Jeff Langbehn, executive director of the Lake County Solid Waste Management District, said he lost faith and respect for Earl Powers, CEO of Powers Energy of America, when Powers walked out on board members in the middle of discussions regarding financing for the proposed south county plant.

And the waste district’s new vice chairman, Griffith Councilman George Jerome, said his faith is wavering in Langbehn and other members of the district’s professional staff who advocated the Powers project.

Jerome and fellow waste district board member Rick Ryfa, also a Griffith councilman, said Friday it is time to have discussion about the future of the district’s professional staff now that the trash-to-ethanol plan is in free fall.

Frustrated following the passage of three years since inking a contract with Powers with no results, the waste district board voted Thursday to find Powers in breach of contract.

The board gave Powers 60 days to secure financing, land for the facility and to show other progress toward construction —  things Powers has failed to accomplish since signing the contract with the district in November 2008.  READ MORE

The project is the Japanese company Marubeni, which will invest about 652 million dollars for the construction of two factory. According to the Japanese ambassador to Angola, Ryozo Myoi, the refining plant will have capacity to produce annually 400,000 tonnes of white sugar and 20,000 tons of cane per day fine. 

The ethanol plant will have a capacity of production estimated at 40 000 kiloliters per year, processing 200 kiloliters per day of anhydrous alcohol and extra neutral alcohol.   READ MORE

Let’s not lose sight of a critical fact: America’s enemies are bleeding this nation’s economic strength through terrorism and guerilla-style military confrontation, and by exploiting its need to import petroleum, with the related costs of military protection for its points of origin, its production and transport.

…The five big oil companies have made something approaching $1 trillion in profits over the past ten years, and yet, the Republicans in Congress resist the repeal of even as little as $2 billion of their annual incentives, while systematically stripping the emerging renewable energy industry of the financial assistance it needs to cross the valley of death—among other things, extending the time it will take for the industry to achieve its Congressionally-mandated goal of producing 21 billion gallons of advanced non-food derived biofuels.  Might this be because the oil & gas industry spent $145 million on lobbying in 2011?

…In 2011, after recycling, California put more than 30 million tons of post-recycled municipal waste into landfills. The organic materials in this waste stream contain the energy equivalent of approximately 60 million barrels of crude oil.

California’s legislature recently increased the state’s mandate for recycling from 50% to 75%.  To comply with its recycling mandates, the waste industry is exporting a substantial portion of the state’s recyclables to China, Nigeria and India, where there is no regulatory oversight, but in California these materials count as recycling the moment they leave the docks.   READ MORE

From the revised S-1: “On January 12, 2012, the parties signed a settlement agreement in which they agreed to dismiss all claims. Pursuant to the settlement, Ineos will receive from us a $2.5 million cash payment and 2,125,000 shares of Series D preferred stock, after which all the asserted claims will be dismissed, and a mutual release of future claims will become effective.

…“In addition, Ineos has the right to receive 2.5% of future ethanol royalties and license fees received by us from third parties who license our technology, subject to a cap with a net present value of $20 million, which will be increased based on future interest rates.”

…“We (Coskata) suspended continuous operations at Lighthouse due to the considerable costs associated with such operations and because our key objectives for operating the facility had been met.

…Coskata might well be joining the group of XTL technologies. This is a group of technologies that are working on a broader set of feedstocks than biomass (BTL), including natural gas (GTL) and in some cases coal-to-liquid (CTL). In its revised filing, Coskata has signaled its interest in working with natural gas, which itself has attracted increasing attention from the Obama Administration and the Congress as a base for enhancing energy security.  READ MORE

In Part I, today, we look at the performance of the six IPOs to date in the aftermarket, the Ceres IPO which is ready to price its IPO tonight, and look towards the IPO queue at important changes in Coskata’s recent filings.

In Part II, tomorrow, we look at how Ceres performed, we’ll have an update on Amyris, and we’ll look at the other companies in the IPO pipeline – Myriant, PetroAlgae, BioAmber, Elevance, Genomatica, Enerkem, Mascoma, and Fulcrum Bioenergy.

…In the IPO window that opened in April 2010 with Codexis’ successful IPO, six companies in the biofuels and renewable chemicals sector have gone public, and as a class they are between 8 and 61 percent off their IPO price.

…Since then (last spring), most of the companies have stayed entirely in line with their original plans, as expressed to their investors in there pre-IPO road shows and beyond, and most have stayed in line with their technical and economic targets and on their growth curve. Market reaction? They got crushed.

Accordingly, we can see the current price environment as more of a measure of the public’s appetite for risk (like, about zero), than as a verdict on the technologies and companies themselves. READ MORE

“We do full service restaurant care, which includes grease trap cleaning and maintenance, plumbing, water systems repair, and grease recycling,” Borish said. “The cooking oil is one of the waste streams we bring back to our plant, where we process it, recycle it and sell it to commodities brokers [for use] as feedstock for the biodiesel [industry] or as animal feed,” he continued. Borish estimates that his company currently sells approximately 18,000 gallons of recycled cooking oil into the biodiesel industry each week.  READ MORE

The US Navy intends to have a fleet of warships known as the “Great Green Fleet” running on biofuels by 2016, and by 2020 it plans to run half of its entire fleet on alternative fuels.

“The US Navy is meeting institutions in Queensland involved in research and development which could deliver the technology that could be passed on to industry partners, who would ultimately be the suppliers of these fuels on a commercial scale,” QUT’s Professor Sagadevan Mundree said.

Professor Mundree and Dr Ian O’Hara from QUT met with Chris Tindal, the US Navy’s director for operational energy, yesterday afternoon (February 6) in Brisbane to explain the capabilities of QUT’s Mackay Renewable Biocommodities Pilot Plant.  READ MORE

Both plentiful and a potentially low-cost source of fuel, biomass residuals are also less controversial than traditional corn ethanol because they are not a source of food or feed. Turning stover (the stalks, leaves and cobs that remain in corn fields after the grain is produced) into ethanol or using anaerobic digesters on livestock farms to generate bioenergy from animal manure are seemingly win-win propositions — more income for agricultural producers, new home-grown energy sources, and environmental protections for states and their communities.

But as Steve Brick, a senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, notes, there are technological, logistical and cost hurdles to overcome in order to expand the use of these energy sources.

And he says states are in a position to help.  READ MORE

Venkatesh Kamath, lecturer, Biotechnology Engineering Department, told The Hindu that people have attended camps organised on the subject through self-help groups (SHG) of the Shri Dharmasthala Manjunatheshwara (SDM) Trust and Junior Chambers International India. The same number is expected to attend four more camps to be held this month, he said.

The aim of the project is to create awareness among farmers, students, the scientific community, and the public on biodiesel and the production process. READ MORE

The VND2 trillion (US$95.2 million) plant has a yearly designed capacity of 100 million litres of ethanol.

Ho Sy Long, the plant’s director, said 10 per cent of the product would be used to produce Ethanol Fuel E5 while the remainder would be exported to Asean members, especially to the Philippines.

Long added that under its commitment, the plant would contribute to rural economic growth by consuming 17,000 hectares of cassava as soon as it came into stable operation.  READ MORE