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Novel Enzyme May Prove Beneficial To Biofuels Industry.
June 18, 2013 – Researchers from the U.K., NREL, and the University of Kentucky have published a paper describing novel cellulose-degrading enzyme from a marine wood borer Limnoria quadripunctata, commonly known as the gribble. Gribbles exhibit a relatively unique ability to produce their own enzymes instead of using symbiotic microbes to break down the biomass they eat. New biomass-degrading enzymes from novel sources such as the gribble may prove beneficial to biofuels industry. Novel Enzyme from Tiny Gribble Could Prove a Boon for Biofuels Research http://news4.thomasn…4&cb=f9bd758dd2 National Renewable Energy Laboratory 901 D. Street, S.w. Suite 930 Washington, DC, 20024-2157 USA Press release date: June 11, 2013 Wood borer makes its own enzyme, which could thrive in industrial setting Researchers from the United Kingdom, the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), and the University of Kentucky have recently published a paper describing a novel cellulose-degrading enzyme from a marine wood borer Limnoria quadripunctata, commonly known as the gribble. Gribbles are biologically intriguing because they exhibit a relatively unique ability to produce their own enzymes instead of using symbiotic microbes to break down the biomass they eat. New biomass-degrading enzymes from novel sources such as the gribble may prove beneficial to the biofuels industry. Gribbles are 1-3 millimeters in length, but collectively they bore through wood quickly, and are responsible for significant natural and man-made marine timber damage around the world. Scientists at Universities of Portsmouth and York in the United Kingdom and the University of Kentucky in the United States, with researchers from NREL, are hoping to turn that special talent into a source of novel enzymes for the biofuels industry. A paper describing the crystal structure of a key enzyme produced by the gribble appears online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. http://www.pnas.org/…301502110.short Gribbles live in inter-tidal zones and, similar to termites, they burrow into wood. Gribbles, unlike termites or many other animals including people, do not rely on gut bacteria to make enzymes to aid their digestion. Gribbles instead exhibit a sterile gut, and secrete their own enzymes into their guts made in a special organ termed the heptopancreas that runs the entire length of their body. Interestingly, several of the enzymes produced by gribbles are in the same important enzyme classes that are typically harvested from fungi in the biosphere for industrially deconstructing the cellulose in biomass. The gribble enzymes hold promise of tolerating salts much better, likely due to the fact they evolved in a marine environment. This unique adaptation may have beneficial implications for the ability of the gribble enzymes to more efficiently operate in a high-solids, industrial environment, breaking biomass down more effectively into sugars, which can then be converted into ethanol or a hydrocarbon fuel to replace gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel. The biofuels industry needs tough, efficient enzymes that are tolerant of industrial processes. “For biochemical conversion with enzymes, industry needs to push up to very high solids, with very little water around,” NREL Senior Scientist Gregg Beckham, one of the co-authors, said. “The structure of the gribble enzyme reveals new evolutionary adaptations that may suggest mechanisms for producing more robust, industrial enzymes for high-solids loadings environments.” NREL ran computer simulations and aided in the structural and biochemical analysis of the enzyme. The work leading to the paper provided deeper understanding of how the organism adapts and survives. NREL and UK scientists are now examining how features of the gribble enzymes could be incorporated into industrially relevant enzymes and settings. NREL is the U.S. Department of Energy’s primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC. Visit NREL online at www.nrel.gov Media may contact: William Scanlon 303-275-4051 William.Scanlon@nrel.gov Continue reading
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United States: Can California Cap And Trade If Brussels Stumbles?
08 May 2013 Article by Jeffrey Rector Last week, the European Parliament rejected a proposal to reduce the quantity of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions allowances in order to fix a supply-demand imbalance in the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). Some view this as the beginning of the end of the European Union’s ten-year carbon cap-and-trade experiment. A high profile failure of the EU ETS is likely to provide ammunition to critics California’s cap-and-trade program. An emissions offset or emissions allowance (representing the right to emit one metric ton of CO 2 or GHG equivalent, or CO 2 e) within EU ETS is no longer trading at values that promote investment in low carbon technologies, and therefore the EU ETS is not presently serving its core purpose. The trading value of an EU Emissions Allowance was above €30 per metric ton in 2008 before the sharp impacts of the global recession. Prices halved in late 2008 and early 2009 and hovered around €15 for two years until 2011. Then prices began a steady decline to €10, then €5, and now even less. It is understood by energy and climate economists that if emissions allowances can be purchased for less than €10, a cap-and-trade system will have little if any effect on the pollution abatement decisions of heavy emitters because the allowances would be cheaper than virtually all known or developable emissions abatement technologies. Indeed, such rock bottom prices may have the effect of promoting high-emitting technologies that should be discouraged. At issue is an oversupply of credits: (i) the EU was too generous in its granting of free allowances; (ii) international offsets from the tradable credit programs under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (including the Clean Development Mechanism) outstripped demand; and (iii) the global recession reduced the demand for energy and thereby the demand for credits, which drives pricing. The EU Parliament recently voted whether to defer the issuance of a portion of new emissions allowances (referred to as “backloading”) in order to constrain supply and raise prices. When the final votes were tallied, the backloading proposal was rejected by a narrow margin. It is said that carbon markets viewed the outcome as a vote of no-confidence in the future viability of the EU ETS, which had pushed the trading price of allowances to the current price of less than €3 per metric ton. The backloading proposal will likely be reconsidered by the EU Parliament early this summer, but its prospects are uncertain. While it is impossible to reduce the basis for opposing backloading to a single idea, it seems that, even in Europe, there is almost irresistible pressure to give economic growth precedence over reducing emissions; and it appears that Europe, much like the United States, is still struggling with the question of whether the two objectives (economic growth and emissions reduction) can be simultaneously advanced. For at least two reasons, the European experience does not bode well for California’s fledgling carbon market. First, it demonstrates the difficulty of creating a market in tradable rights to undertake a previously unregulated activity. The cost of emitting greenhouse gasses has heretofore gone unaccounted for and been externalized. A cap-and-trade system creates scarcity in the right to emit and allocates those rights for free or fee to regulated entities. While cap-and-trade may be a “market-based” solution, the allocation of emissions allowances is, in fact, a political decision that produces winners and losers. Thus, the true test for the political viability of a cap-and-trade system is when the emissions allowances are no longer given away; the EU ETS was beginning to enter this phase, and the strength of the opposition from the heavy emitters predictably increased. The California Legislature has delegated the difficult political decision of allocation to the California Air Resources Board, which partially insulates the allocation decision from political pressure; however, the scope of the delegation to CARB arguably undermines the legitimacy, and possibly the legality, of CARB’s cap-and-trade decisions. Second, the California Legislature viewed it to be in California’s best interest to be a leader in regulating carbon (and in policy circles, a leader in cap-and-trade) on the assumption that other states and the federal government would follow. A high profile failure of carbon cap-and-trade across the Atlantic would be a setback for the prospects of a national policy being implemented in the near future, and the cost of leading when there are no followers might not be one the majority of Californians will be willing to pay. Parties interested in the fate of California’s cap-and-trade system will likely be following this developing story in Europe and waiting for another EU vote, which is expected to come early this summer. The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances. Specific Questions relating to this article should be addressed directly to the author. Continue reading
