The genes help to better develop the wood part of the grass, called the fibrous, such as what is in rice and wheat. In understanding how these genes operate, the scientists hope to be able to discover how to breed crops so that they need less energy to turn them into biofuels.  READ MORE

The fuels, gasoline substitutes derived from plants, probably won’t cut greenhouse gases because forests are chopped down to make way for biofuel plantations, Friends of the Earth and ActionAid said today in an e-mailed statement. The European Commission said that while biofuels cost more than fossil fuels, it’s “reasonable” for motorists to pay extra.

…EU energy spokeswoman Marlene Holzner said today in an e- mail that the biofuels target may increase cereal prices by as much as 6 percent and rapeseed costs by as much as 10 percent.

The commission is monitoring the effects on food prices. She said efficiency improvements alone won’t achieve the carbon cuts needed, and that pursuing renewables is necessary.

…An independent consultant, Malcolm Fergusson, carried out the cost analysis for Friends of the Earth and ActionAid. He extrapolated analysis relating to the costs in the U.K. and Germany across the EU. Fergusson was previously head of climate change policy at the U.K. government’s environment agency.  READ MORE

This study examines the potential fiscal burden on the U.K. government and the additional costs imposed on consumers and other sections of the economy if the U.K.’s blending mandate of 4 or 5 per cent (in 2011/12) was increased to 10 per cent or 15 per cent in order to satisfy the EU’s renewable transport target. A number of important areas listed below were investigated and, where possible, an estimate of the potential costs provided.

• The evolution of the U.K.’s biofuels industry and its current and planned production capacity
• Support programs to develop advanced biofuels for the transport sector
• Agricultural subsidies provided to the producers of biofeedstocks under the CAPs Single Payment Scheme
• Government agency costs for administering the U.K.’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO)
• Changes in tax revenues if the U.K. government reintroduced tax exemptions in order to reduce the price of biofuels in relation to fossil fuels
• Handling expenses met by fuel retailers in order to deliver blended fuels to consumers
• Upward pressure on consumer prices from more expensive biofuel blended with cheaper fossil fuels sold onto consumers
• Engine damage resulting from the use of blended fuels   READ MORE   Download Study

The genes help to better develop the wood part of the grass, called the fibrous, such as what is in rice and wheat. In understanding how these genes operate, the scientists hope to be able to discover how to breed crops so that they need less energy to turn them into biofuels.

Most of the energy in the plants is stored in the woody part but it is difficult to access this energy. However, the researchers discovered that they could create multi-use crops where the straw could be used to create energy more efficiently.

… ‘What we hope to do with this research is to produce varieties of plants where the woody parts yield their energy much more readily – but without compromising the structure of the plant. We think that one way to do this might be to modify the genes that are involved in the formation of a molecule called xylan – a crucial structural component of plants.’  READ MORE

…The system developed by Professor Zimmerman’s team uses up to 1000 times less energy to produce the microbubbles and, in addition, the cost of installing the Sheffield microbubble system is predicted to be much less than existing flotation systems.

The next step in the project is to develop a pilot plant to test the system at an industrial scale. Professor Zimmerman is already working with Tata Steel at their site in Scunthorpe using CO2 from their flue-gas stacks and plans to continue this partnership to test the new system.  READ MORE and MORE (Scientific American) and MORE (Biorefining Magazine)  Abstract

* Importing foods for biofuels could endanger supplies

* Biofuels industry says claims reckless

Germany should not increase imports of food to produce biofuels, because this could threaten the supply of food in developing countries, a report from a German government advisory body said on Friday.

…The council, an independent group which advises the government on ecological economic issues, called on Germany to review biofuel subsidies and undertake a more measured consumption of bioenergy, avoiding simultaneous expansion of uses in vehicle fuels, power and heating.

Ten agencies, including the World Bank and World Food Programme, last June called on governments to scrap policies to support biofuels, saying they force up food prices.

British government advisers in December also called for more moderate biofuel expansion. European Union policymakers are debating the green credentials of some biofuels.

…”Hunger is created by poverty, war and unjust distribution of resources,” said VDB Chief Executive Elmar Baumann. “Claiming biofuels are responsible for hunger is reckless.”

Biofuels bring cuts of at least 35 percent in polluting greenhouse gasses, he said.

The vast majority of German biofuels were produced from feedstock crops produced in Germany or the rest of the EU, which have to be certified as coming from sustainable farming, he said.   READ MORE

…This year, expect GBL to commence signing up of ethanol plants for conversion, with a focus on US opportunities. Already, through the merger with Butylfuel, the company has a lilt plant in Columbus, Ohio, where it will be moving in equipment associated with the GBL technology. Initially, the company will focus on dry mill corn plants, then move on to cellulosic opportunities.

…Butanol and its derivatives are key intermediates in the production of paints, coatings, adhesives and inks, an $85 billion global market. Butyl acrylates are also used in the $700 billion global plastics and polymers market.

The worldwide market for n-butanol is around 4.5 million tonnes per year valued at over $10 billion, and growing at a rate of 3.2 % per year through 2025. Global demand is split between the U.S., Europe and Asia (driven largely by China).

…Longer term, butanol is a superior “drop in” biofuel and can directly replace gasoline as a fuel. It is a superior blend stock as well, and can be blended with diesel as well as other biofuels, such as biodiesel, ethanol and isobutanol.

…GBL has a portfolio of proprietary and engineered Clostridia strains used as biocatalysts to process a wide range of starch, sugar and cellulosic feedstocks.

…The butanol players divide neatly into a pair of producers pursuing isobutanol – Gevo and Butamax, with two pursuing n-butanol, Cobalt and Green Biologics. Now, you can isomerize a normal butanol, but you can’t normalize an isobutanol, which gives some advantages in flexibility to n-butanol, but primarily the difference between the two molecules is that n-butanol is used in a larger set of markets on the chemicals side, for paints, and lacquers, for example – where a linear molecular chain is needed. Isobutanol is used, for example in synthetic rubber, and is no tiny market itself, but it is smaller than the n-butanol market.  READ MORE

This year, Brazil produced 15 million tons of oranges. About 86% of those oranges were then turned into fresh orange juice. Imagine, then, the number of orange peels thrown away in Brazil.

The orange-peel abundance in Brazil  is enough to attract attention from the British chemist James Clark, a professor at the Center for Green Chemistry at the University of York. Clark wowed the most recent British Science Festival by presenting a technique for converting orange peels into biofuel, using microwave energy. It is one of many research projects in the Old Continent attempting to develop biofuel in order to help reduce CO2 emissions.

Clark’s technology is part of a project called OPEC (Orange Peel Exploitation Company). The process consists of crushing the orange peels, putting them in a microwave that resembles a giant home oven, and activating the cellulose and other components with the microwaves. “The orange peel has an interesting chemical composition that makes it very easy to convert into fuel,” says Clark.

The European Union has contributed six million euros to the project. The Carbon Trust, a major British company that specializes in the renewal of carbon-based energy, and the University of São Paulo, have also collaborated. Now Clark and his group are working with a test processing unit, which allows them to process 30 kilos of orange peel (or other citrus peel) per hour.

…Meanwhile, Clark defends his microwave technology precisely because of its low costs, and the fact that the orange peels do not require a refinery like those used for oil. The microwave machine is relatively small, and easy to move to wherever the waste is. “The largest microwave that I know of, which can work with 6 tons per hour, is only 5 or 6 meters long,” Clark says.   READ MORE

…The present energy taxation law results in perverse effects causing shortages of diesel, surpluses of gasoline, discrimination of biofuels when taxed as fossil fuels and loss of government income when taxes are unequal in neighboring countries. So, change is needed, but any substantial progress does not seem to be happening.

Since April, member states are trying to agree on a more balanced tax law. After a delay of more than a year before the bill was put to the member states, the Polish president of the EU spent most of the past six months derailing the proposal, because it runs counter to Poland’s coal policy.

All hopes are now set for the first half of this year when the Danes hold the presidency. Even though a brand new government and not very experienced, the Danes want a pragmatic approach: Focus the law on what really will deliver a change in European transport fuel consumption by aligning taxation of diesel and gasoline and forget about all the other goodies, such as introducing a CO2-based tax, taxation on energy density or a higher tax on coal.  READ MORE