shawn@thegrantfarm.com

$3 Million Awarded for Waste to Energy Facilities

Nevada City-based The Grant Farm secures $3 million for two energy projects that will create 525 construction jobs and 75 permanent green energy positions

Nevada City, California – The California Energy Commission approved nearly $3 million for two high profile projects represented by local Fund Development company The Grant Farm that will transform Waste-to-Energy facilities in Northern California.

The awards — $1.49 million for the Advanced Bioenergy Center Mendota, and $1.31 million for the Sacramento BioRefinery #1 – fund the pre-development and engineering costs to construct two landmark biorefineries that will utilize hundreds of tons of green waste by converting it to fuel for buses, electricity and high value compost.

Advanced Bioenergy Center Mendota

The Grant Farm managed, coordinated and wrote this successful application for $1.49 million in funds from the California Energy Commission for the Advanced Bioenergy Center Mendota (ABCM), a multi-partner collaboration that includes the Mendota Advanced Bioenergy Beet Cooperative, UC Davis, California State University, Fresno; Spectrum Energy Solutions, IR1 Group and Shell Oil.  This application received the highest score of any competing application in the state of California.

When complete, the proposed $200 million ABCM facility will:

• Process nearly 1 million tons per year of locally-sourced sugar beets
• Utilize 80,000 additional tons of almond prunings and other agricultural waste that state law will prohibit from burning on June 1, 2010
• Generate 6.3 Megawatts (MW) of certified Green-e electricity;
• Produce 33.5 million gallons of advanced ethanol and 1.6 million standard cubic feet (SCF) of renewable biomethane
• Process wastewater on behalf of the City of Mendota and create a net positive of 365 acre feet of irrigation water per year
• Create up to 325 construction, engineering and design jobs; 50 BioRefinery Operations positions, 40 to 50 Feedstock Operations jobs and 160 farm labor positions in a community which currently claims the highest unemployment rate in the United States
• Generate $90 million in direct economic activity

Sacramento BioRefinery #1

The Grant Farm has managed the Public Fund Campaign for Clean World Partners’ proposed Sacramento BioRefinery #1 (SBR1) since 2009.  Partners in the project, to be sited at the Sacramento Recycling & Transfer Station, include the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD), UC Davis, Yolo County Transit District, CALSTART, and others.  SBR1 was awarded $1.35 million from the California Energy Commission to fully fund pre-development costs.

When complete, the proposed $23 million facility will:

• Provide a reliable, locally produced supply of 71,324,285 SCF of compressed natural gas (CNG) for the Yolo County Transit District (YCTD) CNG Bus fleet—displacing 584,000 gallons of gasoline a year, or approximately 84 percent of YCTD’s annual demand
• Produce average daily outputs equaling:

• 195,409 SCF of biomethane
• 19,977 SCF of hydrogen
• 3,313 gal of concentrated liquid fertilizer
• 8,521 gal of clean water
• 15 TPD of marketable compost

• Divert 36,500 tons of organic wastes annually from area landfills
• Reduce GHG by 15,512 metric tons per year
• Create 227 full-time, direct and indirect jobs during the project performance period and 16 full-time, permanent jobs
• Demonstrate a commercialized waste-to-energy solution developed with state funding at the University of California, Davis for national and global export.  Successful commercialization and licensing will prompt private, state and federal investment in the billions of dollars

The Grant Farm specializes in identifying public funding partnerships and implementing public fund campaigns for organizations seeking state and federal loans, grants, and tax credits for critical renewable energy projects throughout the United States.  Principals at the firm have more than 35 years of combined experience in public funding, technical writing, strategic planning, and advocacy. Since 1995, they have helped develop more than $375 million in renewable energy, cleantech, transportation and infrastructure, and conservation projects seeking funding from a variety of public agencies—including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, California Energy Commission, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Energy, the Federal Transit Administration and the California Energy Commission.

The Grant Farm is a member of Sierra Commons, an innovative business community housed at the former site of the Stonehouse Brewery in Nevada City.  Sierra Commons is a project of One-Stop Business and Career Center and the Private Industry Council of Butte County.

The Grant Farm recently leveraged its success at Sierra Commons, expanding to a second office in downtown Sacramento, California.

Award winning artist Jerry Murphy was born in Ketchikan, Alaska and grew up in western Washington in a small town called Mukilteo. He has always been interested in art having come from quite an artistic family. Growing up, Jerry spent many hours in rainy Washington at the kitchen table going through stacks and stacks of paper doing pencil drawings. In 1976 Jerry began taking oil painting classes at Jordan Arts in Redwood City, California. He furthered his education in art through classes at the local colleges, attending various workshops, visiting many of the great art museums in Europe, going into every art gallery he happens upon and studying his extensive collection of art books and magazines.

Jerry has participated in many art shows in the San Francisco Bay Area winning numerous ribbons including Best of Show at the San Mateo County Fair in 1986. Along with his wife Arlene, Jerry moved to Nevada City, California in 1996. For the next five years they owned and managed the Nevada City Gallery where Jerry was able to display and sell much of his art. While at the gallery he also improved his picture framing skills and developed a dedicated clientele. After selling the gallery in 2001 Jerry has continued his picture framing business from his home.

Since moving to Nevada County Jerry has been painting with well-known artist and teacher Max Ferry. He has been consistently showing his work at the Nevada County Fair and has won first place awards in the Professional Oil Division and three times has won the Best of Show Award for the best Nevada County Scene. His work has been shown in venues such as Nevada City Summer Nights, the Draft Horse Classic, Sierra Festival of the Arts, California Arts League, the California Art Walk, Artisans Festival, Pioneer Arts and Victorian Christmas in Nevada City.

There are numerous collectors of Jerry’s art and he is enjoying wider interest as more of the art buying public become aware of his work.

Jerry primarily does representational art in oil, depicting local scenes, landscapes, people and animals. Among his favorite artists are Clark Hulings, James Fetherolf and Norman Rockwell.

The business is owned by Todd and two of his friends and fellow game developers, Josh and Lara Engebretson, who moved to Nevada City this month from North Dakota to officially unite the team, which has been working together (despite being thousands of miles apart) via teleconference, Internet Phone Booth, and email for the last few months. For more on the Mythos Lab Team, click here.

Despite the distance and the big move, Mythos Labs is already off and running.  They recently developed a Windows phone demo for the game Battle Punks for the day-one keynote presentation at MIX10, a designer and developer conference in Las Vegas.

Mix10 BattlePunks keynote from Todd Wahoske on Vimeo.

While it’s hard to see Todd go, this is exactly what Sierra Commons is here for: helping get business off the ground in any way we can. Plus, it’ll be exciting to see what he and the Mythos Lab Team will do next.

Follow them on Facebook.

But for those of us who happen to be more visually or scientifically oriented, a cool way to think about what we and other business incubators do is to watch a Ripple Tank (see the video below). 

Although it’s an obscure scientific reference, in the end it is a perfect metaphor for Sierra Commons…so bear with me.

Ripple Tanks Explained

A Ripple Tank is a scientific model used to demonstrate how waves work; it is comprised of a shallow tank of water, an oscillator (or multiple oscillators), and a light. The oscillators vibrate on the surface of the water and create a constant pattern of ripples, which are then projected by the light onto a clean surface beneath the tank. This projection visually demonstrates waves, and how wavelengths, interference, and resonance work.

The Sierra Commons Ripple Tank

Sierra Commons, to use the ripple tank as a metaphor, is the tank itself.  We don’t create waves, we merely reflect them.  Our member businesses create the waves.  They are the oscillators, creating vibrations (innovation, passion, determination, creativity) on the surface of the water.

As with the tank, this “vibration” inevitably sets off a chain reaction of waves within the incubator “tank.” Without the tank, these waves would continue outwards endlessly, dissipating over distance and time, eventually becoming essentially invisible.   But with the tank, the waves reflect off the walls, bounce backwards and resonate with each new wave, creating the strong pattern seen in the video below.  It is the tank that strengthens the waves by reflecting them over one another (resonance), similar to an echo chamber.

And as with the video there are more than one oscillator.  Other member businesses’ (the second, third, fourth oscillator) vibrations react and resonate with the other oscillators’ waves, creating a scene similar to that in the video where there is “constructive interference.”

Members inspire other members, innovation begets innovation.

All Sierra Commons does is create a space where this resonance and amplification can occur.

Our member-businesses innovate.  We just reflect and help resonate the goodness.

The CoworkingVisa membership gives Sierra Commons members a “Visa” for three complimentary drop-in days at any of the other CoworkingVisa offices. Likewise, members of the other coworking offices listed on the site have essentially the same level of access to Sierra Commons.

The site, which is growing rapidly, provides coworking office space members a global platform of free office space so that they always have a place to work during their cross-country or international business trips.

CoworkingVisa has members all over the United States and in dozens of countries worldwide, including offices in Australia, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and South America.  For more information, check out their website wiki.coworking.com/CoworkingVisa.

The positions call for people with experience in community planning, engineering, or facilities services work currently unemployed or “underemployed.”  The positions are paid and will provide interns training in emerging greenhouse gas inventory software, a plus for any employer or local government.

For more information, visit their website at sbcouncil.org.

The first is a scholarship program offered to employers with 1-9 employees to completely offset the cost of attending some of SEDCorp’s August classes, which are listed on their website.  The second is a summer special–open to anyone–making their Identity Theft Protection class in August FREE.  And, the final special is a FREE small business tax seminar in Auburn on August 24th.

For more information on the events and how to register, visit SEDCorp’s website www.sedcorp.biz.