A new investigation by AP has found that the vast majority of counties where fracking is occurring in seven states are also suffering from drought. and that fracking is presenting new strains on water supplies.
http://theenergycollective.com/amymall/239596/new-investigation-fracki
To say that many natural gas companies are taking advantage of people of the Amish faith would be an understatement. In an article written for the New Republic, Molly Redden shares a story where an Amish couple was paid $10 an acre to have a natural gas company come in and start fracking. The couple was told that that was the best offer the company could make. Turns out neighboring farm were receiving upwards of $1,000 an acre. Rather than take legal action, because by their faith they cannot, the Amish couple admits they made a mistake and have to live with it.
This is just one of many similar instances. Not only did the Amish family lose out on a ton of cash, but they also put their farm, crops, and livestock in danger, and unknowingly jeopardized their livelihood due to the chemicals used in the fracking process. Check out the documentary Gas Land for a good idea of this.
The Amish couple did indeed make a colossal mistake, and should have done some investigating on their own. But they were also intentionally misled and outright lied to by a billion-dollar company that can afford to be honest. With the advent of hydraulic fracturing or fracking, this is the process of fracturing rock layers using a pressurized chemical mixture to release natural gas, natural gas companies are tapping into natural gas holds that were once unobtainable. This has created a massive boom in the natural gas industry and has taken the natural companies to Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia, places with large Amish populations .
With the knowledge that the Amish will not sue, this really opens the door for gas companies to do whatever they want without the risk of legal action. The impact of this is enormous. Other than outright lying about land value, let's say a lease ends and the company just keeps on fracking; the Amish can do nothing legally. It is easy to see how this can get really bad and fast.
The Amish do have certain options though. For example, one Amish family that was a victim of an undervalued lease took the gas company to court to simply void the lease. What makes this acceptable for the Amish couple is that there is no money involved - they just want the gas company to leave.
This isn't capitalism; this is wrong. From causing earthquakes to lighting water on fire, fracking has serious health and environmental complications not entirely understood yet. People But if people are willing to take these enormous risks with their land, they should at the very least be paid well for it. Those who constantly step up to defend the actions of oil companies should ask themselves; if gas companies willing to mislead, ripoff, and outright break contracts with the Amish, is there anything these scumbags won't do?
Source: New Republic
Andrew Meggison was born in the state of Maine and educated in Massachusetts. Andrew earned a Bachelor's Degree in Government and International Relations from Clark University and a Master's Degree in Political Science from Northeastern University. Being an Eagle Scout, Andrew has a passion for all things environmental. In his free time Andrew enjoys writing, exploring the great outdoors, a good film, and a creative cocktail. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AndrewMeggison
The post Fracking The Amish appeared first on Gas 2.
What happens in Illinois doesn't stay in Illinois -- especially when you're dealing with the national ramifications of a combined fracking and coal mining rush unparalleled in recent memory.
See that cluster of lights by North Dakota? That's the result of fracking. Six years ago that light cluster did not exist. The reason is over the past years natural gas extraction though the use of fracking has increased exponentially as a result of the push for alternative fuel use and technological achievements.
Fracking is the controversial method of extracting natural gas from shale rock using a chemical and water mixture. Depending on the methods used, some 29% of the gas being extracted can go to waste-or rather, into creating this light show.
That light cluster is fire of natural gas burning as companies work all night to extract resources from the Bakken formation under North Dakota; a place whose citizens now call the "Kuwait on the prairie".
The natural gas rush has been so sudden that North Dakota now has the lowest unemployment rate in the country - more than 41,000 workers got jobs there between 2008 and 2012. Additionally, seven years ago, the U.S. was importing 60% of its oil. Now oil imports are down to 42%. The Bakken fields play a major role in this.
Natural gas is indeed making an impact, be it for better or for worse, and an impact that is now visible from space! The picture was taken by NASA's Earth Observatory, which orbits the planet twice a day some 512 miles up.
Source: news.yahoo.com
Andrew Meggison was born in the state of Maine and educated in Massachusetts. Andrew earned a Bachelor's Degree in Government and International Relations from Clark University and a Master's Degree in Political Science from Northeastern University. Being an Eagle Scout, Andrew has a passion for all things environmental. In his free time Andrew enjoys writing, exploring the great outdoors, a good film, and a creative cocktail. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AndrewMeggison
The post The Impact Of Fracking On America's Economy... From Space appeared first on Gas 2.
http://gas2.org/2013/01/25/the-impact-of-fracking-on-americas-economy-
Last night I attended the pre-screening of Matt Damon's newest flick "Promised Land." The film is about natural gas fracking and centres around an energy company land negotiator who is sent into a community where a new shale gas formation has been discovered to sign contracts with the land owners so development can begin.
http://theenergycollective.com/kalitaylor/166971/energy-issues-hit-big
Wellpads, roads, pipelines and waste pits are clearcuts in forests. Cumulatively they are very destructive to the natural ecosystem.
http://theenergycollective.com/amymall/124261/new-report-details-how-n
http://theenergycollective.com/amymall/124261/new-report-details-how-n
Earlier this week a natural gas well blew up while undergoing hydraulic fracturing (a.k.a. fracking) causing a spill of fracking fluids. Supposedly it's been cleaned up and there's nothing to be seen. Really?
That it happened on the anniversary of last years oil spill is causing some to point at the irony, but it's obviously one of those coincidences that sometimes happen. Rather than point at coincidences what this makes me think of is my blog post from a few weeks ago following the beginning of the still-ongoing nuclear meltdown - This world doesn't have to become an uninhabitable nuclear radiation poisoned wasteland - This world also doesn't have to be fracked over by the natural gas companies, and that: Change starts "here" with "you" and "me"
Like several previous examples (nuclear meltdown, oil spill, etc) this is an example of the environmental cost coming from the fossil fuels we use to power this wondrous life we have. The following should serve as a reminder to that cost, but you can see below most of the discussion going on is the environmental effect of the spill and who has the responsibility for the accident.
See also: Videos on the Bradford County fracking accident
Pennsylvania natgas well has blowout during fracking (April 20, 2011):
A natural gas well spilled thousands of gallons of hydraulic fracking drilling fluid water in Pennsylvania..after a blowout..began spewing fluid at 11.45 p.m...during the controversial "fracking" drilling process which involves blasting shale rock with water, sand and chemicals to release trapped natural gas.."An equipment failure occurred during well-completion activities, allowing the release of completion fluids," Chesapeake said in a statement. ... fluid initially spilled into a nearby waterway ... Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has tested the water and found no adverse affects on aquatic life as yet ...
The same article refers to an earlier accident 2 months ago when another Chesapeake owned well had a spill of fracking fluids.
Fracking fluid leak stops at Pa. gas well (April 22, 2011):
A gas well in Pennsylvania is no longer leaking after two days of efforts to stop hydraulic fracturing fluid and natural gas from escaping.. While the cause of the Tuesday blowout of the well in Bradford Country is unclear, well operator Chesapeake Energy said it has suspended all post-drilling activity on its wells in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio while they investigate why the well malfunctioned
Chesapeake seeks permanent plug for natgas well (April 22, 2011):
Chesapeake Energy is looking for options to plug permanently a Pennsylvania natural gas well following a blowout this week that sent drilling fluid into local waterways.... [they] used a mix of plastic, ground-up tires and heavy mud on Thursday as a temporary plug for the well, which had spewed thousands of gallons of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, fluid into the surrounding area.... company, which had 87 active wells in Pennsylvania in the second half of 2010, has halted all fracking activities in the state following the blowout. ...
An April 20 blog post on the NRDC website points out Bradford County, where this blowout occurred, there are "reports that up to 100 households have had their drinking water wells contaminated by natural gas production operations" and calls it "one of the communities across the nation currently serving as guinea pigs in the new rush to exploit natural gas reserves without adequate regulation or oversight." Another week in natural gas drilling, another fracking blow-out
That blog post referred back to one from April 12, 2011 Pennsylvania continues to lead the pack with news of inadequate oil and gas regulation
Pennsylvania remains the poster child for things that can go wrong when producing oil or gas....contamination of drinking water wells in northwestern Pennsylvania...reports that up to 100 households in Bradford County have had their drinking water wells contaminated by gas production operations...Two houses exploded in Bradford Township... [which may be due to] some type of thermogenic gas migration caused by extensive drilling ... U.S. Environmental Protection Agency officials pushed Pennsylvania regulators to consider re-evaluating all permits for wastewater treatment plants that are accepting drilling or fracking waste and adding stricter standards for testing of radionuclides and other contaminants... Pennsylvania oil and gas inspectors trying to enforce state rules on drilling in the Marcellus Shale have been prohibited from issuing violations unless they have gotten the approval of a senior state official... Carmichaels Municipal Authority recently issued an advisory for residents to boil their water because it had to lower chlorine treatment in order to reduce the levels of trihalomethanes, which can cause cancer .. [which]is being caused by high levels of bromide in the Monongahela River, resulting from natural gas wastewater
Pennsylvania Natural Gas Blowout Spills Thousands of Gallons of Toxic Wastewater into Local Community (April 20, 2011)
Chesapeake Energy Corporation lost control of its Marcellus Shale well near Canton, Pennsylvania. The company reports that a piece of equipment failed during the hyrdraulic fracturing process. As a result, thousands of gallons of chemical-laden water have spilled out from the well into nearby fields and farms.... From their entire land holding, Chesapeake has designated 2.5 million acres for shale gas development. The company estimates it holds 15,800 drilling locations capable of producing 7.7 trillion cubic feet of proven reserves and 64 trillion cubic feet of risked unproven reserves. Furthermore, over the next two years, the company plans to make significant investments in building its capacity to hydraulically fracture its wells...Unconventional extraction of natural gas is conducted using the controversial drilling technique hydraulic fracturing or fracking. There are significant environmental concerns surrounding hydraulic fracturing, primarily regarding the disposal of the toxic drilling water which is injected to break up the rock formations and release the gas.
Pennsylvania Gas-Well Blowout Forces Evacuation (April 20, 2011)
According to both Chesapeake and local officials, the well had already been drilled when the accident occurred and was in the process of being hydraulically fractured, a process in which millions of gallons of water and chemicals are injected into the ground to crack open gas-bearing rocks....Francis Roupp, deputy director of the Bradford County Emergency Management Agency, said "many thousands of gallons" spilled from the well, but he said much of the fluid was successfully contained on the site. He said recent rains also meant Towanda Creek was full, diluting any contamination....Mr. Roupp said he didn't know what chemicals were in the water....A report released by Congressional Democrats last week said fracturing fluid often contains carcinogens and other harmful chemicals....Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, has been especially controversial. Environmental groups fear the process can contaminate drinking-water supplies....This isn't the first fracturing-related accident in Pennsylvania. In a similar incident last June, workers lost control of a well in western Pennsylvania owned by EOG Resources Inc. That incident blew water and chemicals 75 feet into the air but caused only moderate environmental damage, according to state officials at the time...."How many of these can you have?" said David Masur, executive director of PennEnvironment, which has called for a ban on hydraulic fracturing until drillers demonstrate better safety practices. "You've played Russian Roulette. You've spun the revolver too many times. People's lives are on the line."
That article (from the Wall Street Journal) reads like a downplaying of the problems, echoing the industry's emphasis on small concentrations and minimal effect. The fact is the chemicals are carcinogenic and are being spilled into drinking water supplies.
The WJS article referred to an earlier spill: Marcellus blowout sprays gas in Clearfield County (June 5, 2010)
A 16-hour natural gas leak at a Clearfield County well started with the first reported blowout during statewide exploration of the Marcellus shale, but it won't halt drilling in the gas-rich layers underground, state officials said Friday.
Natural gas and wastewater shot 75 feet into the air Thursday night after drillers encountered unexpectedly high gas pressure in the well about 10 miles north of Interstate 80, just outside Moshannon State Forest. Crews from a contractor hired by well operator EOG Resources capped it at noon yesterday. No no one was hurt.
There are no homes within a mile of the site, and crews dug a trench to stop chemicals in the water from entering groundwater, according to the state Department of Environmental Protection.
... "I can't guarantee that it won't happen again," Hanger said. "But I can guarantee we are doing everything possible to make sure it won't happen again."
... In the past two years, Pennsylvania has granted about 3,400 Marcellus shale drilling permits, with more than 1,500 wells drilled, some in populated areas. Government officials have promoted gas drilling as a way to raise revenue from taxes and land-leasing royalties. Environmentalists have decried shale drilling, saying chemicals in the wastewater used to fracture underground rock and free natural gas can contaminate the land.
Pennsylvania Fracking Accident: What Went Wrong (April 21, 2011)
The leak happened at the Atgas 2H well in rural Leroy Township... the failure occurred late Tuesday night when Chesapeake was in the middle of a "frack job." The controversial practice, essential to the extraction of gas from shale, involves pumping up to a million gallons of water treated with biocides, lubricants, surfactants and stabilizers a mile or more into the ground at pressures exceeding 9000 psi. ... believe they have pinpointed the initial cause of the accident: A steel coupling located beneath the well's blowout protector, but above ground, appears to have failed ...
(The blowout protector is the same technology as device that failed in the case of the BP oil spill. It didn't fail here, but if it had, both natural gas and water would have spewed forth from the well. However above-ground wells are much easier to shut down than those deep underwater.)
Marcellus wells typically regurgitate between 30 and 50 percent of the water pumped into them. In normal circumstances, it comes back in a manageable flow, and the well operators collect it in pits or tanks.... in Pennsylvania, the geology is not suited for deep-well injection, and so the water is kept in pits and tanks where it is treated to remove chemicals that are added by the drillers. It also must be stripped of contaminants it picks up while underground: bromides, chlorides and some heavy metals.
... when the coupling failed at Atgas 2H, the water simply came gushing too fast for Chesapeake's operators to bring it under control and collect it. Making matters worse, days of steady rain had partially filled the containment pits and they quickly overflowed ...
Chesapeake gets DEP notice of violation after well incident (April 23, 2011)
The state Department of Environmental Protection wants answers from Chesapeake Energy Corp. about Tuesday night's blowout incident at the company's natural gas well site in LeRoy Twp.
The state agency sent a notice of violation, dated Friday, to Chesapeake Energy requesting further information, including a complete list of materials in the fracking fluids used at the site. The agency asked Chesapeake to submit a written response to the notice within five business days.
One of the instructions in the notice informs Chesapeake to "include an explanation of why it took Chesapeake nearly 12 hours to address the uncontrolled release of fluids off the well pad."
Another calls for "a description of immediate actions taken by Chesapeake to regain control of the well and secure the wellhead, as well as any measures taken to ensure public safety."
...
parody of Mister Mister's "Broken Wings" to promote cleaner energy than fossil fuel
Baby, i don't understand
why we have to keep letting oil pollute our land
This spill might be the worst, I fear
Attest to this, the whole world must hear
We need this so
Take these oily wings
Turn to a higher plan, learn to make clean energy
When we hear better choices win
The book of progress will open up and let us in
Take these oily wings...
Baby, maybe not tonight
but i think we can take what is wrong and make it right
This Earth, it's all we know
It gives us the air & food that makes us grow
We need it so
According to Tree Hugger, Audubon Society "Strongly Supports Wind Power" even though many environmentalists get knots in their stomach thinking about the birds being killed by wind turbines. There have been studies recording birds being killed by being hit by wind turbine blades, but there are other studies on why birds get killed by wind turbines, how to avoid the bird deaths, and in any case the rates of bird death due to wind turbines are lower than birds killed by flying into skyscrapers.
Wind-turbine based bird deaths found to be less than thought likely is my earlier blog entry on this subject.
What's interesting here is that the Audubon Society is saying, essentially, maybe it doesn't matter if a few birds are being killed. In the greater scheme of things wind power has so many more plusses that this minus, if it's at all significant, is completely overwhelmed by the positive effect from generating electricity without any greenhouse gasses, or drowned valleys, or radioactive substances that last zillions of years, etc. Wind power is a relatively benign way to generate electricity compared to all the other methods.
The Audubon Society magazine first ran an article doing an in-depth study of wind power and then in the next issue ran an editorial giving this support to wind power.
Let's hope it captures some attention. There are a lot of NIMBY's who are resisting wind power, but who are otherwise environmentalists. I am absolutely baffled by their resistance. How can they possibly be an environmentalist and be so closed minded as to resist wind power???
Well, this is one of those issues dangerously like that adage of squeezing a balloon just to find the balloon expanding in the area you didn't squeeze. Like many problems you solve, it can create other problems. So it seems to be with wind turbines, that in some cases birds get killed by them. But I am myself completely in agreement with the points I wrote above. First, wind power itself is so extremely benign compared with the many other things our society has done with technology. Generating electricity by capturing the wind seems so completely harmless compared to the urban vistas we see in the major cities, concrete and gleaming steel towers for as far as the eye can see. How can anybody think wind turbines are ugly compared to that? And what of the exhaust spewed by fossil fuel burning power plants? Again, the byproducts from wind turbines seem so completely benign compared to that.
Second, as I noted the problem has already been studied and the solutions are well known.
Third, as I noted, birds get killed by so many other human structures, why are the environmentalists focusing their worry against wind turbines when skyscrapers kill lots of birds as well?
Earlier I'd written about the issue of keeping cool without having to use an air conditioner. Our society has thousands of years of experience of living without the modern technology and air conditioners, so why do we today need this? Is there anything we can learn from our ancestors?
Air Conditioning: "We're cooking our planet to refrigerate the diminishing part that's still habitable": explains some of the cost involved with over use of air conditioning. It costs a lot of power, and the power only contributes to global warming, making the heat worse, which then just makes people want to crank up the air conditioners.
Other air conditioning alternatives and Make your own air conditioner: cover a couple alternatives to air conditioners. These are low-tech methods made by individuals. They have a cooler full of ice water, submerge a pump in the water, and use the pump to send the cold water through some coils. The coils are intertwined into a fan. As the fan blows air over the coils the air cools etc.
How much ice would I have to store up in the winter in order to air condition my house all summer? is an interesting HowStuffWorks.com question along those lines. The idea is, during the winter there's snow, and what if you stored that snow and used it for cooling during the summer.
Before you scoff and say the snow would melt before summer ... do you realize that's exactly what an "ice house" is? Our ancestors would dig a hole in the ground and store snow/ice there. They called it an "ice house".
It shows a possible method to avoid having an air conditioner, so long as you have a significant amount of snow in the winter. It would be the same method as "make your own air conditioner" but on a larger scale.
The HowStuffWorks people tried to answer how much snow is required to be collected. But I think their calculations are faulty. Read it carefully and the base number is the BTU rating of the air conditioner in a typical house. The BTU rating of a gadget like that is going to be the peak capacity of the unit, not its actual usage. You aren't going to have the air conditioner cranked to the max for 12 hours a day all year long. Instead the actual usage in the air conditioner is going to vary during the day.
In any case this seems somewhat achievable to collect enough snow to make a cube 25 feet on a side. Interestingly the ice houses I've seen in colonial era houses were similar size.
While an individual might get tired thinking of shoveling 900,000 pounds of snow, don't most people in heavily snowed places own snow blowers? In other words technology can come to the rescue and some form of snow blower could be used to move snow into a modern day ice house.
Collecting that much snow would also answer this question: What about keeping warm in the winter?
But, really, this solution only helps for places that get a lot of snow in the winter, and are hot in the summer. There are a lot of places which either don't get very hot in the summer, or don't get a lot of snow in the winter. Georgia for example gets rather hot, but gets no snow, and therefore people there wouldn't be able to build an ice house for summertime cooling.
The Air Resources Board (ARB) has led a multi-agency research effort to collect emissions data from late-model heavy-duty transit buses in five different configurations. The objectives of the study were 1) to assess driving cycle effects, 2) to evaluate toxicity between new and "clean" heavy duty engine technologies in use in California, and 3) to investigate total PM and ultrafine particle emissions.
Chassis dynamometer testing was conducted at ARB's Heavy-duty Emissions Testing Laboratory (HDETL) in Los Angeles. The impetus behind this work was to compare the emissions from transit buses powered by similar engines and fueled by ARCO (a BP company) Low Sulfur Emission Control Diesel (ECD-1) and compressed natural gas (CNG). Follow-on work focused on the assessment of aftertreatment control for CNG applications. Five vehicle configurations were investigated: 1) a CNG bus equipped with a 2000 DDC Series 50G engine certified for operation without an oxidation catalyst, 2) the same CNG bus retrofitted with an OEM oxidation catalyst, 3) a diesel bus equipped with a 1998 DDC Series 50 engine and a catalyzed muffler, 4) the same diesel vehicle retrofitted with a Johnson Matthey Continuously Regenerating Technology (CRT) diesel particulate filter (DPF) in place of the muffler, and 5) a CNG bus equipped with a 2001 Cummins Westport C Gas Plus engine and OEM-equipped oxidation catalyst.
The duty cycles were: 1) idle operation, 2) a 55 mph steady-state (SS) cruise condition, 3) the Central Business District (CBD) cycle, 4) the Urban Dynamometer Driving Schedule (UDDS), and 5) the New York City Bus Cycle (NYBC). Collection of PM over multiple cycles was performed to ensure sufficient sample mass for subsequent chemical analyses. Information on regulated (NOx, HC's, PM, and CO) and non-regulated (CO2, NO2, gas-phase toxic HC's, carbonyl compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, elements, and elemental and organic carbon) emissions was collected. Size-resolved PM mass and number emission measurements were conducted and extracts from diesel and CNG total PM samples were tested in the Ames mutagenicity bioassay analysis to determine mutagen emission factors.
Within five years EnviroMission aims to be one of Australia’s leading producers of clean, green renewable energy. EnviroMission owns the exclusive licence to German designed Solar Tower technology in Australia. Our first project will focus on developing this revolutionary technology into the world’s first large-scale solar thermal power station.
A partnership of automotive and fuel companies, government, academia, environment groups and other stakeholders, set up to accelerate the shift to clean low carbon vehicles and fuels in the UK.
Philippines President Pushes Jatropha Planting for Biodiesel - covers a plan in the Philippines to plant a lot of Jatropha, so that they can launch large-scale biodiesel production. This follows a similar plan from one of the states in India.
Jatropha produces a high percentage of oil making it valuable in biodiesel production.
Asia is turning to plants for fuel There is a growing surge of interest in Asia to develop crops and infrastructure to supply plant based oil to the biodiesel industry. This is potentially very good, as it turns oil from a fossil fuel to a renewable fuel. But, as I've covered before on this site, the picture isn't all rosy.
e.g. "One criticism of biofuels is that if you want to go from 2 percent to 20 percent, you would have to direct so much of that agriculture from food to fuel that there would be real competition between the two," By diverting cropland from growing food to growing oil, it threatens food supplies. Well, it will threaten food supplies "later" when the biofuel production becomes significant enough.
Some fuel options are hard to find discusses the biofuel of choice in the U.S. -- Ethanol. Ethanol is more compatible with the majority of vehicles in the U.S. since it's more like gasoline. Ethanol is also produced from the politically connected corn industry.
There's a worldwide push to develop biofuel resources, otherwise known as biodiesel.
In the U.S. this was given a big oomph when GW Bush announced we are addicted to oil, and proposed biofuel research using corn and switchgrass etc. But, consider for a moment, what is the most efficient or effective approach to using biofuels? It's going to be those biological materials which produce the most fuel from a given set of resources.
e.g. The most fuel derived from each acre of ground, or most fuel derived per pound of fertilizer, etc.
In Algae Biomass Already! discusses this and points to a Wikipedia entry on biodiesl that gives the rates of fuel extraction from different feedstocks.
- Soybean: 40 to 50 US gal/acre (35 to 45,000 L/km²)
- Rapeseed: 110 to 145 US gal/acre (100 to 130,000 L/km²)
- Mustard: 140 US gal/acre (130,000 L/km²)
- Jatropha: 175 US gal/acre (160,000 L/km²)
- Palm oil: 650 US gal/acre (580,000 L/km²)
- Algae: 10,000 to 20,000 US gal/acre (9,000,000 to 18,000,000 L/km²)
So, what's GW doing talking about switchgrass when it's going to be most effective to grow Algae?
In India we have Indian State to Plant 160 Million Jatropha Plants in Quest for Biofuel Self-Sufficiency showing that the people in India understand this point.
There's a growing movement towards biofuels which may turn into a real strong adoption of them by our society. Theoretically that's a good thing, as the fuel is derived from renewable plant sources. But there's room for many unexpected problems buried in the details. Often it seems we solve one problem and create 10 others.
Carbon cloud over a green fuel An Iowa corn refinery, open since December, uses 300 tons of coal a day to make ethanol.
The story is that some of the ethanol refineries in Iowa are using Coal for part of the refining process. Ah, it's a refinery, and that generally means heating and distilling liquids. The article discusses how it's usual for the refinery to use natural gas, but some of them are using coal. Either way they're relying on some fossil fuel for production of the biofuel.
In effect the biofuel carries along with it some carbon burden from the fossil fuel.
Another issue is how this shows we haven't completely weaned ourselves from fossil fuel, even with biofuels.
