Article Archive for April 2010
by Jim Lane (BiofuelsDigest) …Also, what exactly is up with biobutanol, perhaps the most important fuel you never heard of — one that is gaining serious traction among bioenergy cognoscenti as a more perfect solution …
(European Environment Agency) While technological advances produce cleaner vehicles, more and more passengers and goods are travelling further distances, thereby offsetting efficiency gains. Based on analysis of long-term trends, a new European Environment Agency (EEA) …
by Jason Paur (Wired) …A small company in Indiana is leading the way for creating an alternative fuel for piston-powered airplanes around the world. Swift Enterprises has created a biomass-derived, synthetic fuel that has already …
(US Department of Energy) More than 600 attendees were able to discuss some of the most pressing issues in the biomass community as well as recent accomplishments and the challenges that lie ahead. We were …
by Robert Paarlberg (Foreign Policy) … Food has become an elite preoccupation in the West, ironically, just as the most effective ways to address hunger in poor countries have fallen out of fashion.
Helping the world’s poor …
Race car driver and environmental activist Leilani Münter is featured in the new tv series “Fast Forward” on Discovery’s Planet Green Network. The series tells the stories of thirteen unique visionaries in their quest to …
by Martha Ellen (Watertown Daily Times) Newton Falls Fine Paper could be the first commercial plant to use a breakthrough technology that turns waste into ethanol.
“It’s a possibility. It’s well down the road,” said Donald …
by Michelle Kautz (DomesticFuels) Tomorrow (April 22, 2010) will kick of the National Flexible Fuel Vehicle (FFV) Awareness Campaign across the state of Nebraska. The educational campaign is a joint project of the Clean Fuels Fuondation, …
by Joanne Ivancic (Advanced Biofuels USA) In the 40th Earth Day Anniversary episode of “The Simpsons,” millions of viewers got an unflattering presentation of “switchgrass vs. corn” biofuels interests. Knock down, drag out fight illustration of the …
(University of York) A major new suite of laboratories, to be opened this week, will help scientists in the Green Chemistry group at the University of York to advance research into clean synthesis, catalysis, novel …
(University of Minnesota) The Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment (IREE) recently awarded over $5.1 million to 24 renewable energy research and demonstration projects at the University of Minnesota.
The selected projects focus on a …
(Colorado State University) Dissolving plant biomass in “green” solvent ionic liquids – salts that melt at low temperatures – converts more sugars needed for biofuel more quickly than traditional methods, according to a new study …
by Kevin Bullis (Technology Review, MIT) When Noubar Afeyan, the CEO of Flagship Ventures in Cambridge, MA, set out to invent the ideal renewable fuel, he decided to eliminate the middleman. Biofuels ultimately come from …
by Nik Bristow (AutoBlogGreen) Green Earth Technologies, maker of G-Oil, the “world’s first and only bio-based and ultimate biodegradable motor oil approved by the American Petroleum Institute,” aired their first-ever television commercial on Saturday, April …
by Rod Walton (Tulsa World) Ethanol is running strong in Oklahoma and nationwide, filling up storage terminals and flowing through most cars in some blended way.
The corn-based variety, however, may be hitting a wall in …
by Kathrine Schmidt (dailycomet.com) A businessman from New Iberia is starting a national website that aims to match renewable-energy investors with local landowners and farmers.
Kevin Caffery believes the state of the ethanol industry, which makes …
by Ken Anderson (Brownfield Ag News) …IRFA managing director Lucy Norton says E85 is currently running about 90 cents less than E10 gasoline in Iowa. Even factoring in a 15 percent decrease in fuel economy, …
by Nina Fowler (National Business Review) Queenstown tourism operators are scrambling to establish a viable local biofuel industry before government assistance expires.
The Queenstown Lakes Biodiesel Consortium’s pilot scheme has been the beneficiary of a two-year government …
(The Province) …Food and yard waste from residential and commercial sources will be converted at the plant into a low-cost natural gas that will be used as an alternative fuel to power the city’s waste-collection …
(Cattle Network) …One of the first products that may be digested in a cellulosic ethanol plant is switchgrass, which is a warm-season grass native to this part of the world. Agronomically it can be produced, …
by David Schwartz (Algae Industry Magazine) Since forming the National Algae Association over two years ago, Barry has concentrated on creating and establishing strong working relationships with what he calls “algaepreneurs” throughout the U.S.
Starting the …
(Educational Corporation of America) Education Corporation of America (ECA), a leading owner and operator of private higher education institutions in the United States, announced today the launch of Ecotech Institute, the first and only college …
(University of Massachusetts Amherst) A new method of converting biomass feedstock into sustainable fuel developed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and University of Minnesota has the potential to have a profound effect …
(The Motorship) BC Ferries in Canada is now using 5 percent blend of B5 biodiesel to fuel its vessels, making the company one of the largest consumers of biodiesel in British Columbia.
The ferry company is …
by Bob Brook (Automotive Industries) New information and comment by combustion experts at the recent SAE Congress meeting here provide substantial reasons to believe critical fuel combustion could be the first fundamental combustion advance for …
(ZeaChem) Company Produces Commercial Grade Ethyl Acetate
ZeaChem Inc., a developer of biorefineries for the conversion of renewable biomass into sustainable fuels and chemicals, today announced it has produced commercial grade ethyl acetate, thereby proving its core …
(POET) Technology ready, CEO says, but loan guarantee, policy stability and market access still needed to achieve vision.
POET plans to have a hand in producing 3.5 billion gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year by 2022, …
by Gordon Dickson (Star-Telegram) Where’s the beef? It’s in the belly of that Amtrak locomotive.
Shortly after noon Tuesday, the Amtrak Heartland Flyer pulled into downtown Fort Worth. It looked and smelled like pretty much any …
Nick Snow (Oil and Gas Journal) US senators from agricultural states introduced legislation on Apr. 20 that would extend the federal ethanol tax credit through 2015. Failure to do so would cost 112,000 jobs nationwide …
(Great Lakes Innovation and Technology Report) Heating and squishing microalgae in a pressure-cooker can fast-forward the crude-oil-making process from millennia to minutes.
University of Michigan professors are working to understand and improve this procedure in an …
by Chrispin Inambao (New Era) LL Biofuels Namibia, a highly ambitious foreign-initiated and multi-billion-dollar venture, has secured 300 000 hectares of land from chiefs in Caprivi to plant jatropha, whose seeds will be press-crushed to produce …
(Honduras News) Agroipsa Farm in Choluteca has deployed the “BEI Jatropha Wave Harvester”, a mechanical harvesting system for jatropha which has successfully completed an eight-month trial.
The system was used for a mechanical harvest of a …
by Reilly Brennan (AOL Autos) EPA Mulls New Fuel Economy Guidelines
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will soon draft a new regulation for the way it calculates fuel efficiency for electric cars, potentially deflating the stratospheric …
(Pew Charitable Trusts) Pentagon, Service Agencies Working to Enhance Security, Save Money and Reduce Emissions
The Department of Defense has initiated ambitious clean energy programs in service of economic, security and environmental goals according to “Reenergizing America’s …
(UOP) Fuel produced using process technology from Honeywell’s UOP under contract from U.S. Defense Energy Support Center.
UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, announced April 22, 2010, that Honeywell Green Jet Fuel(TM) produced using Honeywell UOP’s renewable jet fuel …
Monterey County & Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca Invite You To
The Future of Transportation Technology
Presented by Freescale Semiconductor
Wednesday May 19
1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca
Red Bull Energy Center
1021 Monterey Salinas Highway
Monterey, CA 93942
Please join …
by Michael Kanellos (GreenTechMedia) Isoprene’s a large-volume, high-energy fossil chemical. Genencor says it can get microbes to make it.
…Genencor, the industrial enzyme specialist, has engineered a microorganism that can produce a version of isoprene that …
(Michigan State University) Using productive farmland to grow crops for food instead of fuel is more energy efficient, Michigan State University scientists concluded, after poring over 17 years’ worth of data to help settle the …
(Environmental Protection) Gernot Pehnelt, Ph.D., director of GlobEcon, released a study that says the Renewable Energy Directive discriminates against foreign biofuels.
“European Policies Towards Palm Oil: Sorting Out Some Facts,” demonstrates that the default assumptions embedded …
(CBC News) An Ontario biofuels company is building a test plant in Sarnia to produce ethanol from wood and farm waste rather than corn.
Don Hewson, managing director of the Sarnia-Lambton research park where the facility …
by Shigeru Sato and Yuji Okada (Bloomberg Business Week) As Japan’s rice fields turn fallow and its farming communities decline, a new army of workers is preparing to make the countryside fertile again. This time the …
(SG Biofuels) SG Biofuels announced it has established a strategic partnership with Brookhaven National Laboratory to accelerate the analysis and testing of oil produced by its Latin American Jatropha plantations. The company was selected by …
(USDA) Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack April 16, 2010, invited public comment on several proposed rules designed to increase the production of advanced biofuels and the development of biorefineries. The programs are authorized under the Food, Conservation and …
by Robert Rapier (Forbes) …In order to better understand the intricacies of the issues involved, I have been engaged in dialogue with a number of industry groups and economists. Here I will try to shed …
by John Davis (DomesticFuel.com) Mansfield Oil Company has acquired East Fork Biodiesel of Algona, Iowa … a 60-million-gallon-a-year refinery that will get its feedstock of corn oil from Mansdfield’s network of C&N Companies ethanol plants …
by Tom Konrad (RenewableEnergyWorld.com) …
The most obvious strategy for dealing with peak oil is substitution. If we can find another form of energy in place of oil, then our economy can grow without more painful adjustments. …
(CattleNetwork) …U.S. ethanol industry exported 5.64 million metric tons (mmt) of distillers grains worth nearly $1 billion in 2009, which was 24 percent above 2008 levels.
The Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) touts the worldwide livestock feeding …
(XPrize Foundation, Marketwire) …X PRIZE is an educational nonprofit organization whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs, inspiring the formation of new industries, jobs and the revitalization of markets that are currently stalled. Through strategic …
by Jeffrey Barbee (Global Post) …Sun Biofuels, a British company, has been planting thousands of acres of jatropha at a former tobacco farm here and in other sites in Africa. The company hopes the jatropha …
(US DOE) The U.S. Department of Energy today announced a series of partnerships and other initiatives to address clean energy and energy security in the Western Hemisphere as part of the Energy and Climate Partnership …
