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Posts Tagged ‘biofuel’

Quiet Construction Sites

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on March 14, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Ajit Niranjan/The Guardian.
The electric machinery at an emissions-free building site in Oslo, Norway, makes for quieter construction.

Whether we realize it or not, our noisy world is making us a little more jittery than we need to be. It’s not just the clangor and clash of big cities but near airports, hospitals with medivac helicopters, and construction sites.

Despite Norway’s reputation as one of the biggest oil producers, it is leading the way with electric vehicles, even at construction sites.

Ajit Niranjan has the story at the Guardian.

“Tafseer Ali felt no need to raise his voice as the pair of diggers lumbered past him, their treads weighing heavy on the rock and asphalt. Quiet electric machines like these make it easy to work in the city center, the construction manager said – and keep the neighbors happy. …

“The peaceful streets of Oslo are growing even calmer as the city drives noisy machines off municipal building sites. For locals and builders, the drop in decibels is a welcome side-effect of a goal to keep city-managed construction projects free from toxic emissions. The mandate, which is the first of its kind in the world, came into effect on 1 January.

“ ‘I don’t think we’re going to get to 100%, because not all [electric] machines are available on the market,’ said Ingrid Kiær Salmi, an engineer from Oslo’s urban environment agency, speaking to the Guardian at a building site in the city center last year. ‘But I think we’re going to get pretty close.’

“Construction is one of the biggest sources of urban air pollution, but even forward-thinking cities such as Oslo have struggled to clean it up. The Norwegian capital has led the way in replacing the petrol and diesel that powers its construction equipment with biofuels, which do little to heat the planet but still foul the local air. It is now moving to battery-powered machines.

“The latest data shows Oslo’s municipal building sites were 98% free from fossil fuels in 2023; three-quarters were powered by biofuels and less than one-quarter by electricity. For projects run by the urban environment agency, which has more recent data through to October 2024, two-thirds of machine hours were powered by electricity and one-third by biodiesel.

“The proportion of its projects powered by electricity has more than doubled in the past two years as new machines have come on to the market. …

“Electric vehicles are nothing new to Norwegians, who are more likely to drive a car with a big battery than one with a combustion engine, but the market for clean diggers [excavators] and wheel loaders still has a way to go. The building industry has pushed back on Oslo’s pioneering plans for moving too fast. …

“The requirement that all machinery on building sites must be emission-free is ‘at this point, neither effective nor cost-efficient,’ said Stine Marie Haugen, from the Norwegian construction and civil engineering contractors’ association.

“ ‘Currently, very few countries in Europe have a strong focus on emission-free machinery, which means that access to such equipment is somewhat limited,’ she said. ‘Only a few countries bear the development costs of bringing these machines to market.’

“But by taking on these costs, Norway and a handful of other countries are making clean machines cheaper and more attractive for cities around the world. Manufacturers say the early demand from procurement policies like Oslo’s has encouraged them to develop new electric machinery and make existing ones better.

“As the volume of vehicles increases, costs will come down – but ‘like with all new technology, there is a green premium,’ said Tora Leifland, the head of public affairs at Volvo Construction Equipment. A battery-powered machine can cost twice as much as a diesel one, she said, though it will save money on fuel and do little to inflate the overall costs of a construction project.

“There are also benefits that are harder to capture, such as quieter working conditions on-site and reduced disruptions to local communities and businesses.”

More details at the Guardian, here. No firewall. Contributions to support the Guardian‘s reliable journalism are solicited.

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Will Cactus Pear Save Italy?

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 6, 2025| 8 Comments »

Photo: ItalianNotes.
Prickly pear, or cactus pear. When Italy suffers from drought, some people turn to an edible cactus.

A while ago I posted photos I’d taken in New England and was surprised to see a cactus this far north. Hannah called it “prickly pear” and told me it was known for its versatility. It’s apparently the same cactus that Italy is looking to as a reliable food source.

Stefano Bernabei and Gavin Jones write at Reuters, “Global warming, drought and plant disease pose a growing threat to agriculture in Italy’s arid south, but a startup founded by a former telecoms manager believes it has found a solution: Opuntia Ficus, better known as the cactus pear.

“Andrea Ortenzi saw the plant’s potential 20 years ago when working for Telecom Italia in Brazil, where it is widely used as animal feed. On returning to Italy he began looking at ways to turn his intuition into a business opportunity.

“He and four friends founded their company, called Wakonda, in 2021, and began buying land to plant the crop in the southern Puglia region where the traditionally dominant olive trees had been ravaged by an insect-borne disease called Xylella.

“The damage from the plant disease has been compounded by recurring droughts and extreme weather in the last few years all over Italy’s southern mainland and islands, hitting crops from grapes to citrus fruits.

“Ortenzi is convinced the hardy and versatile cactus pear, otherwise called the prickly pear or, in Italy, the Indian fig, can be a highly profitable solution yielding a raft of products such as soft drinks, flour, animal feed and biofuel. …

” ‘As an industry, cactus pear production is growing rather quickly, especially for fodder use and as a source of biofuel,’ said Makiko Taguchi, agricultural officer at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization headquartered in Rome.

“The cactus produces a tasty fruit eaten in much of Latin America and the Mediterranean, while in Mexico the flat green pads that form the arms of the cactus, are used in cooking. In Tunisia, where it covers around 12% of cultivated land, second only to olive trees, the cactus pear is a major source of income for thousands, particularly women who harvest and sell the fruit.

“In Brazil, which has the world’s largest production, it is mainly cultivated in the north-east for fodder, while Peru and Chile use it to extract a red dye known as Cochineal, used in food and cosmetic production.

Sportswear group Adidas and carmaker Toyota have recently shown interest in using the cactus to produce plant-based leather sourced mainly from Mexico.

“The cactus pear is not yet included in the FAO’s agricultural output statistics, but Taguchi cited the rapid expansion of CactusNet, a contact network of cactus researchers and businesses worldwide which she coordinates. …

“The plant, native to desert areas of south and north America, thrives in the increasingly arid conditions of Italy’s south, and needs ten times less water than maize, a comparable crop whose byproducts also include animal feed and methane. …

“Of the roughly 100,000 hectares of olive trees destroyed by Xylella in southern Puglia, only 30,000 will be replanted in the same way, [Ortenzi] told Reuters in an interview. ‘Potentially 70,000 could be planted with prickly pears,’ he said. …

“Wakonda’s business model discards the fruit and focuses instead on the prickly pads, which are pressed to yield a juice used for a highly nutritious, low-calorie energy drink. The dried out pads are then processed to produce a light flour for the food industry or a high-protein animal feed.

“Wakonda’s circular, ecological production system also includes ‘biodigester’ tanks in which the waste from the output cycle is transformed into methane gas used as a bio-fuel either on site or sold. …

“Under Ortenzi’s business plan, rather than buying up land to plant the cactus, Wakonda aims to persuade farmers of its potential and then license out to them, in return for royalties, all the equipment and know-how required to exploit it.

” ‘The land remains yours, you convert it to prickly pears and I guarantee to buy all your output for at least 15 years,’ Ortenzi said.”

Hmmm. I have two issues. Throwing out the fruit seems super wasteful. And methane may be a biofuel, but it’s no better for the environment than fossil fuel. What do you think?

More at Reuters, here. No firewall.

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