Here is another company that is offering wood chips to help the clean up in the Gulf:

http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Patriot-Energy-Services-LLC-Offers-Help-in-Gulf-of-Mexico-Clean-Up-1163816.htm

As the president of the company says:

“We have a by-product that comes from our unique process that produces a very small wood chip. These Chips are 1 inch minus in size and very buoyant. My team did some testing and realized when mixed with water and oil, the oil attaches to the surface and is absorbed into the chips themselves therefore diverting hazardous material from plant and marine life.”

While this is good news, it’s only part of the solution. We still need a vehicle that can dry the chips and make them as effective as possible when they go into the water. That’s exactly what the Advanced Trailer does. So what are we waiting on? Lets get started!

Randy Hill, President and CEO of Advanced Trailer, announced today that he has submitted an application to use trailer drying technology to help with the cleanup of the BP oil spill in the Gulf.  The Advanced Trailer would be used to procure (dry) the wood chips in preparation to be used to absorb oil along beaches and shoreline in the Gulf Region. Advanced Trailers could also be a very valuable tool in transporting large amounts of wood chips to various locations in the Gulf region affected by the BP oil disaster. Randy Hill has offered BP free consulting and use of an Advanced Biomass Trailer to test how it can help in the clean up.

“The environment has been one of our primary areas of research and development over the past three years,” Hill said in making the announcement. “This is not something we originally had in mind for drying wood chips in an Advanced Trailer. But I believe I speak for all of our staff, employees and shareholders:  we are happy and willing to do our part helping with cleaning up this horrible mess. Were not just selling a product, were solving problems.”

Earlier this week, BP requested that Advanced Trailer submit an application to help with the clean up process. A number of new technologies are being tried including Kevin Costner’s water separation machine. On Tuesday the ABC affiliate in Dallas, WFAA, reported that BP had ordered mulch wood products from a local company to be bagged and used to absorb oil on beaches and marshes. Advanced Trailer has received national attention for its recent work to remove moisture from woody biomass which is used in steam power plants worldwide. The use of an Advanced Trailer could potentially help lower moisture levels in the wood chips which would prepare them and increase the efficiency and amount of oil the wood will take in.

During the past year, Advanced Trailer has provided funding and equipment to a number of U.S. universities and research centers for the drying of woody biomass products. Research at the University of Idaho using the Advanced Trailer successfully reduced moisture levels from over 80% down to near zero. The dryer the wood the greater its ability to hold more oil.

Former President Bill Clinton recently made news when he talked about what to do about the BP oil spill:

http://theweek.com/article/index/204558/bill-clintons-bp-bombshell

Basically, the Clinton idea is blow the site up. Literally. But before you laugh this off, listen to him explain it. It’s not as crazy as you might think:

“Bill Clinton suggested the military may have to blow up the BP oil well. Speaking at a media forum in Cape Town, South Africa this weekend, the former president called the still-leaking well a ‘geological nightmare,’ and raised the specter of sending ‘the Navy down deep to blow up the well and cover the leak with piles and piles and piles of rock and debris.’ Clinton added that we ‘don’t have to use nuclear weapons,’ as some have suggested.”

This might be a solution worth considering. If we blew up the well and then covered it up, wouldn’t that be better than what we have now?

In the past few days we’ve looked at the tragedy in the Gulf and the failed leadership that has yet to find a way to clean up the mess.

This week, we’re going to take a positive focus and look at possible solutions. Is there anything that can be done to stop the flow of oil? Is there something that can help clean up the oil that’s already in the Gulf? The answer may surprise you.

Check out the blog this week for our series on what can be done to stop the spill and clean up the Gulf.

Here is another mistake the administration is making in handling the BP oil spill: stopping good ideas:

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/bp-oil-spill-gov-bobby-jindals-wishes-crude/story?id=10946379

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal had begun using barges to suck up the oil. As the article notes:

“Workers in hazmat suits and gas masks pumped the oil out of the Louisiana waters and into steel tanks. It was a homegrown idea that seemed to be effective at collecting the thick gunk.”

Amazingly, the administration shut this down:

“But the Coast Guard ordered the stoppage because of reasons that Jindal found frustrating. The Coast Guard needed to confirm that there were fire extinguishers and life vests on board, and then it had trouble contacting the people who built the barges.”

What? Fire extinguishers and life vests? Come on. Let’s get serious about cleaning this mess up and let’s not stop good ideas that are working.

When you are putting out a fire, don’t you focus all your effort on ending the flames? Don’t you ask questions later about how the fire started? Unfortunately, that’s not what our government is doing:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37444105/

As the article notes:

“Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that federal authorities have opened criminal and civil investigations into the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill.”

Why are we launching criminal investigations when we haven’t even stopped the leak yet? Let’s get our priorities in order. Stop the leak first. Ask questions later.

In leadership studies, the sports metaphor is often used to describe a leader who “took his eyes off the ball.” In other words, sometimes a leader gets so caught up in the moment that he loses track of what really matters. It could be President Obama is experiencing a bit of this in his response to the BP oil spill:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/15/obamas-pitch-energy-speech-gulf-crisis-infuriates-republicans/

As the article notes:

“Obama, trying to take control of a crisis that has slowly eroded support for his administration, addressed the nation from the Oval Office Tuesday night to rally support for his efforts to tackle the spill. He pointed to the relief efforts already underway and said the government would hold BP responsible. But later in his 18-minute speech, he turned to focus on the need to ’seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels’ and tout Democrats’ climate legislation.”

Why would we focus on cap-and-trade legislation when we have an emergency that needs to be fixed? Time to put our eyes back on the ball.

Today, we continue to look at the surprising facts about the BP oil spill. And we do so by focusing on the cost that is involved:

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-facts

According to this article:

“12,000: Number of Louisiana residents who have filed for unemployment since the spill, most of which have come from the southern part of the state most closely impacted by the spill. (Source: Daily Finance)

$300 million: Estimated cost to BP to plug up the leaking oil spill, not including environmental cleanup costs. (Source: New York Times)

$5 to $42 million: Range of BP’s estimated fines, per day. On the low end, is the cost based on BP’s conservative estimate of 1,000 barrels a day being lost. On the high end, an estimate of 14,000 barrels a day, which is generally considered a more accurate estimate of the leak. As of May 26, this means that BP could be fined anywhere between $37 million to $1.5 billion. (Source: House of Representatives)

$75 million: The government-mandated cap on oil company liability. Some representatives are calling for the cap to be lifted and a new $10 billion dollar cap be put in place. (Source: Los Angeles Times)

$1.5 billion: Amount in insurance claims experts believe the BP spill will cost insurers. (Source: Business Week)”

This is more than just an environmental disaster. It’s a human disaster. It’s costing jobs and impacting lives. And we still have no idea when it will end.

Today, we continue our series on surprising facts about the BP oil spill by looking at the sheer size of the spill:

http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/gulf-of-mexico-oil-spill-facts

According to this article, the size of the spill is much larger than you probably realize:

“19 million to 39 million gallons: Amount of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico in the month since the Deepwater Horizon spill. (Source: Huffington Post)

11,300 miles: The distance around the world the current amount of leaked oil would stretch if it was placed in milk jugs lined up side by side. To quantify, that’s farther than New York to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and back. (Source: New York Times)

102: The number of school gymnasiums that could theoretically be filled floor-to-ceiling with oil from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. (Source: New York Times)

130 miles long and 70 miles wide: Size of the oil slick as of May 17. The slick continues to grow and move.”

Before this is over, the BP spill will replace the Valdez as the worst oil spill in American history. The sad part is, we still don’t know when or how it will end.

Here is another surprising fact about the BP oil spill–it may never be cleaned up:

http://www.livescience.com/environment/gulf-oil-spill-clean-up-100429.html

As the article notes:

“However, for an oil spill at sea, typically only 10 to 15 percent of the oil is recovered, Gerald Graham, president of Worldocean Consulting, a marine oil spill prevention and response planning firm based in British Columbia, told LiveScience.”

So what happens to the rest of the oil?

“The rest of the oil that doesn’t get cleaned up evaporates, breaks up and floats on the surface, or sinks to the bottom, Graham said.”

With possibly as many as 20,000 barrels a day flooding into the ocean, let’s hope Graham is right.

This week we’ll continue to discuss the BP oil spill, but with a twist. We’ll be focusing on items that most people don’t know about the spill:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/19/gulf-oil-spill-still-no-o_n_581424.html

One of the things that most people don’t realize is that BP doesn’t really know how to fix this. In fact, BP has set up a hotline to receive tips from the public on what might be done to stop the oil flow.

One idea that BP is considering is a giant vacuum created by actor Kevin Costner. I’m not making this up:

“Costner, the ‘Waterworld’ and ‘Field of Dreams’ actor, has invested more than$24 million in developing the centrifuge invention, along with business partner John Houghtaling II of New Orleans. On Tuesday, Houghtaling said BP has agreed to test the devices, which can be dropped into the oil spill and separate water from oil, storing the petroleum in tanks. The smallest weighs 150 pounds; the largest 4,500 pounds.”

Let’s hope that Costner’s vacuum works better than his movies.

If you had any doubt about whether alternative energy is the way to go, look no farther than the Gulf of Mexico:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/18/gulf.oil.spill.main/?hpt=Sbin

This has always been one of the downsides to oil: it’s dangerous. As the article notes:

“But the well has been spewing an estimated 5,000 barrels a day into the Gulf since late April, when the drill rig Deepwater Horizon blew up and sank about 40 miles off Louisiana. Eleven workers are presumed dead after the sinking, and the cause has not been determined.”

For generations, oil has resulted in ecological problems and even endangered oil well workers. For safety reason alone, shouldn’t we look for an alternative? We have it. It’s called wind, solar and biomass. It’s better for our economy, better for our environment and better for our safety.

Tonight when President Obama delivers his State of the Union Address, here is something else he should do: challenge Republicans to work with him on cap and trade.

Some sort of carbon legislation is going to happen eventually. So the choice Republicans face is: do we want a cap and trade system or a carbon tax? A carbon tax would most likely come in the form of a dramatic increase in the cost of fuel at the gas pump. Conservatives won’t support that. Instead, a cap and trade system would provide a marketplace where carbon credits are bought and sold.

President Obama should call out Republicans on this issue and encourage them to work with him to create a carbon-trading system that will help our economy and our environment.

It’s the politics of carbon credits that is complicated, not the economics.

The economics is as simple as trading any commodity. First, greenhouse gas emissions will be capped. Second, markets are used to allocate the emissions among the group of regulated sources. That’s it. The result of this simple trading process is that the free market will help monetize and incentivize carbon so that businesses produce lower carbon emissions.

Pretty simple, right? It is. But even if it’s simple, it’s not easy. It will take political leadership to get the country to pursue a carbon credit plan.

Some say a true carbon credit marketplace will never happen.  But in California, such a marketplace is just two years away from becoming a reality:

http://articles.latimes.com/2009/sep/25/local/me-logging25

Here is how it will work:

“In two years, the state will roll out a new carbon-trading marketplace, a provision of the landmark 2006 global warming law signed by Schwarzenegger. Major polluters such as power plants and oil refineries would tap that market. Some of the state’s biggest timber firms, including Sierra Pacific Industries and Green Diamond Resource Co., have done no carbon trading because they don’t want to be told how to manage their forests. Under rules approved two years ago, a timber company that wanted to sell carbon credits had to accept a property easement that prohibited any future development of the land. Those rules barred clear-cutting by companies selling carbon credits.”

So carbon will become a commodity that is sold and traded in an open marketplace. This will allow the marketplace to help dictate cost and value.  And that will benefit both the trader and the buyer.

Carbon credits make sense…as California is about to prove.

Today we continue our series on carbon credit by discussing how it works economically.

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/story.html?id=253242ea-dad8-445e-be8b-22f0b1a7d3ab&k=80479

Essentially, carbon credits create a value that can be bought and sold in a marketplace. As the article notes:

“A ‘carbon market’ works something like this: Governments set tough greenhouse-gas emission caps. Companies that exceed the caps are heavily penalized or taxed. But they can escape some of the pain if they buy ‘carbon credits’ from companies that fall below their own greenhouse gas caps. Eventually, the theory holds, the environment will win because companies will use cleaner technology and clean up their act to avoid having to pay fines or purchase the carbon credits, which could cost in the millions of dollars.’”

The law of supply and demand is at work here. Since there is a demand for a clean environment, the carbon credits are emerging as a new supply to meet that demand.

This makes sense economic sense. And that’s why five U.S. states have already created a carbon trading market. Carbon credits are not just the future, they are the now.

A few days ago, President Obama returned from the climate control conference in Copenhagen. The media described his trip as a failure. I disagree:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/copenhagen-climate-change-confe/6839650/Copenhagen-climate-summit-Barack-Obama-says-world-running-out-of-time.html

Leadership isn’t always about getting results right away; it’s about asking the right questions and looking down the road. President Obama should be commended for raising the important issue of global warming. Many conservatives say that we shouldn’t pursue climate control because scientists are still debating it. I disagree. As a conservative, I think we should take ere on the side of caution and take steps to clean up our environment.

I’m proud to be a conservative who stands with the president on this important issue.

How ironic that our government is considering cap-and-trade legislation at a time of economic difficulty. Yesterday, I wrote about the harm cap-and-trade could do to consumers through higher costs. Today, I want to talk about the harm it could do to our national economy by damaging our trade relationships with other countries.

Martin Feldstein was President Reagan’s Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors. He also happens to believe that the scientific evidence suggests global warming is true. Yet he opposes cap-and-trade as the solution. Why? Because it will harm free trade. Here’s why. Different countries will issue different permits that cost different amounts. As a result, Feldstein warnes:

“A cap-and-trade system can cause serious risks to international trade. Even if every country has a cap-and-trade system and all aim at the same relative reduction in national CO2 emissions, the resulting permit prices will differ because of national differences in initial CO2 levels and in domestic production characteristics. Because the price of the CO2 permits in a country is reflected in the prices of its products, the cap-and-trade system affects its international competitiveness.”
http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/martin-feldstein-cap-and-trade-=-protectionism/362252/

So cap-and-trade is bad for consumers and bad for our national economy. Surely there is a better way to combat global warming and reduce our dependence on foreign oil. And there is: alternative energy.

Happy Earth Day!

On this Earth Day there is an exciting new development in biomass. Lockheed Martin has opened its first biomass facility in Oregon:

http://www.pressconnects.com/article/20090421/BUSINESS/904210427

The article describes the process this way:

“Operating much like a pellet stove in someone’s home, but on a much larger scale, the roughly 11,000-square-foot biomass plant uses sawdust, wood chips and bark primarily from Wagner Lumber in Owego, but also Gutchess Lumber in Cortland and other lumber mills, to generate steam used to heat, cool and provide supplemental electricity year-round at the approximately 1.6 million-square-foot Lockheed plant.”

When a major defense contractor is using biomass for electricity at one of its plants, you know that biomass is here to stay. That’s why I’m so excited that my company, Advanced Trailer, is partnering with the University of Idaho. Our trailers are a perfect fit for drying the wood chips that fuel biomass.

To find out more about biomass and how our trailers are helping make a difference, stay turned for a new ebook that I will release in a few days.