Gevo Vinod’s Other Kior

Vinod Khosla the man who hosted President Obama for dinner and who was once the star investor in Bio Fools is now scratching his head that simply does not comprehend thermodynamics.   His latest flop among many is Gevo.  He has Richard Branson as a co-investor in Gevo the wonder company that was to make jet fuel out of sugar.

They did sell the US DOD some jet fuel at $59 a gallon back in 2012

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/may/7/pentagon-paid-150-gallon-green-jet-fuel-report/?page=all

In early June 2013 Mr. Obama sat down for dinner with Vinod and his family and friends who paid $32,400 for the curry favor and rice that was served by the Khoslas.  The $59 a gallon for jet fuel was a bargain compared to the $32,400 that was charged for a meal that could have been bought for $20 at Amber India a few miles away from Vinod’s home.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g32761-d342116-r143199059-Amber_India_Restaurant-Mountain_View_California.html

Of course at Amber India one cannot buy influence.   This kind of reminds me of Peter Sellers in the classic movie The Party.   One scene in the film is when an American asks Sellers who plays the part of an Indian named Bakshi  “who do think you are?”   Bakshi replies “in India we don’t think who we are, we know who we are!”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Party_(film)

Vinod is not Bakshi he is more like Bakshish.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bakshish

Bakshish means buying favor or currying favor 

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/lucknow/Samajwadi-Party-leader-caught-bribing-policemen-says-it-was-not-bakshish-but-loan-repayment/articleshow/15633678.cms

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/curry+favor

Mr. Khosla and his seven dwarfs Cello, Range, Kior, Gevo, Amyris, LS9, and Virdia certainly curried favor with the Federal and State governments.  

Gevo now is on the verge of insolvency and will raise more money by selling more common stock.   Kior is headed toward a “safe” shutdown.  Mr. Khosla you simply should have studied Thermo 101 and perhaps you could have avoided the embarrassment of being the biggest bio fool at the party.  Bakshi said “birdie num num”, the Green Machine just says “birdie numb nuts”.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=numbnuts

I do recommend The Party as it is possibly one of the greatest comedies ever made.   I do not recommend any biofuel investments that have Vinod Khosla involved as they end in tragedy for the taxpayers and small investors.

A Brilliant CEO Over $20 million for $250

This company called American process claimed to have great technology and got tax payer money back in 2010 and 2011  to build a bio refinery to make ethanol and acetate out of wood chips in Alpena Michigan.  For the year 2012 the US DOE and EPA were counting on this Bio Refinery to produce 500,000 gallons of cellulosic ethanol.   Of course the company did not produce any cellulosic ethanol in 2012.  Nor did it in 2013.   They announced they produced their third ever truck load of ethanol in July 2014.

They announced their second ever truckload in mid April 2014.  Therefore it took them two and a half months to produce 5,000 gallons.   Perhaps if a year has 250 months they will reach the targeted production the US EPA and DOE had for them back in 2012. 

Here are the links that show I am not making up this stuff

http://instituteforenergyresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/IER-Comment-on-2014-RFS.pdf

News

July 1st, 2014Our success story is going on!

On July 1st , our Alpena biorefinery team shipped our third ethanol cargo of 5000 gal. in total. Half of this quantity was qualified as cellulosic ethanol RINs.

http://www.alpenabiorefinery.com/news.html

How in heavens name did a company like American Process get the US DOE and EPA as well as Michigan to believe they would succeed?

Theodora Retsina the CEO of American Process did give a little of the money back to the Obama campaign in 2012.  Yes $250 to his campaign in thanks for the over $20 million of public funds taken for the Alpena Boondoggle.

http://www.primarypost.com/fec/2012/3379973/-Theodora-Retsina/750-Piedmont-Ave-Ne-Atlanta-GA-30308

This highlights the story of bio fools.   The CEO is brilliant.  Four years of high pay.   No cellulosic ethanol.  And a $250 tax deductible donation to President Obama for his 2012 campaign. 

http://www.americanprocess.com/ExecutiveTeam.aspx

OK 5,000 gallons every 10 weeks is approximately 25,000 gallons a year.  Let's assume the plant runs ten years before they give up.  This means 250,000 gallons for $25 million of CAPEX.  Ignoring the OPEX and the time value of money (big ignorance) Theodora cost us $500 a gallon of ethanol.   I can buy Johnnie Walker Black at Costco for less.  I guess Retsina is a fine brand of Vodka that has been quintuple distilled??? 

Petra Nova Another DOE Boondoggle

The Department of Energy (Entropy) is at it again.  They are giving out hundreds of millions of dollars for a “green” boondoggle.  The Obama administration has to show some support for “clean” coal in power generation and they have found the perfect project to waste tax dollars on.

The Petra Nova coal fired power station in Texas is the site of the next DOE boondoggle.  NRG the owner of the plant will take a side stream of emissions from the power station and strip it of CO2 that will then be compressed for pipeline delivery to an oil field for use in enhanced oil recovery.  The DOE loves the project clean up emissions on a coal fired power station and sequester the carbon dioxide deep within the earth.  This all sounds great on the face of it.

Here is the NRG press release on the one billion dollar project that $167 million of tax payer money will be wasted on.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/uciliawang/2014/07/15/nrgs-1b-bet-to-show-how-carbon-capture-could-be-feasible-for-coal-power-plants/

How do I know this is a boondoggle?  The math is simple.  The carbon emissions for 240 megawatts of coal fired power will be 90% captured using power generated from a new natural gas fired power station.  The phys org article below gives us all the data.

http://phys.org/news/2014-07-largest-carbon-capture-coal-date.html#nRlv

Yes 1.6 million tons a year of CO2 emissions will be prevented using a new power station that emits 785,000 tons a year.  This saves 815,000 tons a year of CO2 emissions from 240 megawatts of power generation.  But if one does the math on the new combined cycle gas powered station one quickly sees that the equivalent of 275 megawatts of power and heat is needed.  They could have simply shut down the 240 megawatts of coal powered generation and replaced this with gas fired generation and then more than the 815,000 tons a year of CO2 emissions could have been saved.  Also a lot of money could have been saved.  My calculations show that shutting the 240 mw of coal fired power generation and replacing this with state of the art combined cycle gas generation would save approximately 1,100,000 tons a year of CO2 emissions.   Also untold monetary costs of operating both power stations and the entire chemical stripping process would also be saved.

The project is thermodynamically and economically idiotic.  It makes absolutely no sense spending a billion in capital and spending hundreds of millions of dollars in operating costs each year to save fewer CO2 emissions than could have been accomplished by the simple replacement of 240 megawatts of coal generation with gas generation.  The combined cycle gas plant could have been built for less than a quarter billion dollars.

The chemistry of amine stripping of CO2 from a mixed gas stream is nothing new.  I witnessed this on a coal fueled ammonia plant in South Africa over 40 years ago.  This project does not further science. It is simply another DOE boondoggle with taxpayers and ratepayers footing the bill.  NRG is getting to be brilliant at extracting money in “green” boondoggles.  They are a major player together with Google in the Ivanpah solar project that dispatches some of the most expensive bird killing electricity to the grid.

Dr. Moniz is getting to be as incompetent as Dr. Chu who he replaced.  Projects like the Petra Nova carbon capture should be defunded by the DOE and stopped.  The DOE was mighty proud to use our taxpayer dollars for the Petra Novafied project as shown in the link below.

http://www.netl.doe.gov/research/proj?k=FE0003311

Is Hydrogen Sulfide Good For You?

Researchers at the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom claimed this week that hydrogen sulfide in your farts are good for your cells.

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/research/title_393168_en.html

Yes H2S is kind of like H2O with the O removed and the S substituted.  Remembering my freshman chemistry we were told that H2O should really be a gas due to its low molecular weight of only 18, but the phenomenon of hydrogen bonds causes the compound to be liquid all the way up to 212 degrees Fahrenheit.  H2S does not have the same degree of hydrogen bonding and hence is a gas at room temperature.

Why do I have an interest in the gas that gives rotten eggs and farts their smell?  I guess it is because I found out that Bloom Energy has hidden their sulfur waste and that they asked the state of California money for training their employees in the safe handling of H2S.   Bloom will now probably tell those migrant Mexican employees who are paid subminimum wages that their jobs of handling the hidden sulfur waste are actually promoting good health. 

All this talk of smelly farts has me thinking of the excrement impinging on the air extraction device at KIOR.  Yes the company announced a complex financial transaction this week that I believe is the prelude to eventual bankruptcy or fire sale of the company.   They have finally surrendered to the second law of thermodynamics and have stopped sprouting crap that their wonder catalyst yields copious amounts of gasoline and diesel from yellow pine.  The newspaper in Jackson Mississippi wrote a good article on the role of Haley Barbour and Condi Rice in this thermodynamic fake out.  The link below is well worth the read.

http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2014/jul/16/kior-block/

Returning to Bloom I have now discovered that in August 2011 six months before Mr. Collin O’Mara the cabinet secretary in Deal Away issued his coastal zone act “Completeness Report”, Bloom gave sworn testimony that they needed to perform periodic maintenance on “Desulfurization Bed Canisters”.  We know that Mr. O’Mara performed magic and made the hazardous solid waste with sulfur disappear in the coastal zone.   O’Mara has now resigned his post as the head of the Deal Away department of natural resources and environmental control. 

Bloom has Collin Powell and KIOR had Condi Rice but which green company hired Madeline Not So Bright?   Actually Madeline did not become entangled in greenwashing, she instead offers advice on “investments in emerging markets.”

http://www.albrightstonebridge.com/team/madeleine-k-albright

To be a “diplomat” one used to have learned French and all I can remember from my French is that when “la merde frapper de le ventilateur” things are going mighty wrong.   Condi Rice and Collin Powell are going to wish they were never FANS of emerging green technologies.

KIOR May Sell Itself

The news for the week in matters green is that KIOR the Alchemic company Vinod Khosla and Condi Rice hyped could not pay its loan to the State of Mississippi and is now looking for “strategic alternatives”.  I have a suggestion for Mr. Khosla and the Province of Alberta "the owners" that brought this thermodynamic fake to the stock market.  The suggestion is to admit they disobeyed the laws of thermodynamics and are willing to fork over the remaining balance on the loan. 

Two years back when the stock analysts on Wall Street were touting the junk, I called it a thermodynamic fraud.    For over a year I have been asking Mr. Robert Davidson the manager of the CBS TV station (WCBI) in Columbus Mississippi to report the reality of KIOR instead of keeping on selling hope to the poor folks who work at KIOR or invested in KIOR.  Of course CBS who brought us the launch of the BLOOMDOGGLE on 60 Minutes did not report the real story on KIOR.  The New York Times also hyped the stock and I reported on this in November 2012 in the link below.

http://www.greenexplored.com/2012/11/new-york-times-article-makes-kior-stock.html

KIOR makes Solyndra look like a totally honest deal.  Mr. Khosla brought us Cello, Range, LS9, Gevo, Amyris, KIOR as well as Light Sail.  This guy is clueless about enthalpy and entropy.  He just knows how to entertain President Obama for dinner.  He is exactly what is wrong with US Energy policy.  When the Department of Entropy starts using science and thermodynamics as the basis for policy we may actually get a policy that works.  When bundlers and supporters of politicians get the money we get disasters like Solyndra, Cello, Range, and KIOR.  When former secretaries of state become board members of companies like Bloom Energy and KIOR we get missing weapons of mass combustion and a lot of missing tax payer dollars.

In Delaware the Department of Natural Recourses and Environmental Control (DNREC) announced they will rewrite the operating permit for Bloom Energy now that Mr. William Whipple III has sued Delmarva.

http://www.delawareonline.com/story/money/industries/2014/07/08/dnrec-says-erred-bloom-permit/12385289/

When it comes to basic thermodynamics we cannot trust government agencies to do their job.  We also cannot trust Wall Street stock analysts.  Mostly we cannot trust the New York Times or CBS to get a story straight on green energy as they are simply fooled by hucksters and “green gurus” like Vinod Khosla.  Kholsla has Tony Blair and Condi Rice as advisers.  I just have the second law of thermodynamics and a brain that won’t stop repeating the Brothers Gibbs song that that Delta G equals Delta H minus T Delta S. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_free_energy

Colin O’Mara - The Magical Environmentalist

For almost two years I have been hammering at the BLOOMDOGGLE in Delaware.  The corrupt politicians and supposed public servants simply are the worst magicians ever.  Colin O’Mara who was the Secretary of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) and a member of Governor Markell’s cabinet made the solid waste that is hazardous and contains sulfur disappear in his now famous February 10, 2012 Completeness Report. 

On February 8, 2012 Mr. Paul Foster P.E. of DNREC issued the operating permit to Mr. William Brokenborough of Bloom for the 3 megawatt section of the project at Brookside.  This is a full two days before Mr. O’Mara made the sulfur disappear. 

In Mr. Foster’s permit approval letter we have Section 3 Operational Limitations and paragraph 3.1.6 “The desulfurization beds (filters) shall be operated and maintained according to manufacturer’s recommendations and good engineering practices to ensure that the rate of removal of sulfur from the fuel cells does not result in emissions (air) in excess of the rate contained in Condition 2.1.4 of this permit.”

Condition 2.1.4 of the permit states that “SO2 emissions shall not exceed 0.0001 pounds per hour and 0.00044 tons per twelve (12) month rolling period;”

Now we know that on or before February 8, 2012 Mr. Foster knew the sulfur was removed from the gas and resulted in a solid waste.  Two days later Mr. O’Mara the man in charge of the DNREC and Mr. Foster’s boss made the sulfur disappear.  The DOJ in Delaware under Mr. Beau Biden has refused to investigate the disappearance.  The US attorney in Delaware has not lifted a finger to find the missing sulfur.

I am sure that the manufacturer’s recommendations and good engineering practice instruct the operator to “handle the sulfur waste with great care and dispose of properly”.   The now famous “wonder-boy from Oxford University” Mr. O’Mara has taken the post of President of the US Wildlife Federation.    Dr. Doolittle who understands animal talk was interviewed by Fox News said all the foxes in the wilderness had told them they are now worried their dens will become burial grounds for the solid waste that contains the missing sulfur.  We have red foxes but soon will have yellow foxes.  Actually there are Yellow Fox Gerbils.

http://www.gerbils.co.uk/gerbils/genetics.htm

Gerbils are desert rats and it is fitting that Colin O’Mara is King Rat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerbil

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Rat_(film)

After waging war on the citizens in the coastal zone of Delaware with his BLOOMDOGGLE Mr. O'Mara landed a high paying job in a DC area based national organization.   He is not fit for the job of a dog catcher but someone out there thinks he did a great job in Deal Away.  I wonder which big dog in DC is his protector?   The next Secretary of the DNREC will have to see where are the skeletons are buried and better have some strong front paws to dig deep.  The poor dog will get a real whiff of the hidden sulfur and may just pass out.  One cannot make up this stuff!!!

Condi's KIOR Gets Four Months To Find Weapons of Mass Combustion

The gangrene thermo undynamic rip-off company KIOR got a 4 month reprieve to pay the state of Mississippi the money owed to the state. 

http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2014/07/03/miss-gives-kior-4-months-to-repay-loan/12191853/

Condi Rice was a board member of the company until December last year.  Of course Vinod Khosla, Condi’s client, did not want to throw more money down the drain just to pay Mississippi what it is owed.   I wonder how many calls Condi made to Haley Barbour and vice versa to arrange the “face saving” reprieve?   You are going tell me Vinod was the sole negotiator here, or did he use the services of his trusted “advisers” Condi Rice and Tony Blair?

Yeah Toxic Tony is also a Khosla Ventures advisor.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/tony-blair-joins-khosla-ventures-as-porfolio-comes-out-of-stealth

The real amount that should have been paid on June 30 to the citizens of Old Miss was $1.9 million, but the good folks in Jackson settled for a quarter million payment to give the gangrene company four months of breathing room.    The next “government” in line that is owed money is the pension fund of Alberta (Aimco).  For over a year I warned Aimco of their toxic investments in Kior and Bloom Energy without any reply.  Aimco had a guy named Jagdeep Singh Bachher as their investment guru who sat on the boards of Kior and Bloom representing their large investments in these companies.  After resigning from Aimco, Mr.  Bachher now heads the University of California retirement fund.  I have asked my Assemblyman (Mr. Levine) and the UC Board of Reagents to investigate his hiring for the post of chief investment officer.  I do not believe he is fit for the job given his history on the board of directors of these two gangrene companies, and his cronyism with Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures

http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/press-room/regents-appoint-chief-investment-officer

It will be interesting to see who is going to be the white knight to help KIOR.  The horsemen of the green apocalypse are falling off their mighty steeds that were bought with tax payer dollars.    I can tell you that the second law of thermodynamics will always hold and buying four months of time in the Magnolia State is not going to change a thing that the magic catalyst cannot yield 2.8 barrels of usable products per bone dry ton of pine wood as KIOR claimed.

http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/ABEA-6B1XEW/0x0x667183/56303972-bb74-4977-9288-d26f836e3654/KiOR_Company_Overview_Cowen_29MAY2013.pdf

Condi I suggest you simply give up looking for weapons of mass combustion.  I love the way KIOR did this the day before a long weekend and no one is there for comments.

Happy Independence Day

It has been another year of independence and during the year a lot of things happened.  I could dwell on how poorly the president and congress are doing but even CNN viewers that were polled consider Mr. Obama to be the worst president since WW II. 

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/poll-obama-worst-president-since-wwii-108507.html

From a Thermo perspective, the year showed the laws of thermo to be inviolable just as they have been since the Big Bang.

Greenwashers and hypers were hit hard during the year.  The VCs at Kleiner Perkins and Khosla Ventures were given a big whack by the second law.  Vinod Khosla is now a seven time loser.  His losers include Cello, Range, Kior, Amyris, Gevo, LS9, and Light Sail.  Glad to see that the person, who was also sued for not letting surfers get to a public beach, lost his behind over the year.  Vinod your knowledge of thermo is about as low as one can get. 

Kleiner Perkins saw their behind in the Fisker’s bankruptcy.  They also have seen the Bloom wilt as another lawsuit in Delaware has been filed for overcharge to customer by their agent Delmarva Power.    Yes the BLOOMDOGGLE will be a big news item in the coming year.  No doubt form a laws of thermodynamics perspective the BLOOMDOGGLE is a far bigger case of crony corruption than Solyndra.    The dollars involved are far bigger and the politicians involved are all over the country.

By July 4, 2015 before our nation’s 239^th birthday, I predict that I will report that KIOR is a goner and that the BLOOMDOGGLER’s will be fully exposed like nudists.  Condi Rice will have to apologize for her crimes against thermodynamics, humanity, and nature while on the board of KIOR and Colin Powell will likewise have to apologize for his role on the Board of Bloom Energy.  This is not a GOP scandal, the democrats from Dover to DC will also be exposed for their roles in the BLOOMDOGGLE.  Thermo has a way of applying fully to both sides of the aisle.  Thermo is universal and will always be universal.  Bloom is just a transitory ugly weed that needs a good dose of Round Up.

Mr. Obama fared badly in the CNN poll of the worst president since 1945.  Mr. Huffman is the worst congressman in my 39 years in the USA.  Boxer was bad, Woolsey was worse, but Huffman is by far the worst.  It is quite amazing how bad my representation has been in Marin County since I moved here 26 years ago.  Boxer would not fight MTBE in Gasoline even after I met with her and told her it was a poison that would cause havoc.  Woolsey did not use my sage advice to prevent Dr. Chu from wasting billions of dollars even after I met with her.  Huffman is simply too chicken to meet with me face to face so he uses his AT&T telephone to talk with me for 13 minutes and 56 seconds claiming his Twinkie, oops CLECA, defense for his years of gangrene crony legislation in Sacramento.

You have to say the Green Machine tells it like thermo says it is.  Happy Fourth of July.