Biomass

by Debra Fiakas CFA A shareholder group has taken aim at alternative energy and fertilizer producer Rentech, Inc. (RTK:  Nasdaq), offering a slate of nominees for the next election of directors.  They claim Rentech management is overpaid and doing a very poor job of executing on the company’s strategic plans.  The nominees were a focus of discussion in the last post.  Now we will take a closer look at Rentech’s operations. The majority of Rentech’s revenue is generated from the sale of fertilizer products from the Company’s plants in Dubuque, Iowa and Pasadena, California.  Rentech earns...

Jim Lane In grains, the big news has been the USDA prospective plantings report, which has corn up to 93 million acres in 2016, up 5 million over last year, and it was an unexpected gain given that stock levels of grain are high now. Big stocks plus a big planting equals even bigger ending stocks and prices have declined substantially for corn as a result, down 15 cents per bushel on the report. The USDA report? Officially, here’s what USDA had to say: Corn planted area for all purposes in 2016 is estimated at 93.6 million...

Biochar is still mostly a research and cottage industry, yet it has the potential to impact returns for a broad range of investors. Tom Konrad, Ph.D., CFA Biochar, or amending soil with biomass-derived carbon, shows great potential to improve the productivity of soils, as well as to increase the utilization of fertilizers by plants, while sequestering carbon to reduce the drivers of climate change.  On August 10, I went to the 2009 North American Biochar Conference to look at the potential for investors.  Before I went, I took a look at the publicly traded companies...

Jim Lane  Algae has been touted as the ultimate platform for fuels, chemicals, nutraceuticals, proteins even cancer therapies. There’s been a rate of progress that would impress any devotee of Moore’s Law and a series of wacky claims that would impress any devotee of P.T. Barnun. So, what are the real trends? We’ve traveled several years now since the “Summer of Algae” when it seemed like half the venture capitalists in life sciences were forming algae ventures, or thinking about them. Since then a cluster of research projects and proto-companies have been...

BusinessWeek.com discusses John Kerry's plan to increase alternative energy usage for the country. John Kerry's blueprint for energy independence doesn't suffer from lack of ambition. In early August, he'll unveil an energy plan that he says can break America's addiction to foreign oil, revitalize the U.S. auto industry, help farmers and coal miners, fight global warming, and create jobs all for just $2 billion per year. "We can live in an America that is energy independent," Kerry promises.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the emerging wood pellets industry and how this form of biomass was experiencing rapid growth as a coal substitute in power generation, mostly in Europe as a result of renewable energy and climate regulations. In the time since I wrote that article, I have been looking for ways to invest in the global wood pellets sector. Unfortunately, my search came up mostly empty (except for 1 stock discussed below). In response to my previous post, a reader pointed me to an article Joe Romm at Climate Progress had recently written...

Environmental Power Corp (EPG) announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Microgy Cogeneration Systems, Inc. ("Microgy"), has entered into a Project Development Agreement with South-Tex Treaters, Inc. of Odessa, Texas ("South-Tex"), which for almost 20 years has been a leader in the gas processing industry. The agreement provides that Microgy and South-Tex will cooperate to identify, evaluate and develop projects in the United States that combine Microgy's anaerobic digestion technology, which extracts methane-rich biogas from animal waste, and South-Tex's cleaning and compression technologies that can be used to refine biogas to a pipeline-grade methane.

The announcement of a natural gas pipeline, built by Intrepid Technology and Resources, Inc. (IESV), in the heart of southern Idaho's dairy industry has one rural mayor pretty energized. Mayor Paul D. Isaacson in Wendell believes that the renewable energy company will not only bring to his community as many as 125 jobs, but it will measurably reduce the affects of the 350,000 head of milk cows and cattle that surround the area.

NanoLogix Inc. (NNLX.PK) announced that it has signed an agreement to install a NanoLogix hydrogen generation system using Welch Food's waste organic matter. The NanoLogix methodology for hydrogen production is being developed for the limitless production of hydrogen from organic containing waste waters. The NanoLogix reactor will utilize multiple proprietary methodologies for synergistically creating a hydrogen bioreactor. The hydrogen production method will utilize organic waste from Welch Food's waste stream. NanoLogix is very much a penny stock and has been steadily declining over the last year. It now sits at a low of $0.15. They...

by Debra Fiakas CFA Last week Bion Environmental Technologies, Inc. (BNET: OTC/QB) announced that the company has applied for patent protection of a process to recover nitrogen from livestock waste.  The process yields a crystalline, water-soluble fertilizer product that is about 12% to 15% nitrogen.  Since the nitrogen is extracted from the livestock waste without the use of chemicals and leaves behind potentially toxic salts, metals and minerals, the company is also applying for certification as an organic material. The company believes there will be a strong demand in the agriculture sector for its products. ...

Colorado voters have approved an amendment requiring utilities to get part of their electricity from the sun, wind or plant and animal waste. The amendment requires the state's seven largest utilities to get a portion of their retail electricity sales from renewables, beginning with 3 percent in 2007 and climbing to 10 percent by 2015. Four percent of the renewables should be solar sources.

Last week, I mentioned that I had attended a conference focused on opportunities in the biomass and bioenergy sectors. One of the article ideas I got from this conference was on the emerging market for wood pellets (tightly packed sawdust and other wood shavings) for heat and electricity. How interesting that, over the weekend, the magazine Science published an article suggesting that the US should ramp up its use of wood for small-scale heat and electricity production (the article is not available free of charge but you can find a summary here). The Wood (Pellet) Advantage It...

Green Energy Resources, Inc. (NYIL) announces it has agreed in principle to merge with Italiana Commissionaria Legnami (ICL) of Monza , Italy. ICL has offices in New York and Brazil. The terms of the merger have not been disclosed. ICL is the largest importer of woodfiber fuel in Italy. In 2003 ICL supplied approximately 80,000 tons of woodchips per month to the Italian market. The proposed merger will seek to capture the vertical market from procurement, to transportation, to power generation plants and would create one of the largest international biomass/ renewable energy companies in the world today....

Jim Lane Newly-public Ceres (CERE) makes major breakthrough on miscanthus; is the gigantic energy grass ready for prime-time? Why is miscanthus driving so much attention, yet deserving more? In California, followers of NASDAQ prices noted yesterday that shares in the newly-public Ceres (CERE) rocketed up 15 percent to close at $17.52. What happened? It was revealed yesterday, in the peer-reviewed, online journal PLoS One that Ceres and the Institute of Biological, Environmental and Rural Sciences (IBERS) at Aberystwyth University in Wales have completed the first high-resolution, comprehensive genetic map of miscanthus. The full article is here. In other...

Charles Morand The DOE made public earlier today the amount of money that will awarded to clean power projects in lieu of the usual tax breaks: $3 billion. This will allow project proponents to receive a direct cash grant now instead of a Production Tax Credit or an Investment Tax Credit later on. The guidance document notes the following: "Section 1603 of the Act’s tax title, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act, appropriates funds for payments to persons who place in service specified energy property during 2009 or 2010 or after 2010 if construction began...