Informing public and Congress of Combined Heat and Power and Closed-Loop technologies

Tuesday, October 6, 2009 5:36:20 PM

From: Bill Henderson <hendersonbill65@yahoo.com>
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To: hartwig@ethanolrfa.org

Mr. Hartwig;

As many climate scientists have warned we are very quickly going to be out of time to start taking more
definitive actions to reduce GHG emissions in order to achieve needed GHG reductions when they are needed (in
the next ten years). Everybody seems to think electric cars will save us. The truth that seemingly nobody
recognizes (in the government or the public) is that it will take about 20 years before electric cares will be numerous
enough to have a significant impact and that twenty years will be too late to do any good if we do not do more than
we currently are starting in the next few years.

I have noticed that the ethanol proponent organizations seem to be spending most of their time responding to
non science based criticisms of ethanol. While of course, you must respond to these urban legends and inform the
Congress and public of the facts and debunk pseudo-science, it seems to me the ethanol proponents could be doing
more in the way of an 'offensive' public information campaign (rather than just playing 'defense' most of the time).

One technology that has not been used in ethanol production and which members of Congress, not to mention the
executive branch, seem to be completely unaware of is Combined Heat and Power (CHP). POET has one plant
using this technology but it has received no attention. What surprises me is that ethanol proponents have not been
making this technology and it's capability to greatly enhance the GHG emissions potential of ethanol more widely
known, or perhaps I should say known at all.

The U.S. EPA published a study which showed that CHP used in ethanol production can achieve a negative
carbon footprint. http://epa.gov/chp/documents/ethanol_energy_balance.pdf#page=11 What I believe should be
done is to combine the results of this study with the recent results of the University of Nebraska study
( http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121647166/PDFSTART ) of current ethanol production
efficiency and GHG emissions capacity to show the total affect of CHP with the current industry efficiency.

This spreadsheet, which I put together, gives you the idea of how this could be presented. I am sure the experts
that you have in your organization could do a better job of this but this is provided just to give you the idea.
http://www.geocities.com/hendersonbill65/CHP_GHG_reduction_MJ1 . As you can see when you put CHP
together with the current productivity of the ethanol industry you achieve a 78% GHG reduction vs gasoline which
is approximately a 50% increase from the 51% (avg) found by the Univ. of Nebraska study. This is accomplished
without growing one additional bushel of corn.

Another technology is Closed-Loop production. If ethanol plants were built next to cattle feedlots (over 100 in
the U.S.) they could use the animal waste as a fuel source using anaerobic digesters and greatly reduce the fossil fuel
usage. As you know, anaerobic digesters to produce methane is nothing new and does not require investment in
R&D to achieve. The result of this is to greatly reduce ethanol's carbon footprint. In fact, Closed Loop plants can
achieve Net Energy Gain ratios approaching those of cellulosic ethanol (without the expense of enzymes).

Closed Loop design along with Combined Heat and Power should be aggressively promoted to the Government as
they are cost effective ways to greatly enhance ethanol's GHG emissions impact and they can be implemented in a
relatively short period of time (i.e. a much shorter time period than twenty years) and at a rather modest investment
relative to that required for R&D for battery development for electric cars.
 This information, I believe, should be used to inform the public and the Government of what can be done to
enhance ethanol's effectiveness at GHG reduction. Too much of the conversation is focused on current status and
averages instead of focusing on what is possible with not that much effort or investment. In the past several years
the ethanol industry went through a very fast build-up and there was not enough time and certainly no intelligent
co:ordination from the Government to invest in the most effective techniques available to get the most out of the
ethanol we are producing. fro the sake of our planet this needs to change. I think the ethanol proponent
organizations are in a unique position to inform the pubic and to make these points to the Government.

I believe informing members of Congress of the above technologies would help in the promotion of ethanol, a
fuel which will play an essential role if we are to save the planet from global warming. Hybrid cars will be
necessary too, but we must do something in the near term or what hybrids can achieve in twenty years will not
matter. It will be all over by then if we do not do enough to reduce GHG emissions in the very near term.

Thank you for your time and consideration.