by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …“Building on the first gallons of cellulosic diesel we shipped in March, we continue to make progress with operations at our Columbus facility,” said KiOR CEO Fred Cannon. “The on-stream …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Despite the sluggish economic recovery and questions over policy stability — biofuels ventures have been busy raising lots of capital.   In the past 6 months, $434 million.   Who got what, …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In California, Algenetix, an industrial biotech company incubated from the pipeline of Kapyon Ventures has closed $2.0M in Series A-1 funding to further commercialize its PhotoSeed platform.
The groundbreaking technology vastly …

by Dana Blankenhorn  (TheStreet)  These are desperate times for Big Oil.  Fracking (which involves shooting water and sand into a wellhead, at high pressure, fracturing the surrounding rock) brings enormous profits, but anyone can frack. The …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Although no commercial-scale cellulosic biofuels facilities are operating in the United States at present, at least ten projects exceeding 20 million gallons per year are expected to begin operations by …

by Katie Feherenbacher  (Gigaom)  Companies that are still looking to produce biofuels from plant waste (and not corn) are making slow, but steady progress on milestones in 2013.
On Monday, KiOR, which was largely funded by …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) In Texas, KiOR announced the initial shipments of cellulosic diesel from its first commercial-scale facility in Columbus, Mississippi.
KiOR’s facility uses pine wood chips previously feeding a shut down paper mill …

(Associated Press/WJTV.com)   Four years after announcing plans for an ethanol plant in Pontotoc, a Canadian company has yet to begin construction.
Enerkem Inc. spokeswoman Annie Pare tells The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal (http://bit.ly/WCsH7v ) the company …

by Adam Armour (Itawamba County Times)  Work on the proposed Fulton ethanol plant has come to a standstill. But does that mean the project’s been canceled?
… After the project’s announcement in 2009, two years of …

by Jane Yu (Orange County Business Journal)  Irvine-based renewable fuels maker BlueFire Renewables Inc. has halted construction work on a plant planned for Fulton, Miss. plant.
BlueFire converts non-food resources, such as trash, wood waste and …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In California, Rentech announced plans to cease operations at, reduce staffing at, and mothball its research and development Product Demonstration Unit, in Commerce City, CO, and to eliminate all related …

(Associated Press/Omaha.com)  After decades of talk, the ethanol industry is building multimillion-dollar refineries in several states that will use corn plant residue, wood scraps and even garbage to produce the fuel additive.
The breakthrough comes at …

by Jeremy Martin and Jim Collins (Politico) The fuels of the future are here today, and we can thank Congress for enacting the Renewable Fuel Standard. This bedrock policy has brought us to the point where …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  You’ve heard about the crack spread, and the crush spread — as means to value oil refining and crop refining.  Let’s think about biomass densification and compression, and in that …

(Ohio State University) OARDC has received a $6.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Energy to test and expand OARDC-developed technology that can produce biogas from a variety …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  A long war of opinion has been waged for years between advanced biofuels’ detractors and supporters.  Mirage or reality? Completion of 6 key projects 2012 decided much of the debate. …

by Joanna Schroeder (DomesticFuel.com)  What do people in the Southeast think about biofuels? Do they support biofuel ventures? Who will grow the biomass? Will those in established industries fight against it? These are just a …

(ClarionLedger.com)  A team of Mississippi State University agricultural economists recently received U.S. Department of Agriculture funding to study policies impacting biofuel supply chains.
Keith Coble is the principal investigator for a project to develop a model …

by Robert Rapier  (Biofuels Digest/Energy Trends Insider)  Last month KiOR announced the start of production of biocrude from their Columbus, Mississippi plant. KiOR CEO Fred Cannon stated in an earnings call that when the product shipped …

(Clarion Ledger)  …Today, Redalje’s Marine Science lab at Stennis Space Center is studying algae, grown from Mississippi coastal waters, and recreating that ancient process.
“We now look for one that produces large oil droplets that what …

(Renewable Fuels Association)  The Advanced Ethanol Council this morning released a report giving a snapshot of cellulosic ethanol producers in the U.S. and around the world. A look at facilities owned by companies such as …

by Andrew Herndon  (Bloomberg/Renewable Energy World)  Cellulosic biofuel companies will boost production almost 20-fold in 2013 as the first high-volume refineries go into operation, signaling a shift from an experimental fuel into a commercially viable …

by Jeff Ayres  (Clarion Ledger)  Mississippi alternative-energy development projects that have received more than $400 million in state backing through loans, grants and other incentives in recent years have seen widely varying degrees of success.
KiOR, a …

(US Department of Agriculture)    Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced $10 million in research grants to spur production of bioenergy and biobased products that will lead to the development of sustainable regional systems and help …

by Matthew L. Wald (New York Times)  For years, scientists and engineers have been juggling various combinations of acids, steam, bacteria, catalysts and the digestive juices of microorganisms to convert agricultural waste and even household …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Brent Crude trades this past week at a transorbital $109 per barrel (West Texas Intermediate at a suborbital, if high, $85).  It puts the conventional wisdom that biofuels are too …

(ACORE)  The American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE) released the 2012 edition of its report, Renewable Energy in the 50 States, as an interactive, online resource. Compiling updated financial data, resource potentials, market and policy …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  500 ton per day wood biomass to biocrude plant commences oil production – the long wait for cellulosic biofuels at scale is over.
…But the news from Columbus, Mississippi, that cellulosic …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  … Today, we’ll look at the bigger balance sheets to see who is investing what, and when, with whom, and why.
…We’ve also focused here, for the sake of brevity, on those …

by Prafulla D. Patil, Veera Gnaneswar Gude, Aravind Mannarswamy, Peter Cooke, Nagamany Nirmalakhandan, Peter Lammers, Shuguang Deng (Fuel)  In this comparative study, direct conversion of algal biomass into biodiesel using supercritical methanol (SCM) and microwave-assisted (MW) …

(US Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service)  …Of the five regions, the Southeast has the greatest natural capacity in the continental United States, with sufficient sunshine, soils, water, and other natural resources to produce more …

(Environmental and Energy Study Institute)  Cleaner, more sustainable, more climate-friendly, more affordable advanced biofuels are closer to reality than many outside the industry seem to think. At least three new, advanced biofuel biorefineries are being …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …Like many states (or countries) that have limited oil reserves or reserves that are economically unfeasible to extract at this time – the path to energy independence lies generally in …

(US Department of Agriculture)  Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced payments for 125 advanced Biofuel producers across the country to support the production and expansion of advanced biofuels from a wide variety of non-food sources, …

by Luke Geiver (Biomass Magazine)  The U.S. EPA has granted KiOR Inc. the necessary permit to sell renewable cellulosic gasoline in the U.S. According to Fred Cannon, the EPA’s acceptance of KiOR’s advanced biofuel blendstock …

Mississippi State University Sustainable Energy Research Center (SERC) and the Mississippi Biomass Renewable Energy Council (MBREC) are partnering this year for the inaugural Southeast Biofuels and Renewable Energy Conference, to be held August 8 – 9, …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Section 9011 of the Farm Bill – the Biomass Crop Assistance Program – USDA deploys $9.6M in new investments in bioenergy crops as questions revolve around the program’s future and …

by Guy Chazan (Financial Times)  In the world of biofuels, all eyes are on the tiny northern Italian town of Crescentino, site of the world’s first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant, which will start production this …

by Vershal Hogan  (Natchez Democrat)  Alcorn State University  has conducted research into using bamboo as a feedstock for biofuels production.  READ MORE

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  … Regardless of its naming deficiencies, waste has been hot and getting hotter as a bioenergy feedstock because it solves three of the most pressing problems blocking capacity expansion.
1. The feedstocks …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …Emerald Biofuels announced that it will build an 85 million gallonrenewable-diesel refineries at a Dow Chemical site in Plaquemine, Louisiana. The company will use Honeywell’s UOP/Eni EcoFining process technology for the …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Companies like KiOR, ZeaChem, Virent take aim at a tasty aviation biofuels market with new recipes and game-changing economics
…If you can produce in-spec, sustainable, low-carbon, renewable jet fuel at $3.32 …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …KiOR did not recognize revenue during 2011, as its activities remained focused on construction of its first commercial facility in Columbus, Mississippi, research and development (R&D) designed to improve production …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Yield unlocks value, and especially feedstock yield. What’s the latest? What feedstocks are reporting yields that could support 1000+ gallons per acre for terrestrial crops?
…Yield from the acre, yield from …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …In California, Virdia, formerly HCL CleanTech, a leading developer of cellulosic sugars, today announced major company milestones, including a new brand and CEO, its latest funding round, and a $75 …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  What are Google, BP, Conoco, and GE investing? Is 3,000 gallons per acre of renewable gasoline possible?
In the past few weeks, news has begun to circulate around the industry – …

by Former Sens. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) (Bipartisan Policy Center/The Hill)  …For example, both parties have helped raise fuel efficiency standards.  First under President Bush in 2007, then under President Obama in …

by Holly Jessen (Ethanol Producer Magazine)  Removing fiber from dried distillers grains with solubles using the elusieve process results in an enhanced product with greater nutritional value for growing and finishing pigs, according to a …

(Syntroleum)  Norfolk Southern becomes first fleet user in the U.S. to deploy clean renewable diesel
Dynamic Fuels, LLC and Mansfield Oil Company have signed an agreement to supply renewable diesel to Norfolk Southern Corporation (NYSE / …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …In Canada, Enerkem has filed an F-1 registration statement for a proposed $125 million initial public offering. The number of shares to be offered in the proposed offering and the …

by Kent Misegades (General Aviation News)  Mississippi State Senator Michael Watson has just introduced Senate Bill 2137, “An act to require retail dealers and distributors of gasoline to offer for sale or use nonethanol-blended unleaded premium grade …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …First commercial projects from newly-minted public companies Solazyme, Gevo and KiOR. Two trash-to-biofuels projects from INEOS Bio and Enerkem, located in Florida and Alberta. Europe’s largest biosuccinic acid project, scheduled …

(Blue Fire Renewables)  …To meet increasing demand for cellulosic sugars (“The New Oil”) BlueFire formed SucreSource, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary that will manufacture cellulosic sugars from biomass for Biofuel, Bioplastic and Specialty Chemical markets. …

Presentations delivered by the various panel members are available on the CAAFI Expo website.  READ MORE
Business Team

RIN Compliance and D-Code Pathway Definitions (PDF) – Luce
Business Team Panel Discussion Elements of Alternative Fuels – Business Case …

by Kris Bevill (Ethanol Producer Magazine)  The U.S. federal government continually names China as being a country to beat in the clean energy race. However, increasingly, cellulosic ethanol producers and technology developers are coming to …

(PR NewsWire)  BlueFire Renewables, Inc., a company focused on changing the world’s transportation fuel paradigm through the production of renewable fuels from non-food cellulosic wastes, has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (“MOU”) with China …

(US Department of Agriculture)  Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today (September 27, 2011) announced that USDA will make payments to more than 160 energy producers in 41 states to support and ensure the production and expansion …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Like to quickly understand the surge in renewable chemicals and one of the hottest companies in the hottest sector of the bioconomy?  Here’s our 10-minute version of the IPO from Elevance …

by Phil West (The Commercial Appeal)  Legislature to consider incentives to land Israeli company’s 800 jobs, $1B operation
Gov. Haley Barbour wants state legislators to approve $100 million worth of financial incentives to help an Israeli …

by Alexandra Witze  (Science News)  Two giant pandas in the Memphis Zoo have dropped researchers a gift. Studies of the pandas’ poop show that their gut microbes break down bamboo efficiently — a trick that …

by Joanna Schroeder (DomesticFuel.com)  A new way to remove fiber from corn has been discovered by a professor from Mississippi State University (MSU). He calls his process Elusieve and has filed for a patent. The process was …

By Ucilia Wang  (GigaOm)  Freshly minted as a public company, biofuel producer KiOR reported Thursday that it brought in no revenues and widened its losses for the second quarter. Given that no one expected the young company …

by David Biello (Scientific American)  Making biofuels from waste makes dollars–and sense
…Turning garbage into fuel is potentially an answer to two pressing problems—diminishing the world’s dependence on fossil fuels and an alternative to burying trash in landfills. …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …But a new generation of technologies is coming along fast, primarily in advanced biofuels, which is gasifying biomass at the front end along its path towards making fuels, chemicals or …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …A conversation with Terrabon COO Simon Upfill-Brown
…BD: Fuels or chemicals, for the first project?
SU-B: We are still very much focused on fuel, we feel that fuel is the way to …

by Matthew Lynley (Green Beat)  Enerkem, a company that specializes in converting unusable waste into ethanol and other chemicals, announced today that it has raised $30 million in an extension of its most recent funding round.
Enerkem …

by Kevin Cooper (Natchez Democrat)  A federal judge ruled Thursday that would-be biofuels wizard John Rivera’s claims were not worth the hill of beans he claimed could be magically turned into fuel.
U.S. District Judge David …

(Environmental and Energy Study Institute)  On July 19, 2011, the Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC) and Environmental and Energy Study Institute(EESI) held a briefing on the energy title of the Farm Bill, with a special focus …

(US Department of Energy)  The U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Biomass Program will be conducting detailed biennial peer review meetings of its activities throughout the first half …

(Bloomberg)  Catchlight Energy LLC, a joint venture of Chevron Corp.  and Weyerhaeuser Co., will supply forest products that Kior Inc. will convert into biofuels.
The deal announced today expands an agreement made in April for Catchlight to purchase …

(Elevance)  Company to expand facility, create 165 full-time jobs
Gov. Haley Barbour and executives from Elevance Renewable Sciences Inc., creator of high-performance renewable specialty chemicals for use in personal care products, detergents, plastics and lubricants, announced …

In Canada, Enerkem Inc has closed a $60 million financing round that includes Valero Energy Corp. who joins existing investors Waste Management, Rho Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures and Cycle Capital, who have each invested in the …

by Garthia Elena Burnett (Commercial Dispatch)  FedEx is the latest company to sign an offtake agreement with Kior, a biofuels plant slated to begin production in Columbus in 2012. FedEx plans to use oil produced …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Khosla-backed pyrolysis venture heads for the public markets. Is the IPO window still open? Will this one fly? Should it? The Digest looks at the technology, the team, the progress, …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Will these biofuels projects make the expected steps towards commercialization?
There was a strong response to yesterday’s Top Story about technologies that were  approaching make-or-break milestones in 2012. But what …

(PR Log) Florida Biodiesel, Inc. has completed a B-60 Biodiesel Processor sale, made by 70centsagallon.com to Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College. The Biodiesel production equipment will be used to demonstrate Green Fuel technology to students.
Mississippi …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …NGOs in Africa have been touting for some time the use of ethanol cook stoves, to replace three-stone, wood based stoves that can trigger local deforestation and expose women and …

Advocates for biomass utilization and renewable energy development from across the state and region will gather in Biloxi, Mississippi on May 10-11, 2011, to learn, promote and network. The theme of the conference “A Decade …

by Bill Brandon (Advanced Biofuels USA)  On February 10 & 11, about 120 participants gathered in chilly Chicago for the first Municipal Solid Waste to Biofuels Summit presented by the British firm, Eye for Energy.  …

(KiOR)  Project would produce drop-in fuels from wood biomass at four facilities across three states
KiOR, Inc., announced today that it has received a term sheet for a loan guarantee supporting an over $1 billion biofuels project …

(USDA) Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced new investments in 33 states to support the production and usage of advanced biofuels. Vilsack highlighted these projects as ways the Obama Administration is working to reduce the …

(USDA)  Expansion of Biofuels Reaches All Regions of the Country
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced January 20, 2011, that biofuels and biomass energy projects across America have been selected for funding to continue the Administration’s support …

(Enerkem)  Enerkem Inc. today announced that Enerkem Corporation, its wholly-owned U.S. affiliate, has  obtained a conditional commitment  for an US$  80 million  loan guarantee by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), for  the construction of its  landmark waste-to-biofuels …

by Michael Kanellos (GreenTechSolar)  In the past year, the state of Mississippi has convinced an impressive array of green tech and other companies to open factories in its borders.
How exactly is it pulling this off, considering that …

by Susanne Retka Schill  (Ethanol Producer Magazine)  Miscanthus will see a giant leap in acreage in 2011, thanks to Soperton, Ga.-based Repreve Renewables LLC. The company currently has 500 acres planted in five locations in …

(US Geological Survey)   Growing corn for biofuels production is having unintended effects on water quality and quantity in northwestern Mississippi.
More water is required to produce corn than to produce cotton in the Mississippi Delta requiring increased …

(BioPro NewsWire)   Mississippi tree farmers look forward to new biomass facilities in the state providing a new market for wood, according to an article published this month in the Jackson, Miss., USA-based Clarion-Ledger. The newspaper reported …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …Today, we look at companies that, in the month of November, have made material strdes towards commercialization – through securing of funding, commencement of construction, offtake deals, or in other ways.

AE …

by Kris Bevill (Ethanol Producers Magazine)  Recent activities in the cellulosic ethanol industry have shown that while financing continues to be a major hurdle, technological advancements continue to be made and companies are beginning to …

(PRNewsWire)  BlueFire Renewables, Inc., a company focused on changing the world’s transportation fuel paradigm through the production of renewable fuels from non-food cellulosic wastes, announced a contract with Cooper Marine & Timberlands to provide feedstock …

(PRNewswire)  Contract Is Among First of Its Kind in U.S.
BlueFire Renewables, Inc., a company focused on changing the world’s transportation fuel paradigm through the production of renewable fuels from non-food cellulosic wastes, has announced an …

(US Department of Energy)  U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced September 8, 2010, the investment of up to $16.5 million for two major research and development (R&D) initiatives that will support the expansion of renewable transportation …

by Emily Wagster Pettus  (Bloomberg BusinessWeek)  Mississippi lawmakers on Friday (August 27, 2010) will consider $50 million in state incentives for research and production of renewable fuel made from timber, one of the state’s most …

(The Dispatch)   …KiOR of Houston, Texas, plans to locate three facilities in Mississippi, the first of which will be in Columbus on the southern fifth of The Island, at the Columbus-Lowndes Port’s east bank. …Additional …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …The Digest took the opportunity to visit with BlueFire’s CEO Arnold Klann, who has been working in the cellulosic biofuels space for more than a decade, and continues to be …

Biofuels research and development activities have increased significantly over the past two years.  The Department of Energy (DoE), the Department of Defense (DoD), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and numerous state agencies have carefully evaluated …

The Mississippi Biomass and Renewable Energy Council invites you to examine ways in which renewable energy and energy effi ciency can be the drivers for economic development in Mississippi.
Who Should Attend?
Agricultural, forestry, environmental, academia, business, …