SBI Energy: Market Insights, Opportunities &Trends

Why aren’t alternative fuels taking off more quickly? It’s a valid question given the large quantity of proposals for massive solar and wind turbine installations in the U.S and around the globe this year.  Meanwhile, we hear little news of new alternative fuels projects.  The answer, according to a new market study, Specialty Pipelines for Renewable and Alternative Energy Substances, lies in the transportation logistics.

Crude oil, finished fuels, and natural gas pipelines crisscross the United States and the globe. But in many cases, these existing pipelines are not suitable for the transport of sensitive biofuels. The chemical disposition of biofuels is substantially different from conventional fossil fuels.  For example, the corrosiveness and water solubility of ethanol makes it incompatible with most existing pipelines. 

Industry concerns also persist regarding the contamination of jet fuel, which has strict quality control, by residual biodiesel left in the pipeline. Current pipeline deliveries of biodiesel remain limited to B5 blends through pipelines that do not traffic jet fuel. 

An additional inhibiter to immediate alternative fuel success resides in the lack of existing pipelines in remote regions where Biomethane and biogas are produced. As a result, biofuels are largely transport by truck or rail, which drives up costs and limits how effectively biofuels can be brought to market.

In order to support current and future alternative fuels development, producers and investors are looking towards specialty pipelines for their distribution needs. As a result research publisher SBI Energy forecasts that the market for specialty pipelines is expected to increase nearly 4-fold between 2010 and 2015.   Substances carried in specialty pipelines - carbon dioxide, ethanol, biodiesel, and biomethane/biogas - have found market growth due to high petroleum prices, the development of enhanced oil recovery methods using carbon dioxide injection, carbon capture and sequestration system development, the presence or potential for carbon emissions penalties in several world markets.  The fastest growing segment, Ethanol, will expand significantly as construction proceeds on dedicated ethanol pipelines, creating a market in excess of $1,000 million by 2014. The projected 2011-2015 CAGR for this market is 27.2%.

(Source: sbienergy.com)

Market Insights: A Selection From The Report

Data Centers
The function of a data center is to house the infrastructure needed to store and serve vast amounts of data. These facilities house servers, storage devices, network equipment, power supplies, cooling equipment and other infrastructure. An estimated 33 million servers were in use within data centers globally in 2005. This number is expected to grow to more than 122 million by 2020.

Data centers consumed 130 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2005, or 0.7% of the world’s electricity generation that year. About half of the electricity consumed within a data center is used to power servers and storage devices, while approximately 45% of the electricity used by the data center is for cooling systems and the balance for operation of uninterruptible power supplies (UPS). Assuming no energy reduction initiatives, by 2010 electric consumption of data centers will have grown to 210 billion kilowatt hours and to 355 billion kilowatt hours by 2015. Data centers would then account for over 1.5% of projected total global electricity generation in 2015.

The forecasted energy consumption and associated carbon emissions shown in Figure 3-3 above assume no energy reduction initiatives. However, there are several technological developments and trends underway which will lead to reduced energy use within data centers. These include…

View Table of Contents »