The Power of Manure

Check out this MSNBC video clip featuring a Central Valley Dairy: Joseph Gallo Farms in Atwater, CA. A tour of this dairy will be conducted on June 5th at 10am.

Farming Clean Energy: A Conference to Grow Clean Energy Capacity in the San Joaquin Valley

The Farming Clean Energy Conference is designed to catalyze the adoption of clean energy
within the agricultural sector California’s San Joaquin Valley. The primary focus of this
conference will target farmers and agri-business owners and the practical actions that they can
take to develop successful clean energy projects. The conference will encourage participants to
share experiences with their peers, the financial community, technology vendors and regulators.

This two-day conference is scheduled for fall 2008.

Rationale and Significance Production of renewable energy is emerging as an industry with major potential for rural economic development in California, benefiting the region’s wealth of farms and agribusinesses, in addition to helping the region address its air quality and growth challenges. The agricultural sector has the potential to become a leading clean energy producer as well as a major beneficiary of clean energy production—however, clean energy resources still face numerous obstacles to commercialization. This conference will focus on economic revitalization of the San Joaquin Valley and highlight opportunities and obstacles to implementation of on-farm energy projects including: wind and solar power, biodiesel and biogas\biomethane production. This conference would not be a stand-alone, one-time event. Instead, it will be the first of similar events designed as a means of organizing key agricultural sector partners in the region around clean energy and shaping the support areas for the nascent San Joaquin Valley Clean Energy Organization (SJVCEO.) As a follow-up to the conference, SJVCEO staff will provide information and assistance to support development of promising clean energy projects and partnerships, in addition to addressing barriers to clean energy development in the region.

Approach and Focus Areas

• Potential conference topic areas include:
• Selling Power to the Grid (including power purchase agreements and net metering)
• Regulatory permitting challenges (including key air and water permitting and the
  potential for permit coordination)
• Developing Valley-based alternative fuel market opportunities (including market opportunities from Assembly Bill 1007 to develop clean fuels in the Valley)
• The financing and ownership structure of renewable energy installations/facilities
  (including farming co-ops, strategies for attracting public and private sector capital, and
  avenues for funding small- to medium-scale renewable energy projects)
• The impact of global warming and related agriculture production opportunities
  (including carbon credit programs, no-till cropping & specialized feedstock production)
• Project scale issues and how to overcome them
• Market opportunities to leverage and impediments to address
• Federal, state, and local programs and policy leadership

Who Should Attend?
Farmers, agri-business owners, leaders from agricultural groups, rural development
organizations, utilities, private business, research facilities and clean energy advocates who share a common vision for a sustainable agricultural sector for the San Joaquin Valley.

Roadmap to a Sustainable Biogas Industry in the SJ Valley

San Joaquin Valley Clean Energy Organization
Development of a Sustainable Biogas Industry in the SJ Valley
RoadMap

Background:

• Assess the geographic availability, quantities and cost to handle the organic resource
• Examine possible business models to cost-effectively transform organic resource to energy
• Calculate potential energy production in therms, MW’s or gallons of fuel, account for air pollution benefits and green house gas emission reductions
• Describe the purpose of this document

State of Affairs:

• Describe the current rate of development for the target industry, i.e., how many units are installed? how many permits are in process? what are investors concerns and uncertainties?
• Identify path to investing in biogas production facilities, from design, financing, permitting, installation and commissioning, as well as utility contractual agreements
• Survey current efforts being undertaken at the state (Cal EPA, ARB, CDFA, CEC) and federal (US EPA, USDA, DOE) agency level, regional and local organizational efforts to advance the biogas industry in California.

Regulatory and Institutional Barriers:

• Describe the issues pertaining environmental laws and regulations that make the investment path more expensive and time consuming. Describe same impact created by utilities, IOW’s.
• Use in-the-grown testimonials from farmers and their consultants to highlight levels of frustration with the process, lost opportunities and cancellation of potential projects.
• How many projects have not being build because the permit process is onerous?
• How many more projects would be built if utility contract options were more equitable and further compensated owner of resource to make investment more profitable?
• Identify path to overcoming these barriers.

Drivers to Overcome Barriers:

• Identify regulations, energy policy objectives and economic market forces driving or that can be used to drive the development of the biogas industry
• Rank the drives by level of importance, timeliness, relevance to the regulatory agencies and utility companies, as well as to the dairy farmer and investment partners.
• Assess potential to activate drivers by legislation, collaborative efforts within regulatory agencies as well as progressive utility purchasing power policies and rates to stimulate investment.

Conclusions and recommendations:

• Summarize state-of-affairs with positive and negative developments; identify two or three recommendations that can have positive impacts and are within the scope of the SJVCEO.