Mixed Greens: Nuts! Ferguson finds a new renewable energy source

A government-backed study examining ways the Australia’s almond industry could reduce its energy use has found that just 20 per cent of the industry’s husk and shell waste, converted into biofuel, could be used to offset its energy demand. Conducted by the Almond Board of Australia, the $60,000 study – just over half of which came from a $32,000 grant from ARENA’s Emerging Renewables Program – found that this could be done by carefully matching the industry’s overall energy demand with the availability of feedstock and with technology costs.

Federal energy and resources minister Martin Ferguson said on Wednesday that the study highlighted the importance of industry undertaking proper monitoring of its energy use, to make effective energy efficiency improvements. The Almond Board is now considering its options in implementing the renewable energy strategy, which could include feasibility studies, technological trials, and running an integrated, site-specific project to meet onsite and local supply and demand. The Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics has projected that use of biofuel for electricity generation will increase by 3.9 per cent a year between 2012–13 and 2049–50.

In other news…

Victorian cleantech start-up Axiflux – the award-winning company behind the creation of the world’s first modular, real-time, software-reconfigurable electric motor and generator – has announced it is joining EV Engineering, a consortium of companies that includes Better Place and Futuris, formed to develop proof-of-concept Australian electric vehicles. The Axiflux team is led by chief executive Chris Mosely, and David Jahshan, who is chief technology officer and inventor of the Axiflux technology. Mosely says the new joint venture will provide the resources to further test their technology, which Jahshan says has the capability to “revolutionise the EV industry.”

The Obama government has approved three new renewable energy projects to be built on federal land in California and Nevada. Bloomberg reports that the two solar plants and one wind farm are expected to total 1.1GW of capacity, enough to power more than 340,000 homes. The solar projects are in one of 17 zones approved by the Interior Department last year to accelerate the approval process. “They are the blueprint, the bible, if you will, of where solar energy will go on public lands in the years ahead,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said on Tuesday at a press conference.