The person: Randy Grissom, the dean of economic and workforce development at Santa Fe Community College and director of the college’s Sustainable Technologies Center, was one of the first three full time instructors at SFCC. Living in and out of Santa Fe since 1983, Grissom first helped develop the occupational and vocational programs at SFCC, and then worked with the manufacturing extension program, which eventually spread to Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii. After a stint as SFCC’s vice president of finance and administration, Grissom spent nearly four years working for a Hawaiian company that used pineapples for sustainability projects. Now, he’s back in Santa Fe to help the college develop a jobs-oriented biofuels program.
The plan: Teach Santa Fe students about the growing industry of biofuels.
How it works: “You can get fuel from algae. You’re basically short-circuiting millions of years of evolution,” Grissom tells SFR. SFCC was recently tapped to lead the statewide Center of Excellence in Biofuels under a New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions State Energy Sector Partnership grant. The grant provides over $1 million to the center to pay for new equipment, new instructors and new students.
“For those who qualify and meet the criteria the grant was written for, their costs are covered,” Grissom says. The credit certification is 32 credit hours and can be accomplished in only two semesters. “We’re working with companies who have potential for placing our students; a few around the state are looking for 15-20 students to run their plants,” Grissom says.
Grissom highlights Eldorado Biofuels, headquartered in Santa Fe, as a company that is currently involved in a project funded through Los Alamos National Laboratory. “They’re taking used water from the oil and gas industry and using it to grow algae; they’re actually cleaning up the water before re-injecting it,” Grissom says.
The DWS’ sub-industry council, which oversees the Biofuels Center, has a goal of training 150 people over the year and then placing about 90 in jobs.
Bottom line: Last year, the US Navy and Air Force publicized goals to use more biofuels in the coming decade. “The DoD is very interested, from a national security standpoint,” Grissom points out. “Our biofuels program is designed to be a program that is sparking innovation.” Given the large number of underground, brine water aquifers in New Mexico that are ideal for algae growth, Grissom’s program could be sparking our engines very soon as well.
Biofuels fit well into a Mad Max apocolypse, as there are some places electricity is simply ineffective as a means for power, such as to drive aircraft carrying big payloads at high speed.
On the other hand, if the military budget is so worthy of cutting, what is the point of buying algae fuel at $50/gallon when JP8 is $4? What is being proven here, when soldiers' families need food stamps to get by? What is the priority?
The only reason biofuels are being used by DOD is a poltical mandate, not their economy or any other significant improvement over the existing solution.
Biomass enerrgy sources are further down the ecnomomics curve compared to wind or solar, and that's with the a glut of production on both of the latter. That's why Sol City is installing for free and offering a coupon for "free electricity", which would supply me for more than a year. Someone else is paying for it, maybe a neighbor, maybe someone in ID...or even a resident of SF. "There ain't no so such thing as a free lunch."
Any cost increase in energy ripples through every commodity and business, driving costs upward and reducing what a dollar can pay for. Going green has a cost, Conversion of a utility to solar and wind renewables, means significantly higher utility bills and conversion to electricity for household chores like cooking and heating. Is that really the best idea?
Ideas have consequences. Be careful what you wish for.
Note also that when a "business" is built on a poltical mandate rather than economics, it exists only as long as the mandate and funding exist. Europe is seeing significant retrenchment from its "investment" in green power, and debt troubles over there are a combination of misplaced spending and a lack of economic activity to provide a tax base to pay for the spending. Spain particularly is hobbled on both its debt and contracting economy for "going green".
If the algorithm of huge deficits and state spending worked, Greece would be in different straits.
Virtually all the funding for this initiative are from taxpayer, not market sources. When the winds change, it can disappear. Or when other people's money runs out. Er...not a "sustainable" enterprise.