by Jennifer A. Dlouhy (SF Gate)  United Airlines on Tuesday announced it has committed to buy at least 15 million gallons of cleaner-burning renewable jet fuel from a Los Angeles-based refinery, marking a potentially major breakthrough …

by Andrew Herndon (Bloomberg)  Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM), which has invested more than $100 million to develop algae-derived biofuels, is refocusing its research with Synthetic Genomics Inc. after almost four years of work failed to …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Beyond biomass, beyond fossil fuels, beyond light itself.   And now, the direct production of drop-in biofuel blendstocks. All available from a microbial “cow”.
This week in California, a research team from …

by Lynn Yarris(Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)  Joint BioEnergy Institute Researchers Develop Enzyme-free Ionic Liquid Pre-treatment
Advanced biofuels – liquid fuels synthesized from the sugars in cellulosic biomass – offer a clean, green and renewable alternative to …

by Michelle Macaluso (Fox News)  …Propel Fuels is launching its Clean Mobility Centers in Fresno. The stations will offer both E85 and biodiesels ranging from B5 to B99 that will be locally-sourced from producers in …

(Edeniq/Yahoo! News)  Visalia Plant Milestone Signifies Greater Commercial Viability for Cellulosic Ethanol and Sugars
Edeniq, a biomaterials and sustainable fuels company, today announced the company’s first demonstration plant, located at its Visalia, CA headquarters, has completed …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  World’s #1 chemical company to produce renewable Butanediol using Genomatica’s process.  The Digest has a one-on-one with Genomatica CEO Christophe Schilling to explore the deal in-depth.
In Germany, BASF announced that …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) … Oil refiners have been waging a well-funded war on California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which requires oil companies to reduce the carbon pollution from gasoline and diesel by 10 percent …

(Green Car Congress)  The California Energy Commission unanimously adopted the 2013-2014 Investment Plan Update to support the development and use of green vehicles and alternative fuels. The update sets funding priorities for the approximately $100 million in …

by Kathy Robertson (Sacramento Business Journal)  Novozymes Inc. is staffing up to support a $2.5 million Department of Energy contract to find new and more efficient enzymes for turning corn leaves and stalks into fuel for …

by Erin Voegele (Ethanol Producer Magazine)  The University of California-Davis Institute of Transportation Studies has published a new status review of the state’s low carbon fuel standard (LCFS). The review is the second in a …

by Kim McDonald   (University of California at San Diego)  New discoveries of the way plants transport important substances across their biological membranes to resist toxic metals and pests, increase salt and drought tolerance, control water loss …

by Min Zhang and Randy Schekman (Science Magazine)  Most eukaryotic secretory proteins are directed into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) by an amino-terminal signal peptide (leader sequence) and progress to the cell surface through vesicular flow via …

by Ron Kotrba (Biodiesel Magazine)  California-based Community Fuels recently earned BQ-9000 Laboratory certification, making it the first biodiesel producer in the nation to receive this third-party approval. “We are serious about quality and believe that …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Energy cane for California’s Imperial Valley?   Canergy lines up Beta, CHS, Certis as partners for greenfield low-carbon fuel project slated for 2016 opening.
In California, Canergy announced that it has selected …

by Brock Vergakis  (Associated Press/The Washington Post) NASA researchers said Thursday that test flights conducted in California have shown a commercial jet could fly safely with a blend of jet fuel that includes a plant oil.
Scientists …

(Algae Industry Magazine)  lgae Testbed Public-Private Partnership (ATP3) members from across the U.S. gathered at the Arizona State University Polytechnic campus April 15-18 for their national kickoff meetings to discuss strategies for advancing research and …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Pilot-scale biorefineries for drop-in military diesel, jet fuel the focus of the DOE’s latest grant round.
In Washington, the US Department of Energy announced up to $17.7 million in grants to …

by U.S.-Israel Science and Technology Foundation/Biomass Magazine)  After a briefing by senior White House staff on April 17, following their arrival in the U.S., an Israeli delegation of top academic and industrial biofuels research scientists and …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In California, Aemetis announced that its 60 million gallon per year capacity ethanol facility in Keyes, CA has completed maintenance and Advanced Biofuels retrofit, and is now restarting production.
Last December, …

(Johnny Rockets/Sacramento Bee/PR Newswire) Johnny Rockets partners with DAR PRO Solutions to recycle its restaurants’ used fry oil into renewable diesel fuel.
Each year, Johnny Rockets serves about eight million pounds of American Fries and two million …

(Science Daily)  Stepping into unexplored territory in efforts to use corn stalks, grass and other non-food plants to make biofuels, scientists have described the discovery of a potential treasure-trove of candidate enzymes in fungi thriving …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  An explosive report from Bloomberg alleges that a pathway to $2.18 per gallon gasoline was developed at Chevron-Weyerhaeuser owned Catchlight Energy.  Yet, the project was sidelined. Why?   Was the project …

(Reuters/NexSteppe)  Malibu and Palo Alto Sorghum Hybrids Provide Scalable, Reliable, and Sustainable Feedstock Options for the Biobased Industries
NexSteppe, a company dedicated to pioneering the next generation of sustainable feedstock solutions for the biobased industries, today announced the …

by Aldo Svaldi (The Denver Post)   Cool Planet Energy Systems took a step closer Friday to a corporate relocation and expansion that could bring nearly 400 jobs to the metro area and place the state …

by Holly Jessen (Ethanol Producer Magazine)  The ethanol industry reacted swiftly to the so-called RFS Reform Act, legislation introduced April 10 in the U.S. House of Representatives, which they said would gut the renewable fuel …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In California, Propel Fuels has opened another in its chain of transformative Clean Mobility Centers — and the first station in Fresno to offer E85 Flex Fuel and biodiesel, sourced …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …. And surprisingly, a research team from the University of California, Davis has not only catalogued the impacts of treating microalgae with 83 different compounds. They’ve found that common antioxidants …

by Matt Horton (Mercury News)  …Yet at the fuel pump, consumers still have no power. We all know our dependence on fossil fuels weakens our economy and security while threatening our environment. We simply feel …

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 Amanda Peterka  (Governors Biofuel Coalition)  Cellulosic biofuels can become profitable for farmers and help displace oil, but they must use already-available agricultural land, according to a study released by a nonprofit yesterday.
Commissioned by the …

(Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute/PR NewsWire)  The $100K ACC Clean Energy Challenge, a business plan competition supported by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) encouraging students from universities in the southeastern United …

(Department of Energy) The U.S. Department of Energy today announced it would fund its three Bioenergy Research Centers for an additional five-year period, subject to continued congressional appropriations. The three Centers—including the BioEnergy Research Center …

by  Louise Downing (Bloomberg)  SG Biofuels Inc., the green fuel biotech company working with Airbus SAS, is seeking a partner in Southeast Asia or Africa and expects to complete a cooperation deal within 180 days to expand its …

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 Amy Harder (National Journal)  As policy makers in Washington DC and across the country confront the costly consequences of mandating renewable fuels, some have suggested a low carbon fuel standard (LCFS) as an alternative. …

by Karl Plume (Reuters)  Pacific Ethanol Inc said that it is importing sorghum as well as buying the grain from domestic sources as prices for corn, the primary feedstock for the U.S. ethanol industry, hovered …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  A numbers of readers responding to “Biofuels from a raging fireball” (Friday’s Top Story, on research work with the raging fireball, Pyrococchus furiosus, to make biofuels and renewable chemicals from …

(Green Car Congress)  A new spatially-explicit life cycle assessment of five different “sun-to-wheels” conversion pathways—ethanol from corn or switchgrass for internal combustion vehicles (ICVs); electricity from corn or switchgrass for battery-electric vehicles (BEVs); and photovoltaic …

by Lynn Yarris (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)  When blessed with a resource in overwhelming abundance it’s generally a good idea to make valuable use of that resource. Lignocellulosic biomass is the most abundant organic material …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Crop yield and oil content increases of up to 50% and 34% seen from ZeaKal’s HME technology.  Though in early days — what’s going on?
… A successful Series A is …

(U.S. Department of Energy)  Supplying high-quality feedstock for use in a broad range of sustainable conversion processes to produce advanced biofuels is a complex, multi-step process. Each step in the feedstock supply and logistics chain—from …

by Jim McMahon (Biodiesel Digest)  Since 2008, the San Diego Center for Algal Biotechnology (SD-CAB) has been conducting research into algal applications for biofuel. This has been a joint collaboration between several departments of the …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Today in part II, we look at a new set of technologies coming along that are redefining our ideas about scale and cost.
… A barrier to long term deployment? The …

(Associated Press/Washington Post)  Amid the vast almond orchards and grape fields that surround Five Points in California’s Central Valley, a once-dominant crop that has nearly disappeared from the state’s farms is making a comeback: sugar …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  The first wave of cellulosic biofuels projects are now reaching completion.  But what does the next wave look like – from technology to financing? We explore the trends in our …

(Biofuels Digest)  In California, the state’s Energy Commission approved $5,580,773 for clean-energy transportation projects ranging from producing biofuels to making trucks run cleaner. Buster Biofuels, LLC, based in the San Diego area, will receive $2,641,723 to …

by Ian Branam (Scientific American)  Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory have found that nearly 14 percent of land in the continental United States, or roughly the combined area of Texas and New Mexico, …

(SG Biofuels/Biodiesel Magazine)  …Through the use of new genetic technologies, SGB’s scientists have revealed that the company’s germplasm collection can be divided into a number of distinct heterotic clades, or genetically related groupings of plants. In …

by Scott M. Paapa, Todd H. West, Dawn K. Manley, Eric J. Steen, Harry R. Beller, Jay D. Keasling, Dean C. Dibble, Shiyan Chang, Blake A. Simmons (Biomass and Bioenergy)  As advances in biotechnology have …

(The Business Journal)  A new facility opening in Pixley this year will use emissions from a nearby ethanol plant to make liquified carbon dioxide.
The plant will be the sixth carbon dioxide liquefaction plant in California …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) In California, Global Clean Energy Holdings announced that it has acquired Sustainable Oils, a leader in Camelina genetics and production. The acquisition includes 100% ownership interest of Sustainable Oils and the …

by Skip Derra (Arizona State University)  Conversion of large swaths of Brazilian land for sugar plantations will help the country meet its needs for producing cane-derived ethanol but it also could lead to important regional climate …

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 Dennis Domrzalski (Albuquerque Business First)  One of America’s largest producers of biodiesel said it might walk away from its unfinished biodiesel plant in Clovis if the state Legislature rolls back a mandate that all diesel …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Sales increase 35 percent at participating test sites — and survey results reveal driver preference for algae-based Soladiesel over conventional fuels.
In California, Propel Fuels and Solazyme announced that sales grew …

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 …

(National Aeronautics and Space Administration)   NASA researchers have begun a series of flights using the agency’s DC-8 flying laboratory to study the effects of alternate biofuel on engine performance, emissions and aircraft-generated contrails at altitude.
The …

by Jeff Kessler (The Energy Collective)  …Unlike the current consumer technology industry, where new products can offer novel or superior services, transportation fuel options compete primarily on price and availability with limited room for product …

(California Economic Summit)  … But as the Cali-Baja Mega-Region Initiative, as it’s now called, celebrates its fifth year in existence next month, it has become clear these three distinct regions can not only overcome their differences—they’ve …

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 …

(GreenAirOnline)  Once touted as a wonder-crop that would become a staple feedstock for jet biofuels, jatropha suffered a fall from grace as yields failed to live up to overblown claims. However, California-based alternative energy crop …

(The Business Journal)  Developers of a planned biorefinery in Mendota are hoping to get $5 million from the California Energy Commission as part of a program to encourage the development of alternative fuels.
The pilot-scale biorefinery …

(Chromatin/MarketWatch)  Chromatin, Inc., a leading provider of innovative crop breeding technology, sorghum seed products and feedstocks, and Calgren Renewable Fuels, a leading ethanol producer located in Pixley, CA, announced today an alliance to develop a …

(Chromatin/Ethanol Producer Magazine)  Chromatin Inc., a leading provider of innovative crop breeding technology, sorghum seed products and feedstocks, and Aemetis Inc., an advanced fuels and renewable chemicals company, have announced that they have entered into …

(Green Car Congress)  Researchers at the Naval Air Warfare Center, Weapons Division (NAWCWD) at China Lake have developed a process for the synthesis of high energy density renewable fuels through the selective dimerization of α-pinene, …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Could a switch to biofuels make super-dense JP-10 military aviation fuels affordable? Could F18A Super Hornets add payload or extend range?
Currently reserved for tactical missiles because of cost, biofuels could …

by Tina Casey (Clean Technica)  As pressure on the Obama Administration to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline ramps up, algae biofuel is emerging as yet another domestic energy source that undercuts every argument for the …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …Nature hasn’t (so far) selected algae for long life. Generally, the little one-celled growth factories survive by blooming slightly faster than they get eaten. Making a world that’s safe for …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  22 projects around the world show the multi-faceted promise of algae.  Concrete, polyurethane, bioplastics, cosmetics and, oh, fuels — so many big things to make from algae, it’s become a …

(The Business Journal)  A planned biodiesel production facility will begin operating next year thanks to a $6-million grant approved this week by the California Energy Commission.
The facility is one of six projects throughout the state …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  … As we highlighted this week in the Digest, Chromatin and Pacific Ethanol announced that they have entered into a multi-year agreement to produce, deliver and use locally grown sorghum in …

by Jim Lane (Biobased DIgest)  Bringing your biobased technology forward through the Valley of Death may require a bridge over troubled waters.  Here are partners worth knowing.
… Bioenergy commercialization is long, expensive and risky. Derisking …

by Mary Solecki (California Progress Report)  …And I think that is what’s at the heart of the biofuels movement: doing more with less. How can we deliver our energy needs from domestic sources and still deliver …

by David R. Baker (San Francisco Chronicle)  The oil industry is mounting a concerted push to roll back biofuel mandates, both in Washington and Sacramento.
At the federal level, oil lobbyists have joined with environmentalists and ranchers — a …

(Arcadia Biosciences)  New Tree Crops To Increase Productivity While Preserving Natural Resources and Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Arcadia Biosciences, Inc., an agricultural technology company focused on developing technologies and products that benefit the environment and human …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …Environmental Entrepreneurs launched a new Web site at www.fuelinggrowth.org, as a clearinghouse for information on how clean fuel companies are driving economic growth, includes reports that examine the growth and …

(PR NewsWire/Yahoo! News)  Top 5 States For Advanced Biofuel Companies: Calif., Ill., Colo., Texas and Iowa; New Web Site at www.FuelingGrowth.org Documents Impact of Growing Industry
California is home to nearly 30 advanced biofuel companies, but dozens of …

(Nanowerk.com)  A collaborative study by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI), a bioenergy research center led by Berkeley Lab, and the Idaho National Laboratory (INL) has shown that an ionic liquid …

(Menafn /The Record/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services)  A seed producer is recruiting area farmers to produce sorghum, a grain crop also known as milo, for use in ethanol production, including at the Pacific Ethanol Inc. plant in …

(Bren School of Environmental Science and Management)  New study shows solar power is not only better in terms of energy efficiency, land use, and greenhouse gas emissions – but is cost competitive, too
…As electric vehicles (EVs) …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  One of biofuels’ most-celebrated technologies falters; the struggle to raise capital claims a high-profile victim.
…The company had been known for its awesomely promising technology, leisurely pace towards commercialization compared to …

by Andrew Herndon (Bloomberg)  Aemetis Inc., a U.S. ethanol producer, idled production at its plant in Keyes, California, citing “unfavorable market conditions for corn ethanol” and will upgrade the facility to also produce fuel from …

by Danny King (AutoBlog)  Count Pearson Fuels, and the state of California for that matter, is among proponents of boosting ethanol content in light-duty vehicle fuel. San Diego-based Person received a $1.35-million grant to add …

(U.S. Energy Initiatives)  U.S. Enerby Initiatives Corp announced that is has signed a Letter of Intent to form a Joint Venture that will provide the tools, experience and support to build several small scale biodiesel …

(University of California-Davis)  Chemists at the University of California, Davis, have engineered blue-green algae to grow chemical precursors for fuels and plastics — the first step in replacing fossil fuels as raw materials for the …

by Susanne Retka Schill  (Ethanol Producer Magazine)  Nebraska now has about 80 flex-fuel pumps with the addition of two new ones at the Stop N Go in Hartington, Neb., and in California, Pearson Fuels just …

(Department of Energy)  As part of the Obama Administration’s all-of-the-above strategy to develop every available source of American energy, the U.S. Department of Energy today announced more than $10 million to five projects in California, …

(University of California-San Diego/Biodiesel Magazine)  Biologists at UC San Diego have demonstrated for the first time that marine algae can be just as capable as fresh water algae in producing biofuels.
The scientists genetically engineered marine …

(Acclaimed Movers and Storage/Biodiesel Magazine)  …Acclaimed Movers and Storage, Los Angeles’ leading luxury, residential and commercial moving company, is doing just that with the conversion of all of its trucks to an ecofriendly biodiesel fuel.
…As …

by Jim Lane (BioInvest Digest)  An obscure EPA ruling may change the economics of ethanol production, forever — who wins, who loses, what’s the investor’s bottom line?
Just before Christmas, the EPA issued a final rule, …

by Susanne Retka Schill (Ethanol Producer Magazine)    Researchers at the Joint BioEnergy Institute are exploring new ways to meet the challenge of recalcitrant cellulosic feedstocks and lower the cost of biomass-based biofuels. The group recently published …

(EScienceNews.com)  Galactan is a polymer of galactose, a six-carbon sugar that can be readily fermented by yeast into ethanol and is a target of interest for researchers in advanced biofuels produced from cellulosic biomass. Now …

(ScienceCodex.com)  …Pectic compounds decorated with β-1,4-galactan (a chain of six-carbon sugars) are of considerable interest to the biofuels industry, because six-carbon sugars are readily converted into ethanol (biofuel) by fermenting microorganisms. A new study published …

(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 Erin Voegele (Ethanol Producer Magazine) On Dec. 7, the Oregon Environmental Quality Commission elected to begin implementation of the state’s Clean Fuels Program. A spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality confirmed the commission …

(XS4Green.com)  …John Benemann, Ian Woertz, and Tryg Lundquist, MicroBio Engineering, Inc. (Walnut Creek, CA) and California State Polytechnic University (San Luis Obispo, CA), present the results of an engineering and economic study of vegetable oil …

by Kristin Macey (CDFA Division of Measurement Standards/Imperial Valley News)  The Department of Food and Agriculture’s Division of Measurement Standards (DMS) has tested samples of a new 20 percent biodiesel blend fuel made from algae …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Next-gen renewable oils producer achieves first linear scale-up to 500,000 liter fermenters — clears path for large commercial production volumes.
…To date, no next-generation producer had successfully achieved linear scale-up in …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  Policy, finance, technology, feedstocks, markets, prices, opposition.  Here’s what’s on your mind, as the critical 2013 deployment year for biofuels looms.
So here are 15 burning questions as suggested by various …