never get beyond the planning phase.

It is against this backdrop that Congress is considering a revision of renewables tax incentives to make them more effective in the current financial climate. Congress will likely revisit energy tax legislation in 2009 to, at a minimum, extend the production tax credit for wind that expires on December 31 of that year. While considering that extension, Congress has indicated that it will consider making the PTC and possibly the ITC refundable. Unlike the current-law tax credits, the holder of a refundable tax credit need not have a tax liability to capture the value of the tax credit. Rather, the holder of the tax credit can apply for a refund from the federal government in an amount equal to the credit.

This approach would allow developers and project investors who do not have sufficient tax liability to capture the value of the tax credits to nevertheless do so in the form of refunds from the federal government. This change could significantly expand the universe of potential project investors from the handful (that have both the capital on hand and the tax liability to utilize the project tax credits) that exist today. Such an approach, if enacted, would push the United States a step closer to the feed-in tariff approach so common in Europe. One lingering complexity to be resolved is whether the accelerated tax depreciation (five years for wind and solar projects) would be refundable as well. On the one hand, this accelerated cost recovery represents a sizeable portion of the tax benefits that attract investors. On the other hand, Congress may be reluctant to set a precedent for other industries that depreciation and cost recovery can be a refundable item.

An alternative proposal put forward by the incoming Obama Administration would allow claimants of renewable energy tax credits to carry them back to the preceding five tax years. This would allow these project developers and investors to wipe out taxes paid in earlier years and claim a tax refund from the federal government. While this approach is likely to be helpful to many potential investors, it is unlikely to have the broader stimulus effect of a generally refundable credit.

Meanwhile, it seems likely that other industries will enter into the renewables tax financing market. In particular, public utilities appear to be a good choice to take up some of the slack. As regulated companies, utilities tend to have both cash and tax liability. In addition, the renewable energy sector is a natural fit for the core competency of these entities. Utilities know project development, power purchase agreements, transmission interconnects, and other fundamentals around power production (even if the underlying technology is new to most traditional utilities). 

Conclusions

Despite momentum in public opinion, political circles, and discussions among strategic investors, the renewables sector faces a challenging year like most sectors of the economy. While comprehensive climate change legislation may have to wait for firmer economic footing, other help may be on the way. A federal RES would create demand for renewables on a national basis. This coupled with revamped refundable tax credits could shake loose project-level investment that has been lacking in recent months. These legislative changes could change the outlook from “A Tale of Two Cities” to another great Dickens book: “Great Expectations.”

This article was first published by the KPMG Global Energy Institute in 2009 prior to the enactment of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  It is reprinted here with permission of the publisher.

About the Author

John Gimigliano, principal in KPMG’s Washington National Tax group.  Prior to joining KPMG, Gimigliano was Senior Tax Counsel for the Committee on Ways and Means. As the lead tax counsel for the House of Representatives during the Energy Policy Act of 2005, he was a principal author of many of the alternative energy tax incentives currently in the Internal Revenue Code. Gimigliano also represented the House during the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008.

About the KPMG Global Energy Institute

This article is provided by the KPMG Global Energy Institute. The Institute’s goal is to provide an open forum where industry financial executives can share knowledge, gain insights and access thought leadership about global energy industry issues and emerging trends. To access a regularly updated library of thought leadership, video and audio Web casts, podcasts and conferences and events, please visit http://www.kpmgglobalenergyinstitute.com/.

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Builds awareness of the benefits of renewable energy technologies for rural landowners and communities in Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Montana.




Provides resources for offsetting our carbon dioxide footprint.



America stands first in nuclear defense expenditures but it ranks 14th in efforts to lift children out of poverty; 18th in the percentage of children in poverty; And last in providing health insurance for all children.

... an international not-for-profit technical association founded in 1947 to provide an information network for all segments of the forest products industry — from standing tree to finished product.

The information and networking center for citizens and environmental organizations concerned about nuclear power, radioactive waste, radiation, and sustainable energy issues.