I believe that’s an E.F. Schumacherism.  He’s the originator of the “appropriate technology” movement, and the author of Small is Beautiful; Economics as if people mattered.

I started working on the notion of “Solar Double Cropping” in the fall of last year-about the time that the Province of Ontario passed a law prohibiting solar farms to be installed on farmland.  To me the entire thing smacked of the “Food vs. Fuel” debate which hovers around biofuels.

Trust me.  “Food vs. Fuel” does not usually end well for “Fuel.”

We have just deployed a 130 watt “semi-shade” panel over a pair of “container gardens.”

The idea is that 50% of the light energy is converted into electricity, and 50% of the light energy is allowed to pass through to grow food below.  Hence the “double cropping.”

The demonstration is modular, so that one person can easily disassemble and move it-for trade shows and the like.  And while it sits in the yard, it is charging the battery bank on the Pittsboro location of the B100 Community Trail.  Our 30 watt panel that is bolted to the shed is undersized based on the traffic the tank is currently receiving.

So we upgrade the Pittsboro tank, while demonstrating how light energy can be shared across functions.

It’s as easy as adding a couple of serial ports to a memory board in order to save slots on the bus.

This summer we plan to build a giant “solar double cropping” array at the south end of the plant.  Above the tractors will be five hundred some odd panels. Electricity will be harvested above, while produce is being harvested below.

In the middle of the picture is Beth, and her big red(orange?) Mercedes.  She’s a long time member, filling up.  She sometimes rolls into the plant on fumes-but when she arrives, she surely wants to be sure there is enough solar power in the batteries for her twenty gallon fill.

We met at Gary and Ilana’s house on Box Turtle, which is out by Shakori Hills in Silk Hope.  It’s a beautiful rammed earth 800 square foot house that is the envy of the community.  It’s constructed of so much thermal mass that when the woodstove goes out it takes the place “three days before it knows to get cold.”

Rachel was the president of the board.  She has now passed the mantle to McCayne, who runs Harland’s Creek farm with Judy.  Rebekah Hren became treasurer.  She’s the author of The Carbon Free Home.  Maria Kingery stepped up to do board development.  She’s one of the founders of Southern Energy Management.  Sami Grover agreed to settle in as secretary.  He’s one of the creative geniuses at The Change who also writes for local papers and for Treehugger.

These are big brained people.  Articulate, concise, and obsessed with finding a way for human beings to forge a sustainable existence on this garden planet.

Abundance has long been focused on renewable energy, local food, and building community.  It has grown from an idea in the hot tub to a quarter million dollar per year enterprise.  Under the stewardship of Tami Schwerin it has gone from a group of volunteers installing solar panels on the Moncure School to a multi-faceted enterprise that has helped spawned farms, and community events like Pittsboro’s Mardi Gras party.  Along the way it has launched Pecha Kucha, getting Pittsboro sanctioned as the smallest Pecha Kucha venue on earth, and it is has helped buttress the Pittsboro Christmas parade, and created a “pepper festival,” and held film screenings, and arranged micro-loans, and led tours of our Eco Industrial Park, among other things.

It’s hard to pin Abundance down.  It does a lot of things.  One moment they are the fiscal sponsors of the Sustainable Biodiesel Summit, the next they are facilitating a regional conversation on how to re-engineer our foodshed, and the next they are tabling in the name of “solarizing Shakori.”

Like all good board retreats they worked on crafting a new mission statement, analyzed their strengths and weaknesses, assessed their opportunities and threats, and generally dug deeper into the reason for their existence.  I haven’t served on the board for awhile, but I have remained active in an advisory capacity.  And I have to say it was a treat to watch this star studded board in action.

From left to right: Camille, Tracy, Gary, Maria, Tami, Lyle, McCayne, Sami, Rachel, Rebekah, and Margo

I spent the day eating local food that Gary served up, drinking local mead and wine, and marveling at how a small group of committed people could do so much to shift the status quo in our community.

It was a wonderful day in Silk Hope.  The retreat ended when Sami’s wife Jenny arrived with their baby, followed by Abundance staffers, volunteers, and their partners with dinner catered by Angelina’s Kitchen.

It was a remarkable day.  For a remarkable organization.  Abundance was one of our better ideas…

I thought it was a fabulous read, and it has inspired me to push harder on our project.

It was cold, and dark, and rainy-but Tami rode along so the very real threat of dying from lonesomeness was kept at bay.

Ever since Russell went to work for Yes! Solar Solutions over in Cary, I have been running the distribution part of our business.  And I’ve noticed something strange about it.

It’s boring.  Watching the gallons roll through the meters is tedious.  Driving our short truck is challenging-especially since third gear is missing.  And with big liquids sloshing around on the back, it is easy to feel like you are being thrown from lane to lane.

And yet, after each run, I am overwhelmed with satisfaction.  As if I have accomplished something.

Which means filling up trail locations is the opposite of my normal work life at Piedmont.  When I am taking calls in the Control Room, or cleaning out the stall which is my email box, or negotiating financing, or talking to a vendor, I am never bored.

Most days evaporate before I know it, and after making 99 critical decisions I am left with the feeling that I have accomplished very little indeed.

It’s strange.  I can be bored filling up the trail-delivering fuel to our members who depend on it-and feel like it is a worthwhile endeavor.  Or I can be super stimulated by a giant multi-faceted project which demands a lot and feel I have done nothing.

As I was wrapping up the meter tickets and fuel logs tonight I learned that both EdibleEarthscapes and Piedmont Biofarm were awarded grants from Rural Advancement Foundation International. Very nice bit of news with which to end the week.  Strengthening the farms means strengthening the whole.

Surely there is a connection between that and keeping the B100 Community Trail full of fuel?

Our State Energy Office, run by Larry Shirley, came into about 70 million dollars worth of stimulus money, and became everybody’s darling.  Fair enough. For years it had been preaching energy conservation and renewable energy, and for years it had been all alone in the dark.  It was a misunderstood part of the North Carolina Department of Administration, sharing an obscure building with the NC Boxing Commission.

With tens of millions of federal dollars in hand, it suddenly got snapped up by the Department of Commerce.

And Larry was moved aside.

In came John Morrison, formerly from Advanced Energy-a non-profit that is typically the shill of our Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs).  John has good credentials, and was to be our state’s new Energy Czar, and Larry was sent off to promote Green Collar Jobs.  The governor also appointed Tim Toben to form the North Carolina Energy Policy Council to re-write the State Energy Plan.

All good.  Tim is a big wind proponent, and is the creator of Greenbridge, which is a daring new high rise project in Chapel Hill.  When he asked me to serve,  I indicated I would be happy to help out.

But when Tim’s list went into the governor’s office for “vetting,” I was dropped from the lineup.

That happens a lot, it seems.  Once I was scheduled to speak at an event with then Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodwin, only to find that he was bumped in favor of President Bush, and when that happened I was de-invited.  Once I was asked to go to lunch with Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu, and when the day arrived, I was informed that my name had been dropped from the list.

I frequently get asked to go to the prom, but when prom night arrives my dates have made alternative arrangements.

A month ago I was asked to speak to the NC  Energy Policy Council at their inaugural meeting at the North Carolina Biotechnology Center.  But when the day drew close, I was dropped again.

Am I the only one who cares about all the dry cleaning I have arranged and never get to use?

Tomorrow I am on my way to the Department of Commerce to address the Low Carbon Transportation Committee of the North Carolina Energy Policy Council.  Fingers crossed that I don’t get dumped.

At Rachel’s insistence I am going to be nice.  Here is what I am going to say:

I should begin by saying that I really wanted to be on your side of the table today.  I was invited to take a seat with you, but when the list of names went into the Governor’s office, I got dropped.  It’s like I lost my date to the prom.

That hurt my feelings and made me wonder  why someone at the Governor’s office wouldn’t want me involved in writing a new State Energy Plan.  And I think I figured it out.

I think it was that speech I made over at NC State when I suggested we burn the NC Utilities Commission to the ground.  For the record, I think my remarks were misconstrued.  I wasn’t suggesting we use gasoline.  I think we should use a clean burning renewable fuel to get the job done.

But you don’t care about any of that.  You made the cut, I didn’t, fair enough.  What you would like to hear about from me today is not hurt feelings, or prom dates gone by, or radical ideas for societal change.  What you would like from me is to learn more about biodiesel production in North Carolina.

Biodiesel’s story is pretty simple.  We start with fat to make fuel.  Our industry began on virgin soybean oil, and when soybean oil became too expensive, biodiesel plants shut down, or where shuttered.  Small, multi-feedstock plants like ours were fortunate because we were able to re-tool for poultry fat.  And when poultry fat became too expensive, we were able to retool for used cooking oil.

When you look at North Carolina’s pattern of industrial biodiesel development you see a series of small, multifeedstock plants that have managed to weather the storms of the feedstock markets.  Our little plants are flexible, and able to change feedstocks, to sunflower oil, and canola oil, and whatever we can lay our hands on.  We have had eight or nine plants operating across the state-all of them small by industry standards.

We’ve had explosions, and fires, and our share of industrial accidents that have taken a toll on our state’s production capacity, and we’ve seen plant closures based on simple business conditions.

Today in North Carolina we still have seven or eight facilities making fuel, and none of them are at their rated capacities.  High feedstock costs, combined with low fuel prices have hobbled the industry.  Our plant used to put one hundred thousand gallons of fuel on trucks each month.  Now we do ten thousand gallons.  And I would say that is indicative of the industry as a whole.  We are limping.

Since 2005 our industry has enjoyed a 1.00 per gallon production credit from the federal government.  At the beginning of this month, that production credit lapsed.  Which means the industry is shutting down.  North Carolinians are being furloughed, and let go, and like the rest of the country, we are watching our precious “green jobs” vanish.

You could say it was poor housekeeping on the part of the Democrats-or you could say everyone was so busy fighting climate change in Copenhagen that they let our industry perish.  If you were jaded and bitter, you would say that lapses of this type are a good way for politicians to fill their campaign coffers, as the industry lobbies for the return of that dollar.

Everyone expects that dollar to be re-instated-possibly increased for small producers-and everyone expects it will be retroactive.  Which means gallons created today will be credited once the law is passed.  Which means if you have deep pockets-and can lose a dollar on every gallon pumped, you can stay standing.

As a state we have invested heavily in the development of this industry.  From State Energy Office Grants, to the Green Business Fund, to the work of Triangle Clean Cities, and the Solar Center, to our incredible investment in the Biofuels Center of North Carolina, we have kept up with, and occasionally led the rest of the country. Today North Carolina continues to have one of the largest B100 communities on the continent. What we have not done, is put a producer’s credit in place.

Many other states have.  In South Carolina the producers of biodiesel pick up an extra .20/gallon. In Pennsylvania its .50.  And in Kentucky it’s a whopping 1.00 per gallon from the state.

I must confess that at Piedmont Biofuels we have an active consulting business, with clients from all over the world, and those who show up at our place today are advised not to build a facility in North Carolina.  Why operate here when the incentives are better from our neighbors?

Piedmont is about to begin work on our largest undertaking ever-a 2.6 million gallon per year facility, expandable to 10 million gallons, on rail, in South Carolina.

From what I understand, you folks are charged with re-writing North Carolina’s Energy Plan.   As the biodiesel industry stands on the brink of collapse, you might wonder if our fuel should be included at all.

And I am here to say, “Put biodiesel into the mix.”

Despite the roller coaster ride which is biodiesel, North Carolina is a net exporter of fats, oils, and greases.  I would argue that these exports represent a significant “leak” in our economy.  Each time we trap those BTUs inside our borders, and convert them into fuel to power our endeavors, we are better off.

Here’s what we are going to do.  We are going to continue to make biodiesel.  Today our plant is powered by used cooking oil, and we are going to drill deeper into North Carolina’s waste stream for more sources of affordable feedstock.

Here’s what you should do.  Write a plan that supports renewable forms of energy, keep in mind that the only path we have to sustainability lies in conservation, and while you are at it, make sure you include biodiesel in your thoughts.

He completed the biofuels course at Central Carolina Community College, and founded “Wednesday Night Potluck,” where he would frequently hold court , and occasionally explain the meaning of life to those of us in attendance.

Holden is popular on project.  He waltzed in from Florida and captured a place in our hearts.  And when his semester ended, instead of furnishing us with the obligatory “Interns’ Journal,” he re-upped to stay on as our Sr. Intern.

That’s rather like signing up for a second tour of duty in Vietnam.

Over the Christmas break Holden returned to Florida and made a bunch of money working construction, but when he returned to town he wasn’t feeling so hot.  So lousy in fact, that he was unable to attend Wednesday Night Potlucks.  Not good.  There is so much to do around here that it is not unusual for people to not attend things.  It might be impossible to attend every potluck, local lunch, celebration, opening, festival, movie night etc.-but for Holden to miss the institution that he had anchored was bad news indeed.

On Friday he was hanging around the plant bored out of his head.  His energy was too low to work, yet he could not face lying around in White feeding the woodstove alone.

We’re not sure what’s got him. He’s headed to Georgia for a second opinion, where he can stay with his sister and get some proper care.

We are not set up for illness.  We tend to be young and healthy and apart from a three day stint years ago when one of our interns cracked up and required three days of babysitting, we don’t have a good system in place for helping sick people.

When we hatched the plan on Friday-with Moya on moral support, and Curtiss on Greensboro transportation, I put in the order that Holden would recover.

Holden is the guy with long blonde hair in the background. We don't have a lot of good photos of him. On his first weekend on project we were holding a "Martian Party" to celebrate the day Zafer's ship crashed in our meadow.

Holden was torn about leaving.  He wanted to stay and work.  The notion of leaving before his time was up was visibly difficult for him.

I said, ” Don’t worry about it.  Go get well.  This is a lousy place to be sick. And don’t die.  We’ve already had one person die on project and it wasn’t that good for us.”

And with that I returned to my day.

Now, on a dreary Sunday morning, when I am supposed to be working on my book, I find my thoughts wandering back to Holden.

I’m not much on prayer, although I once watched my daughter return to life in an intensive care ward and I could feel the prayers washing over her.  Positive thoughts, perhaps?

This morning I’m putting an order in to the Cosmic Waiter.  Holden gets some rest.  Gets a new diagnosis, gets well, and returns in fine shape.  I want this to be a scare.  Not the fight of his life.

And she does cool work.  Her firm, Green Team, focuses on what they call the “Awakening Consumer,” and they help folks work sustainability into their products and branding.

I’ve written about Jess’s energy footprint before, but her relationship to local food is another matter all together.  On her trip home she passes the legendary farmer’s market at Union Square, and more hip, excellent, foodie-focused  establishments than we have in our entire region.

But she has the problem of no money.  We spent some time together in Chicago and Toronto over the holidays, and I was shocked to learn that she totes a peanut butter sandwich to work every day for lunch.

So for her birthday last week I decided to make her some peanut butter.  I went by the garage on Thompson Street where Farmer Doug had stashed a ton of peanuts-still on the vine-and I shoved them in the Jetta and took them to the plant.

A hatchback load of biomass was reduced to a bucket of peanuts, which I then shelled by hand.  A bucket full became a bowl.  Which I then roasted on a cookie sheet.  I was called away just as the peanuts were coming out of the oven, when Carol stopped by.  Carol and I have been working on strengthening our foodshed recently, and have been writing about it over at Sustainable Grub.

None of us had ever made peanut butter before, and the technical aspects of doing so were swirling about the plant kitchen.  My theory was that you throw the nuts in the blender and you call it a day.  Doug and Greg felt that a blender was incapable of releasing the oil from the cell walls of the nut and that another machine would be required.

Carol had a “Vitamix” at her place-which is apparently some sort of juicer.  Mightier than a blender perhaps?

By then I was out of the conversation.  I simply tried to bring the focus back to Jess, who, to my horror, is living on commodity peanut butter for lunch.

Carol took the peanuts home and transformed her kitchen into a food lab.  The blender made a thick oil-less meal, to which she added a shot of canola oil, and the Vitamix turned it into a wonderful soft swirling goo.  One batch was too runny.  One batch was too thick.  She blended them together and came out with an offering for Jess that was just right.

Apparently she went through some other hoops too.  She skinned some the nuts, and re-roasted, and basically played for hours on perfecting peanut butter.

I filled a small Tupperware dish with hand made peanut butter and sent it to Jess, and another one circulated around Piedmont Biofuels.  Whenever we have a new food breakthrough I tend to walk about with a spoon, or a fork, or a knife, distributing tastes to everyone I bump into.  Some might recall our “Banana Communion,” in which many people received a single slice of a locally grown banana.

Homemade peanut butter transported Tami back to her childhood.  Her father used to make it for her in Raleigh.  So she went to work making a batch.  In our most recent violation of child labor laws, she deployed kids in the harvesting of the raw nuts.

And she went the “crunchy” route, using peanut oil and honey to increase lubricity.

Her honey infused crunchy peanut butter is like the food of the gods.  Not as spreadable, but exquisite off the spoon.  She took a large container to her Dad to celebrate his birthday.

Apparently Jess passed samples around Green Team, and apparently our home grown, hand made peanut butter is now the rage on the top floor of a Fifth Avenue advertising firm.  There has long been a suspicion amongst her colleagues that her father is a nutjob.

I try not to worry about that.  Rather, I like to speculate on the next logical step.  Clearly we need to drive toward “peanut butter self sufficiency.”  Naturally Doug has selected the best seeds and set them aside to preserve favorable genetics.

I’m currently thinking of where I can deploy a large enough rabbit-free area to take off a decent peanut crop  next year…

For the last three months, I have been an intern at Piedmont Biofuels.  Rather than just providing a standard journal with dates, which would be pretty boring, I decided to write more of a reflection upon my time and work.

My story cannot be told without including how it began.  I had been finishing my Master’s thesis while looking for a job all summer and was having no luck.  Sometime in July, I sent an email to Piedmont Biofuels just asking about getting involved in biodiesel and about the internship.  One week before the internship was scheduled to begin, I am on the phone with Lyle who basically says you want it, you got it without so much as an interview or my having visited.  I visit and tour that Sunday and decide that evening to take the internship.  On Monday I let Lyle know I will be coming down the next day, which is Tuesday when the internship class begins.

Things begin immediately when I get in a truck with Holden, the other intern, and Caleb, who has since moved on.  We take a trip to pick up big, white plastic containers we call totes and return them to Piedmont.  That afternoon I am touring the place and meeting people and going over general forms and rules for working at Piedmont.  That evening began the biodiesel class taught by David, one of Piedmont’s Design/Build guys.

Over the first couple of weeks, most of the jobs I did involved cleaning in some way, shape, or form.  I helped move some old totes from the old co-op over to the biofuels plant.  I also helped David clean out the inside of some tanks for a biodiesel plant they were building.  I didn’t have much of a schedule and hadn’t gotten to know many of the people, so everyday I would walk in and find David and work for him.

On Labor Day though, I managed to get trained for working in the lab by Rachel and spent that week in the lab while at the same time preparing how I wanted to spend my weeks.  I tend to work better with a schedule because I know where to go and what to do.  I don’t have to wait for someone to tell me or try to find the work, it is already there.  I set my schedule to work Monday and Tuesday in the lab.  Wednesday I worked for grease collections, and Thursday and Friday I would work for Design/Build.

At first my work in the lab was more cleaning, but quickly I got a project involving using high voltage to separate glycerin from biodiesel.  This was research that Greg had previously done, but some more detailed work was needed.  Rachel was giving a presentation on it in Germany so that became my project.  Working with Greg, we figured out a plan and determined what variables we wanted to test.

During the beginning of my time in the lab, I also worked on fixing various pieces of lab equipment.  I fixed a stir plate, helped replace a shaker bath motor, and some pumps which I also calibrated.

The grease collection work ended up being a lot of fun.  This mostly consisted of going on grease runs with Moya to collect the waste vegetable oil.  These days are long days because it just takes time to fill the truck.  But you also get time to talk and if you are lucky you get some free food from the generous restaurants we picked up from.  We usually met at 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning, and since I have a habit of being up early, I just began to make the coffee.  I went to Raleigh, Chapel Hill, Durham, and Greensboro to collect the grease.  Once I figured out what to do and how to work the stinger, everything ran smoothly and we developed a rhythm.  Although one day the vac truck key was lost and the spare would not turn the engine, we ended up going to Lowe’s at 7 in the morning and got a new key cut from the spare.  It was a long shot solution but it worked.  I also spent some time helping to clean the vac truck and collection barrels; I also helped organize both barrels and pallets for grease collection use.

My time working in Design/Build usually involved a lot of cleaning.  From the tanks at the beginning of my time at Piedmont to the major shop cleaning towards the end, we cleaned a lot of stuff.  I helped clean totes for worm bins and also helped to paint some worm bins.  I got to lend a hand to the fabrication crew who were great when I had a question about how to do something.  They would give me the right tool or tell me how to use or demonstrate if necessary.  By the end of my internship, I learned about using grinders for prepping tanks for painting and how to cut bolts off, although I still don’t like all the sparks.  I learned about using the port-a-band and sawzall.

Although production was not on my weekly schedule, I did occasionally help Jeremy or Leif out.  Twice I helped to unload an 18 wheeler with a pallet jack, it was pretty tiring.  I would also help to load or unload totes.  Never anything big, but the help was important.  I also became forklift trained and although I didn’t drive the forklifts much, I did use it some.

One of the most important aspects of being at Piedmont is the community that exists between the people.  There are a number of different businesses on the campus and a lot of the people live near each other.  They see each other regularly and socialize together a lot.

There were some other things I did that deserve some mention include the effort to clean up the old co-op which I occasionally helped with.  For a lot of that, Holden deserves tremendous credit.  I also got to mentor a senior project on biodiesel, which was fun.  I assisted in the biodiesel workshop, so I got to attend the workshop for free and even got the presentations as well.  This isn’t too bad considering, I just made sure presenters were there on time, which they were without my intervention.

Early on Lyle gave me a copy of each of his two books which I read.  They were interesting and good reads.  They helped me to understand the point of the whole campus. While I will still go to the big stores, my sensitivity to local commerce has certainly been elevated and I will make a conscious effort to be less dependent upon the large corporations.

Finally I just want to say how wonderful I found the people to be.  I was never given a task that the person who gave it to me wouldn’t jump in and help me do.  Within the first couple weeks, I went to lunch with Rick and Spencer one day at the co-op marketplace and Rick buys me a cookie.  When white was being prepped for gravel, Lyle was out there in the rain with his son helping to bust up concrete.  David helped perform tank cleaning and went so far as to get inside the tank.  Moya spent hours on laying on the vac truck shoveling out garbage while I helped.  Greg helped with lab dishes and Rachel helped to finish up the presentation.

Piedmont was a great chance to learn, not just about biodiesel but also about community.  I often worked extra hours or weekends, but so does everyone else.  No one makes you work the extra hours, you just want to because it needs to be done or you want to help the other people.

I’m new to it, and I am eating it up.

The other day it dawned on me that we have a bunch of bloggers around here who dabble in like-minded foodshed issues.  Whether it is Tess with her “foodshed geeking” over at true food, or Carol’s flight through local foods at her kiln opening in From the Pottery Kitchen, or my own speculations here at Energy Blog, it would be sweet if they could be collected as multiple voices in one place.

And I think Sustainable Grub would be an excellent start.

So I pinged Dee.  And she’s up for it.

Now I just need to get Camille and Bob to consider contributing.  I just took delivery of some Happy Pig from Trace.  Perhaps he will toss in some insights from Cricket Bread.

Those of us who blog know that blogs need to be fed, and perhaps multiple writers feeding Sustainable Grub will create a vibrant home for multiple voices.  I think I might send one in on the latest abomination from Estill Family Food Labs.

Hope to see you there.

There was a time when Evan would bring hard copies of the Chapel Hill News to the plant.  They would lie around the kitchen, and occasionally make it into our media archives, and be forgotten.  After Evan left, I kept writing columns, but everyone stopped getting copies so they assumed they had ended.

Here’s my latest column, which was sort of inspired by Rick, who is one of our design-build guys.

Piedmont Biofuels site is a busy place.  It’s loaded with press releases and party announcements and new restaurant partners and all sorts of stuff.  In an effort to clarify my writing stuff, I created a new site, where all of my columns, and book reviews are archived.

I wanted to make it easier to discuss writing projects with editors and publishers and such.

And while that worked nicely (our company library gets a bunch of “review” copies of books these days), Energy Blog took the hit.

Next semester we have a “media intern” coming on board.  Perhaps he will offer a hand at unifying all of this…