Some biofuels news

From the Worldwatch Institute again today!

 

PRESS RELEASE Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Contact: Supriya Kumar, skumar@worldwatch.org, (+1) 202-452-1999, ext: 510 Biofuels Make a Comeback Despite Tough Economy Washington, D.C. - Global production of biofuels increased 17 percent in 2010 to reach an all-time high of 105 billion liters, up from 90 billion liters in 2009. High oil prices, a global economic rebound, and new laws and mandates in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, China, and the United States, among other countries, are all factors behind the surge in production, according to research conducted by the Worldwatch Institute's Climate and Energy Program for the website Vital Signs Online.   The United States and Brazil remain the two largest producers of ethanol. In 2010, the United States generated 49 billion liters, or 57 percent of global output, and Brazil produced 28 billion liters, or 33 percent of the total. Corn is the primary feedstock for U.S. ethanol, and sugarcane is the dominant source of ethanol in Brazil.   "In the United States, the record production of biofuels is attributed in part to high oil prices, which encouraged several large fuel companies, including Sunoco, Valero, Flint Hills, and Murphy Oil, to enter the ethanol industry," said Alexander Ochs, Director of Worldwatch's Climate and Energy Program. High oil prices were also a factor in Brazil, where every third car-owner drives a "flex-fuel" vehicle that can run on either fossil or bio-based fuels. Many Brazilian drivers have switched to sugarcane ethanol because it is cheaper than gasoline.   "Although the U.S. and Brazil are the world leaders in ethanol, the largest producer of biodiesel is the European Union, which generated 53 percent of all biodiesel in 2010," said Ochs. "However, we may see some European countries switch from biodiesel to ethanol because a recent report from the European Commission states that ethanol crops have a higher energy content than biodiesel crops, making them more efficient sources of fuel."   Vital Signs authors Sam Shrank, a Worldwatch MAP Sustainable Energy Fellow, and Farhad Farahmand, a Climate and Energy research intern, also explored how new mandates in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, and China have altered the biofuel industries in these countries. "In Argentina, the biodiesel industry grew not only because of favorable conditions for growing soybeans, but also in response to a new B7 blending mandate, which requires the fuel to be 7 percent biodiesel and 93 percent diesel." Accordingly, biodiesel producers in Argentina are investing heavily in facilities to increase production.   In the United States, however, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) made the decision to dramatically lower the country's production target for cellulosic ethanol, a biofuel that is made from woody plants or crop waste and that can be converted to ethanol much more efficiently than conventional ethanol, resulting in lower associated greenhouse gas emissions. "The EPA's target reduction reflects the technical challenges and high costs of commercializing so-called 'second-generation' biofuels," said Shrank. "Instead of the 950 million liters required initially under the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, the final target will be a much smaller 25 million liters."     Proposed legislation in the U.S. Senate would cut current ethanol production subsidies while maintaining tax credits for related infrastructure such as refilling stations. If supports like subsidies and tariffs are removed in the United States, sugarcane ethanol from Brazil will likely become more prevalent. Although sugarcane ethanol has the benefit of being cheaper and more efficient to produce, there are concerns that increased production will speed deforestation in Brazil as more land is cleared for feedstock cultivation.   The new Vital Signs Online article highlights both the increases in global production of biofuels and the factors behind this growth. It presents the latest facts and figures on the major biofuels producers and outlines new laws and mandates that will affect production of the fuels.   Further highlights from the study:  Due to unsteady ethanol production in Brazil in 2010, the United States became a net exporter of the fuel for the first time, sending a record 1.3 billion liters abroad, a 300-percent increase over 2009. Sugarcane ethanol supplies 41.5 percent of the energy (48 percent of the volume) for light-duty transportation fuels in Brazil. Asia produced 12 percent of the world's biodiesel in 2010, a 20-percent increase from 2009, mostly using palm oil feedstock in Indonesia and Thailand. Virtually all of the 1.5 billion liters of Argentina's biodiesel exports, representing 71 percent of total production, went to Europe. Canada has national mandates for the production of E5 (5 percent ethanol and 95 percent gasoline) and B2 (2 percent ethanol and 98 percent gasoline), and four Canadian provinces have individual mandates up to E8.5. In the United States, eliminating the $0.54 per gallon import tariff and $0.45 per gallon blenders' credit would reduce the ethanol industry's profits by 7 percent and its margins by 20 percent, according to the University of Missouri's Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute. Brazil plans to build 103 new sugarcane mills by 2019, increasing production capacity by 66 percent. # # # Notes to Journalists: To obtain a free copy of this article, please contact Supriya Kumar at skumar@worldwatch.org.   About the Worldwatch Institute: Worldwatch is an independent research organization based in Washington, D.C. that works on energy, resource, and environmental issues. The Institute's State of the World report is published annually in more than 20 languages. For more information, visit www.worldwatch.org. # # #

Nowadays, you have to be talking about sustainability.  You have to be looking at what you've got and how you're going to give back and not just take.  My friend Josh Brown gets it, I'm glad to be good friends with him and his family.  I'll paste in his video below about their organic farming gig.  I'm working on this website: LoveYourForest.com, to get the region going on biomass for energy.  You have to start somewhere!  Look around and see what you can find. Help to make connections that lead to growth.  Feed the web (thank you Kevin Kelly).

Food

Excerpt from "Back to school and back to good food," Worldwatch Institute, 8/32/11 

With children preparing to begin the school year, Nourishing the Planet offers the following solutions for schools to encourage healthy eating:

   

·     Connect Local Farmers to Schools: Providing locally sourced foods in school cafeterias improves diets and strengthens local economies. The U.S. state of Vermont is a leader in the nationwide Farm to School movement, which integrates food and nutrition education into classroom curricula and serves local foods in school cafeterias. Over the past decade, 60 percent of Vermont schools have joined the effort, forming a statewide network aided by the state's Agency of Agriculture, Department of Health, and Department of Education. Children benefit from farm-fresh foods for breakfast and lunch, and local farmers expand their business into a market worth over $40 million. Urban areas across the United States, from New York to Los Angeles, are also participating in this growing movement.

    

·       Savor Mealtimes: Emphasizing the importance of mealtimes teaches children to appreciate the value and taste of good food. France, which has one of the lowest rates of childhood obesity in Europe, takes lunch very seriously. School lunches are well funded, and every part of the meal is prepared on school grounds in professional-grade kitchens-a stark contrast to the heat-and-serve kitchens in U.S. schools. Kids from preschool to high school are served four- to five-course meals and are encouraged to take time eating and socializing with friends. At some schools, detailed menus even suggest what parents should serve their children for dinner. Soft drink and snack machines are banned from school premises.

  

·       Implement School Gardens: School gardens provide hands-on opportunities for children to cultivate and prepare organic produce. In the United States, REAL School Gardens creates learning gardens in elementary schools in high-poverty areas of north Texas. The organization has found that the school gardens not only nurture healthy lifestyles and environmental stewardship, but can also improve academic achievement through active participation. REAL School Gardens supports 81 schools, providing daily access to nature for more than 45,000 children and 2,700 educators.

  

·   Nutrition Education: The city of Chicago's public school district doesn't offer mandatory nutrition education as part of its curriculum. To fill this void, the nonprofit Communities in Schools of Chicago (CISC) connects 170 schools to volunteer professionals who run a broad range of programs that address the social, emotional, health, and enrichment needs of students. Demand for nutrition classes has almost tripled in the past four years. This is due in part to the results of a Personal Health Inventory administered by CISC to more than 5,000 students, which showed that nutrition was the lowest scoring area.

  

  ·  Equal Access to Healthy Foods: Childhood obesity disproportionately affects low-income families that may not be able to afford healthy foods. Schools in Greeley, Colorado, are taking a giant leap forward by cooking every meal from scratch. This is a much healthier alternative to the processed factory-food items that dominate school cafeterias today, and can be more cost effective for poorer school systems that take advantage of U.S. federal reimbursement rules. With 60 percent of the city's students qualifying for free or reduced-price meals, Greeley is proving that it isn't only rich school districts that can provide their children with healthy meals.

 

OK this weblog has been moderately useful in the past. I'm going to try and do better.

Happy 2010! I have a very good feeling about this year.

Looking back on 2009...

I am horrified that it's almost been a year since I posted on my own weblog!

I am also guilty of another sin: Some of the information on my website was (horribly) out of date.

I did have a busy (insane) 2009, but that's no excuse. It's important to keep your website and weblogs up to date. For your website, it's a reflection on your business. For your weblog, it's the only way to keep people coming back to read it, for whatever reason you want them to read it.

I've only done 2 new websites since my last post (I'm not including all the SIU work), because I've been busy working at SIU, among other things. But hopefully this year will be a bit better. I'll be back soon!

O my how the time flies!

I've been busy with some websites, www.topshelfkitchens.net and www.illinidraftinganddesign.com. They're not quite done yet but we got them ready in time for a home show that the boys were involved with last weekend. Those boys are my brothers! Finally I got to do websites for them.:)

I'm working with Dorothy on Easywebsitesandbrochures.com, we've done some websites together.

And I'm thinking about canceling all my hosting and redirecting my domain to free blogs until the economy pics up! You can do the internet cheap if you want to. However a lot of people are taking advantage of the downturn to prepare for the upturn that will surely come. Now is the time to take a few steps to prepare the foundations for that business you have always dreamed of, or to get more people aware of the business you've already got. Use the time wisely! You don't have to spend an arm and the leg for this. I have some helpful links on this page to get you thinking about the groundwork. Get started today! And kudos to my brothers who did just that!

MarketingSherpa article summing upnew CAN-SPAM rules, coming into effect July 7. Yes, I read all this boring stuff!

Just say No!

As I run out of space on the page of my to do list to add more items, I see the wisdom of this article about saying no with grace. It's written by the ArtBizCoach, Alyson Standfield.

Here are some nice articles to read on a summer Sunday morning.

Live for the Journey, not the Destination

11 Questions to Kickstart your Dream

HowTo: Make a page on MySpace!

There is no sure-fire way to increase traffic to your website, but there are a number of small, easy and inexpensive things you can do. One thing is setting up a page for your business on MySpace.com to drive traffic to your business’s website and increase the number of sites linking in to yours. There are many social networking sites out there, but MySpace.com is one of the oldest and most populous, so it can’t hurt to put your banner up there.

Having a presence on MySpace.com can help, first by brining direct traffic and second by increasing your rank in search results as you get more traffic and links in to your website. Plus, a page on MySpace.com is like a second web page, and having another web presence is basically like having a second business location in real life; it’s more likely that people will come across your business. Just make sure your MySpace.com page is a reflection of your business website and not something totally different! Finally, by getting on MySpace.com and connecting up with other southern Illinois people and businesses, we can start to develop a critical mass that will get harder and harder for people to miss in cyberspace!

Follow these steps and you’ll be up and running on MySpace.com in no time:

1. Go to http://www.myspace.com.
2. Click on “Sign Up” and fill in the required information.
3. Choose your MySpace.com URL: try to pick something that is similar to your business name or web address and is easy for people to spell and remember.
4. Confirm your email address: you will get an email in the email box you specify in order to be able to do things like add friends, post bulletins and blogs, and more.
5. Find, add and invite your friends: start with http://www.myspace.com/sispecialties.
6. Promote your MySpace.com URL: put it on your website, your business card, etc.
7. Join SITourPreneurs Group: http://groups.myspace.com/sitourpreneurs.

Setting up a page on MySpace.com is just one of the many things you can do to improve your web presence. Other options include:

• Write a weblog: Weblogs are easy to set up and update. Webpages that are frequently updated will get people coming back to your site and improve your search rankings. Also, if you write about something interesting enough, other websites will link to the articles you post and additionally increase traffic.
• Email newsletter: Sometimes it takes time to build up a relationship with potential customers before they will purchase your product or service. Plus, it’s phenomenally important to keep up relationships with existing customers. An email newsletter is an easy and inexpensive way to keep in contact with potential and existing customers. Just make sure to get permission to send people your emails!
• Cross-linking: find other sites like yours or complementary to yours and ask them to link back to your site. Make your own ‘links’ page on your website to add your ‘partner’ links to your webpage.

For more information, contact Innucopia!

Ah, life is interesting isn't it? I can't believe it's been two months since I posted to this blog. OK for today, I recommend reading this article about kick-butt viral marketing campaigns. There's got to be some good ideas in there that could be adapted to just about any business.

Google's productivity apps will outpace behemoth Microsoft Office? Everything's and everyone's moving toward free? That's what some are saying. I've gotta go, I've been meaning to set up my business email accounts on my Gmail so I can check them from anywhere instead of Outlook.

My economics teacher in high school told us the first day of class that if we could come up with something that was truly free, he would give you an automatic A in the class. No one ever got an A this way. No matter what you said he had a comeback. No one could get him.

I'm still a believer in that basic premise: nothing is free. Ever since "New Rules for the New Economy"'s "Follow the Free" rule I've been there in business as well. There's a blog post about it today that discusses the more technical side of this nothing is free issue.

However we are somewhat moving in that direction. I met with someone at a local tourism bureau this week and he was telling me about how a local web design firm wanted to charge their non-profit organization tens of thousands of dollars for a new website. All they need to be able to do is keep the content somewhat updated, get lots of content they have in printed brochures online, and list some events and coupons. Thirty GranD??? I mean I can't believe what I'm hearing. No, no no. No longer to small non-profit organizations and new businesses need to get ripped off by firms charging tens of thousands of dollars for a website, then charging again when they want to make updates to the text. There are things like Joomla, which can be combined with other things like Google's Calendars and Picasa. Voila! All "free." O except you have to get it all installed and up and running and looking the way you want it. That's where the hook is. No matter what, someone's time is going in there. But still, we're talking hours, maybe a couple days as opposed to weeks or months or months of time. Some organizations might need flashy websites for their target groups, but for most small businesses and organizations on a budget, a well organized and up-to-date website is what's important.

At any rate I would recommend to anyone building a new website or doing an update, consider something like Joomla. You can use free templates, or buy your own template (look and feel) for cheap (something like $40 I've seen), have someone spend a couple days setting it up and transferring over your existing content. Once it's up and running you'll always be able to go in and update it, as simply as going in and writing a word document. Excellent.

I've been reading some interesting articles lately about the effects of the recession on jobs. Here are some tips for making yourself indispensable at your job so you'll improve your chances of keeping it through a recession. Here's another one about the best economic sectors to be in or thinking about moving towards with a coming recession. I guess it's only later in life that one starts to understand the wisdom of one's mother; my mom is a nurse at Caterpillar and I just can't imagine a much safer place to be. Cheers to Mom!

In terms of jobs my mom and I are on the opposite ends of the spectrum. She with her stable job and steady paycheck, me with my unpredictable job working from gig to gig. A friend of mine was contending recently that what I have isn't a real job, since the paycheck isn't steady and predictable. So I started wondering what it is that constitutes a real job. How is that defined these days, is there such a thing, or is it going the way of the dodo considering, among other things, the many ways that the world is getting flatter? I personally think we're moving more and more towards people having to reinvent themselves and find their own niche. The majority of people are going to need to learn to constantly educate themselves, keep up with economic and technological trends, and take risks to get their name out there in order to survive.

Southern Illinois business leaders are taking aim at the future; here's the ambitious plan neatly arranged on 17 slides. I think it's a great effort, and by coincidence I read this article this morning. People all over the world appreciate beauty and care in presentation. A lot of people around here understand how to appeal to a global audience and you can tell by their focus on the details (two small examples: Blue Sky Vineyard and Back 2 Basics). If SI is going to be successful they are going to need to help everyone around here understand and embrace that. I think the biggest hurdle will be getting people who have lived here to change. But at any rate, considering my new position as corporate sales for Arts & More Gallery, and my continued efforts to get southern Illinois on the map, I hope to do my part to beautify SI for all the new KBE workers, retirees, and tourism traffic.

I have been talking to a lot of people here in Carbondale about what it takes to be successful around here. This region presents a lot of obstacles for businesses, given the wide distances that separate everyone, the slow penetration of the internet, the sometimes less than visionary people in positions of power, and the general demographics. Simple things take longer to do here. For two and a half years I have lived here and watched people struggle along and fight against all the forces, be they the rising gas prices or falling sleet, that they cannot control. Everyone plugs along and works twice as hard to get the same results that are more easily attainable in more 'progressed' regions. It's not just here, basically anywhere somewhat rural without a significant economic advantage and all ducks in a row in terms of community and governmental support and vision is suffering.

So the bottom line that most everyone realizes or figures out is that to make it here, you have make it happen, and sometimes you have to reinvent yourself, and you have to work hard. Also, you have to get your face out in front of people, or they don't trust you.

A lot of people have less employment opportunity and this is magnified as the economy weakens. I read articles about how more people than ever are interested in voting in the upcoming elections because they're hoping some politician somewhere can help them. The fact is, like everyone in southern Illinois has already learned a long time ago, we are on our own and we're going to have to reinvent ourselves to survive. I have been trying to do that ever since the end of Starlab back in 2001, which ruined me forever for a normal 9-5 job interest (because it was such an incredible job). I hope I can help people who want to make the same changes and help them take control of their lives, and possibly make the learning curve a bit shorter for them.

I met someone last week I'm very happy to report who has been here plugging along for years and is making it work, Cavanaugh Gray with his Entrepreneur Cafe. He's been doing the Young Entprepreneurs Program since 1996 and he sees now that more and more non-youth need the same kind of assistance and inspiration. So we'll hopefully be putting our heads together on some projects, casting the nets a bit wider, and drawing on the extra strength that comes in numbers.

I'm checking my MediaPost "Search Insider" subscription email this morning and I come across this article about SEO-ers whose main goals are to become famous, as opposed to more sensible albeit boring goals such as providing a good quality product or service. I felt my stomach grumble as memories surfaced of an experience in the last year where I believe I was burned by just such an organization, although it was with a pay-per-click adversiting service firm. But I believe the same type of bravado-seeking exists in both areas, since it's all somewhat new and uncharted territory.

So, at the time I did extensive research to find a pay-per-click advertising organization for my current employer, an ecommerce company, whose current pay-per-click advertising, although clearly not running at top efficiency, was the main source of traffic for their website, so certainly of core importance. We did not have the resources or expertise internally to handle the needed improvements, although I had personally handled a few PPC campaigns in the past and knew the basic ropes, so I could speak intelligently enough on the subject. I contacted references, I read the trade opinions, I scoured company websites, compared pricing, and spent hours on the phone with their sales people. In the end I picked a big glossy Inc500 company, the CEO a reknowned 'expert' in the field, that was whopping the charts getting big clients and doing great things. They gave us a great deal and I really liked my contact, who seemed to know how important it all was to us, got to the point and knew her stuff.

Our campaign started fantastically; something like 4-500% return on investment the first month. WOW! Things were looking good. Then my contact informed me she was leaving the company to spend more time with her kids, which of course I can understand. Unfortunately I took an instant distrust to the guy that took over in her place; one of those types that likes to hear themselves talk. (I am the type of person who wants to get the business done and get busy working; time is money, or time is with my family. And I have very little patience for anyone who does not appreciate this.) Well, they subsequently tanked our click ads and our internet ranking went down the drain, and it was a very painful thing to endure. This was just over the span of a couple of months, but it was devastating to the little company, and didn't make me look good. Of course there were other things at play such as a decrease in consumer spending, general economic downturn, competitor moves, my own distractions, but I can't discount the role this service provider played. But, as the old saying goes, if it doesn't kill you it only makes you stronger. That's what my guru tells me to chant whenenver I start to think of this experience, haha.

Part of the problem was that this company charged us based on a percentage of our spend. That clearly means that they're not going to be spending as much time on your account than the higher spenders, but of course they're not telling you that; supposedly they've got someone on your account every day. At the time all of the firms I talked to charged this way. When I got around to trying to switch, they had already figured out the problem and unfairness about that pricing scheme, and wanted a minimum monthly budget for said services. Made sense to me. We did have a sizable monthly spend, but probably just on the high end of the little guys.

So I learned sevaral other things from this experience, regarding the outsourcing of your core marketing activities such as PPC that I can share. First, just because the CEO is a gargantuan expert doesn't mean everyone in the company is! It's probably hard for these companies to find people with solid experience, since it's a relatively new field. Ask your sales person and everyone who will be working on your project what their actual experience and results have been. Second, make sure you trust who you're talking to at the company. Trust your intuition and get that person off your team immediately if you don't like them. If you don't feel right about it there's probably a good reason for that. Third, determine ahead of time what is your maximum drop allowance. E.g. if numbers are dropping after a week, or month, you give the service provider another week, or month, to boost up the numbers or they're out. Make sure everyone who needs to know at your company and theirs knows this ahead of time, and don't let your provider determine this for you. Fourth, have a plan in place whenever you make a big change like this that will support any drop in traffic from your normal levels of clicks. Perhaps ramp up some of your other tried and true marketing/advertising activities concurrently. Finally, at least for the first few months, make sure someone is checking on your account every day (or other time period acceptable to you) and not just blowing pleasantries in your ears. If your team members are all working on several projects, some that may be more high-profile than yours, you have to make sure they're not going to let yours fall through the cracks.

These things are probably obvious to the big marketers at the big firms but when you're running a small business with a hundred things to manage, you might miss it.

This blog is quickly becoming an extention of my own personal attempts to maintain a balance between my work and the rest of my life. This is something essential that a lot of people may miss because life goes so fast. I have had the luck to always appreciate how fast especially the good times go, after having the privilege to experience, honestly, so many weddings of my close family and friends early on. Those wedding weekends always fly. So by the time I was half way through those I was always reminding everyone not to forget that it was going to be over before they know it. I'm sure I was very annoying.

Also, I got to live in Europe for seven years, and experience a completely different culture. People would always ask me what was different to live there, and I would always have to say there is not any one big thing, but every single thing is a little bit different. Those difference, combined, are large and most people don't realize or appreciate that, again probably because life moves so fast and who has seven years to sit and think about it? But one thing that was different was just how people take time to sit and be with friends and family even if just for a cup of coffee, and to have those nice vacations and the freedom to stay home if you were sick. Honestly, things like not having to worry about health care does in fact give you more space in your brain to think about other things.

So today I got on this site and started watching some of these videos. There is a series with Harvard lecturer Tal Ben-Shaher, and in one he is talking about 5 steps to happiness, although he was put on the spot and he only gave four. The first was to simplify, don't try to do everything, learn how to say no. The second was the mind-body connection, keep your body happy with exercise and it will feed your mind. Third was don't fear painful emotions, because if you don't feel or express those you are either a psychopath or dead. Fourth, appreciate what you have. Appreciation is good because it means giving thanks, but also leads to growth because it gives us direction. Good stuff!

I have recently had two different people, artists, tell me that they could not update their website without paying their web developer, so they weren't doing it or they were having to cough up the dough. There are solutions for this nowadays. You can get a content management system installed on your website from the very start. If you already have a site and need to switch to something that you can manage and easily update without having to know anything about html, consider something like LightCMS or have your developer consider it. Set up something simple that you can easily go in and edit. Up to date, relevant and useful information is more important to people with limited time and attention span who become more and more familiar with the way the web works than flashiness.

More useful information for today: How not to be annoying.

What is that old saying, something about how inactivity breeds wickedness or something like that? Anyway we have been stuck inside, unable to even get out of our driveway due to a debilitating ice storm, most of last week. It's amazing how you take something like being able to get out of your house for granted. At the same time I was fighting a bout with the flu during which I couldn't breathe through my nose for almost two weeks. Another thing we almost always take for granted.

Luckily I have learned a thing or two in life, enough to know never to take time with people you love for granted. And do everything to love your work or at least do a good job at it so you can feel good about it. I've been thinking about all this but now I've gotten the kick to write it down after a friend forwarded me this link, a video presentation about how to live your life, among other things. Well worth watching.

In the meantime I have decided on an additional course of action for my business. I'll not only be beautifying southern Illinois with presentable online presences, but also by supplying art to walls. I've been getting more and more involved with art ever since I moved to southern Illinois, and things are just kind of falling into place. More later.