During the National Governors Association summer meeting last weekend the governors worried about economic damage from the Alaska oil field shutdown and complained about years of energy policy neglect by our U.S. Congress. Energy independence and alternative fuels had already been placed on the discussion agenda when news of the oil field shutdown added new urgency to the discussions.
Many governors called for drilling more oil wells faster and digging more coal faster. Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, called for greater investment in coal to produce synthetic fuels. Republican Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi just blamed the nation's energy problems on environmentalists. There was even a little discussion about alternatives such as ethanol and wind energy at home.
As usual there was no "out of the box" alternative energy thinking from this collection of politicians from across the nation, no serious talk of conservation and no talk of breaking up the big oil monopolies as when the government prosecuted its anti-trust lawsuit against Standard Oil fourty years ago.
It's too bad Missouri's Governor Matt Blunt, a very conservative Republican, did not talk up a new renewable oil production technology that is already pumping out oil in his own back yard!
Changing World Technologies' waste-to-oil subsidiary, Renewable Environmental Solutions in the city of Carthage, MO, shipped more than 440,000 gallons (10,476 barrels) of renewable diesel fuel oil in May 2006. The oil was created out of turkey waste from the Butterball turkey operation in that city.
The thermal conversion process developed by Changing World Technologies digests any organic waste, including wood, paper, slaughterhouse waste, pork and beef "feed lot" farm waste, poultry farm waste, municipal sewage, municipal garbage, old tires, and mixed plastics to produce high-quality oil. The oil meets specification D396, a diesel fuel type widely used to power electrical utility generators. The oil can also be further distilled into vehicle-grade diesel and gasoline, or, via a steam process, cheaply made into hydrogen.
The thermal conversion process is 85% efficient, and everything produced is environmentally benign and commercially useful. In addition to oil it produces "by-products" of methane gas, black carbon, fertilizer and several other useful oil derivatives, ultimately discharging just clean potable water.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. imported 3.3 billion barrels of crude oil in 2002.
Converting just the annual U.S. agricultural waste into oil using this process would produce over 4 billion barrels of synthetic crude oil per year.
An additional 4 billion barrels of synthetic crude oil could be produced annually if U.S. cities modernized their municipal sewage sludge and garbage disposal operations to use this thermal conversion process rather than dump into the environment.
That is potentially 8 billion barrels of U.S. produced light crude oil that can be directly shipped to existing U.S. refineries.
While the Energy Policy Act of 2005 lavished $14.5 billion in tax breaks on big energy firms, Changing World Technologies had to fight hard to receive even token federal support. Only three states, California, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, offer incentives to support deployment of this company's process.
In contrast to the U.S., governments throughout Europe have offered a cornucopia of incentives to promote this type of renewable energy process. The company is already planning projects in Wales, Ireland, England, and Germany and may even relocate fully to Europe, according to an article in Discover Magazine.
This renewable "green" energy process could reduce and perhaps eventually eliminate America's "addiction" to foreign oil, reduce America's net addition to global warming carbon emissions, and purge billions of tons of U.S. waste from the environment annually.
Read about Changing World Technologies' waste-to-oil process in two issues of Discover magazine: http://www.discover.com/issues/may-03/features/featoil/
http://www.discover.com/issues/apr-06/features/anything-oil/
Many governors called for drilling more oil wells faster and digging more coal faster. Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a Democrat, called for greater investment in coal to produce synthetic fuels. Republican Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi just blamed the nation's energy problems on environmentalists. There was even a little discussion about alternatives such as ethanol and wind energy at home.
As usual there was no "out of the box" alternative energy thinking from this collection of politicians from across the nation, no serious talk of conservation and no talk of breaking up the big oil monopolies as when the government prosecuted its anti-trust lawsuit against Standard Oil fourty years ago.
It's too bad Missouri's Governor Matt Blunt, a very conservative Republican, did not talk up a new renewable oil production technology that is already pumping out oil in his own back yard!
The thermal conversion process developed by Changing World Technologies digests any organic waste, including wood, paper, slaughterhouse waste, pork and beef "feed lot" farm waste, poultry farm waste, municipal sewage, municipal garbage, old tires, and mixed plastics to produce high-quality oil. The oil meets specification D396, a diesel fuel type widely used to power electrical utility generators. The oil can also be further distilled into vehicle-grade diesel and gasoline, or, via a steam process, cheaply made into hydrogen.
The thermal conversion process is 85% efficient, and everything produced is environmentally benign and commercially useful. In addition to oil it produces "by-products" of methane gas, black carbon, fertilizer and several other useful oil derivatives, ultimately discharging just clean potable water.
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. imported 3.3 billion barrels of crude oil in 2002.
Converting just the annual U.S. agricultural waste into oil using this process would produce over 4 billion barrels of synthetic crude oil per year.
An additional 4 billion barrels of synthetic crude oil could be produced annually if U.S. cities modernized their municipal sewage sludge and garbage disposal operations to use this thermal conversion process rather than dump into the environment.
That is potentially 8 billion barrels of U.S. produced light crude oil that can be directly shipped to existing U.S. refineries.
While the Energy Policy Act of 2005 lavished $14.5 billion in tax breaks on big energy firms, Changing World Technologies had to fight hard to receive even token federal support. Only three states, California, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, offer incentives to support deployment of this company's process.
In contrast to the U.S., governments throughout Europe have offered a cornucopia of incentives to promote this type of renewable energy process. The company is already planning projects in Wales, Ireland, England, and Germany and may even relocate fully to Europe, according to an article in Discover Magazine.
This renewable "green" energy process could reduce and perhaps eventually eliminate America's "addiction" to foreign oil, reduce America's net addition to global warming carbon emissions, and purge billions of tons of U.S. waste from the environment annually.
Read about Changing World Technologies' waste-to-oil process in two issues of Discover magazine: http://www.discover.com/issues/may-03/features/featoil/
http://www.discover.com/issues/apr-06/features/anything-oil/
