Blogroll Review: Grease, Weddings, & Ethanol

Grease Power
Looks like folks collecting used vegetable oil for their biodiesel vehicles will be getting competition from….big oil! On the Energy Blog, oil wastes and sludge can be recycled into electricity:

“Chevron Energy Solutions, a Chevron (NYSE: CVX) subsidiary, today announced that it has begun engineering and construction of a system at the City of Rialto’s (California) wastewater treatment facility that will transform wastewater sludge and kitchen grease from local restaurants into clean, renewable power.”

Do you want fries with that? 🙂

Green Wedding
Are you worried your wedding is bad for the planet? Fear not, Wedding TerraPass is now here (at least the beta version). Adam at Terrablog says:

“With your Wedding TerraPass comes a fancy certificate of offset for display at the reception (if so desired), including a nice frame to display it in. The frame is handmade from salvaged Douglas fir, and will continue to serve your framing needs long after the blessed event.”

Did you hear about the wedding rings made of recycled gold?

Ethanol Hyped?
Could these warnings be true? Are we getting too excited about bio-ethanol for fuels? While the debate goes on over the energy and environmental impacts of an ethanol economy, oil execs do not believe ethanol is viable for the near term. Dana Childs at Inside Greentech
writes:

“While the petroleum company leaders said they’re keen to see renewable energy sources becoming a mass produced reality, 60 percent said it will not be possible by 2010. Of those that believe it will, 18 percent identified ethanol is the most viable for mass production by then, 13 percent said biodiesel and only 3 percent said cellulosic ethanol.”

Dana adds that in an interview with KPMG “forty-four percent [of the executives] identified their biggest risks as financial.”

Any risks to the beer industry? 🙂

Frank Ling is a postdoctoral fellow at the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL) at UC Berkeley. He is also a producer of the Berkeley Groks Science Show.