by Gary Parsons (Key.aero)  Airbus and Brazilian carrier TAM Airlines are trialling a new biofuel that could reduce the carbon footprint by up to 80%, the companies claim.
An Airbus A320 has been converted to use …

(Alibaba.com)  State-owned China National Offshore Oil Corp (CNOOC) has sold out its first batch of biodiesel on the island province of Hainan, the company said on Wednesday.   The fuel was blended into normal diesel and …

by Alan Yonan Jr. (Star Advertiser)  …As the algae companies slowly move forward with their research and development, however, another source of renewable energy is blossoming — literally — on the Big Island. Hawaii Pure …

(The Phnom Penh Post) NTC Jacam Energy has halted plans to produce biodiesel because of a lack of raw materials, particularly jatropha, according to the firm’s chairman.
The firm had planned to more than triple its …

(Digital Journal/Marketwire)  AMG Bioenergy Resources Holdings Ltd. (The Company) announced that it has just signed a Letter of Intent with China Zhejiang Biodiesel Co, Ltd (“CZBC”) to acquire the Eucalyptus and Jatropha Plantation assets that CZBC …

(Financial Express)  Shifting focus to its biodiesel programme, Thailand is planning to open large scale jatropha seed based plants to produce the much needed commodity.
Analysts said long-neglected jatropha ready for a starring role and a …

(PR Newswire)  SG Biofuels, a bioenergy crop company developing and producing elite seeds of Jatropha, today announced it has established a strategic partnership with Bunge North America, the North American operating arm of Bunge Limited, to …

(Oil and Gas Journal)  Repsol and Group KUO of Mexico City have formed a 50-50 company based in Mexico to develop a biofuels business based on jatropha curcas, an oil seed with a high content …

(Seventh Space Interactive)  Jatropha curcas L. is promoted as an important non-edible biodiesel crop worldwide.   Jatropha oil, which is a triacylglycerol, can be directly blended with petro-diesel or transesterified with methanol and used as biodiesel. …

by Joelle Dent (Biofuels Digest-Asia)  “Why wait for top-down solutions? Providing energy in a bottom-up way instead has a lot to recommend it. There is no need to wait for politicians or utilities to act. The …

by Miyuki Iiyama and James Onchieku (SciDev)  It sounds too good to be true: a biofuel crop that grows on semi-arid lands and degraded soils, replaces fossil fuels in developing countries and brings huge injections of cash …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …Hawaii is a code word meaning “paradise” not only to sun-starved tourists, but to bioenergy developers. It has all the hallmarks of the “perfect market”.
1. A state that generates no …

(Chicago Breaking Business/Dow Jones Newswire)  Boeing Co., in cooperation with Air China Ltd. and others, plans to test a commercial-jet biofuel in China produced from a locally grown plant by the middle of 2011-part of an …

(All Africa)  …CREEC – Centre for Research in Energy and Energy Conservation is an institution doing research in renewable energy (Biomass stoves and gasifiers); Biofuels; Solar PV and energy efficiency in households, industry and institutions.
Obviously, …

(Times of India)  Beginning later this month, the jatropha crop will be planted across 30,000 acres in the arid districts of Bankura, Birbhum, West Midnapore and Purulia over the next 15 years. Around 10 lakh …

(SG Biofuels)  SG Biofuels, a bioenergy crop company developing and producing elite seeds of Jatropha, today announced it has established a proprietary technology for large-scale Jatropha hybrid seed production. Hybrid seeds result in greater yield, uniformity …

(Journal of Peasant Studies)   In this collection we ask a number of questions emerging out of the new agrarian political economy created by the ‘biofuel complex’. Together the papers offer perspectives from political economy, political …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  …Earlier this year, SG Biofuels and Life Technologies formed a strategic alliance, and recently announced they have completed the sequence of the Jatropha genome.
The company’s integrated breeding and biotechnology approach …

(MarketWatch)  …Carbon2Green is currently conducting a pilot project in the Bandundu region of DRC and wants to achieve a funding enabling it, by the end of the year, to proceed with the hiring of over …

by Andy Reid (Sun Sentinel)  A biofuel plant offering renewable energy could become a never-ending headache for neighborhoods west of Delray Beach, worried residents argued Thursday.
Pressure from residents helped persuade the county Zoning Commission Thursday to …

by Joelle Dent (Biofuels Digest)  …“If  there were a medal for valor in biofuels it would certainly go to the board of D1 Oils, which has now had to repel its third take-over attempt by …

(The Hindu)  The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University has proposed to initiate and establish bio-fuel plantations with financial assistance of Central Government.
…“Increasing interest is shown towards the utility of Tree Borne Oilseeds (TBOs) like jatropha, pungam, …

(SG Biofuels)  Life Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: LIFE), a provider of innovative life science solutions and SG Biofuels, Inc., a bioenergy crop company, announced they have completed sequencing the Jatropha curcas genome to 100x coverage, using the …

(The Assam Tribune)  The D1 Williamson Magor Bio Fuel Ltd has developed jatropha plantation over 51,000 hectares of land and the plantation carried out by the company in 2007 has started yielding sub-commercial crops … …

(AFP)  Mozambique’s state fuel company has partnered with the private sector to invest 19 million dollars (14 million euros) in biofuel production, state media reported on Monday.
National supplier Petromoc, Portuguese fuel company Galp and biodiesel producer …

During October 26-28, 2010 BEI International, LLC and Agroipsa Farms will be hosting the Jatropha World Honduras event at the Agroipsa Farm in Choluteca, Honduras.  At this event you will be shown a real 550 …

(SG Biofuels)  SG Biofuels, Inc., a bioenergy crop company focused on the development and production of elite seeds of Jatropha, today announced plans to establish the world’s most advanced Jatropha research and development center located in …

by Prabha Jagannathan  (Economic Times)  In a significant implication for the country’s biofuel policy, a specialised arm of the United Nations has warned that the developing countries should not buy blindly into the ‘jatropha for …

(TheBioenergySite.com)  Waterland supply its Jatropha Oil for use as feedstock for aviation fuel.
Waterland International signed a Memorandum Of Understanding with a leading supplier of biofuels for the aviation industry.
Waterland will be making its first delivery of …

By Amy R. Remo (Philippine Daily Inquirer)   State-owned PNOC-Alternative Fuels Corp. has forged an agreement with Dole Philippines and Toyota Tsusho Corp. to put up pilot jatropha plantations in Sarangani province.

Under the memorandum of understanding, the …

(Biofuels International)  After recently acquiring joint venture operations in Central Java, Indonesia, renewable energy company Jatoil has secured its first sale of a commercial quantity of crude jatropha oil.
The sale is under a new four-year …

(EurekAlert)  …In their article, “Global mapping of Jatropha curcas yield based on response of fitness to present and future climate,” Antonio Trabucco and colleagues point out that Jatropha grows in a wide range of climatic …

(Environment-Expert.com)  VEPOWER Limited has entered into an exclusivity agreement with Jatropha Africa with the goal of financing the Company’s 50,000 hectare plantation in Ghana, West Africa.  VEPOWER will thus secure more than 40,000 tonnes of …

by Antionio Trabucco, Wouter M. J. Achten, et al.  (Global Change Biology)  Although acclaimed as a biofuel crop with high potential to sustainably replace fossil fuels, Jatropha curcas L. remains a poorly studied plant. Reliable yield assessments with …

(MarketWire)  Mission NewEnergy Ltd., a vertically integrated biodiesel refiner, and one of the world’s largest Jatropha plantation companies, is pleased to announce that it has aggregated, crushed and shipped commercial quantities of Jatropha oil from its …

(CSIR India/The Economic Times)  …The Central Salt Marine Chemicals and Research Institute (CSMCRI) located in Bhavnagar district of the state has hit upon a process by which biodegradable polymers can be developed at almost zero-cost …

by Michael Whitaker and Garvin Heath (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)  This life cycle assessment of Jatropha biodiesel production and use evaluates the net greenhouse gas (GHG) emission (not considering land-use change), net energy value (NEV), and net petroleum …

The world’s largest tea producer McLeod Russel India Limited expects its investment in D1 Williamson Magor Biofuel Ltd  to start bearing fruit within the next one year when the first crop (jatropha) is expected, a …

(Biofuels Digest)  …Closely watched in Asia, the ongoing crisis is likely to be viewed in retrospect as an energy tipping point, emblematic of the case for biofuels and the decline of the world oil and …

(Boeing)  Boeing and PetroChina, together with representatives of the Chinese energy sector and the global aviation industry, May 27, 2010, announced the signing of an agreement to evaluate establishing a sustainable aviation biofuels industry in China. The strategic …

(Environmental Protection Agency)  President’s Environmental Youth Awards (PEYA) Winner:  Adarsha Shivakumar, Apoorva Rangan, and Callie Roberts   Pleasant Hill and Martinez, California   -   The Project Jatropha Team promotes the cultivation of Jatropha curcas, a perennial shrub with …

(AllAfrica)  A planned biofuel project in Magarini District (Kenya) has put Malindi County Council and ecologists on a collision course.
This follows a request by the National Environment Management Authority for residents’ views on the project, …

(Biofuels International)   LL Biofuels Namibia is set to produce its own biodiesel after signing an agreement that will see the cultivation of jatropha on 300,000 hectares of land located in the north-eastern Caprivi Region, Namibia.
The …

(New World Energy)  Indonesia based PT New World Energy (NWE) and leading multi-national appliance manufacturer, Bosch and Siemens Home Appliance Group (BSH) of Germany recently partnered together on a pilot project to bring clean cooking …

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 …

(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 …

(PSFK Conference New York)  Following Haiti’s devastating earthquake, new methodologies for organic and economic growth quickly began to sprout. Supported by American bio-diesel company, Sirona Fuels and the Sirona Cares Foundation, Haitian farmers began working …

(AllAfrica.com)  Sun Biofuels, a British firm that has invested in jatropha plantations in Tanzania, envisages offering full time employment to 1,500 Tanzanians in its jatropha biofuel project at Kisarawe.
Of the 1,500 people, 400 are already …

by Vikas Bhargava/Ahmedabad (Outlook India)  In a breakthrough, Bhavnagar-based Central Salt and Marine Chemical Research Institute (CSMCRI) has discovered microbe from Indian waters to manufacture bio-degradable plastic using a by product of Jatropha plant.
“We have …

General Motors Co.  announced on March 30, 2010, a five-year partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to help develop the potential of the jatropha plant as a sustainable biofuel energy crop.  Traditionally considered …

by Mokagedi Gaotlhobogwe (MmegiOnline) Coal-rich Botswana has announced its ambitious plans to reduce carbon emissions by setting up a 50 million-litre per year bio-diesel processing plant to be fed from jatropha (oil seed) plantations by 2012. …

(Focus Taiwan)  Taiwan is suggesting its South Pacific allies plant Jatropha trees to help solve energy shortages.
…”Jatropha is the recipe for green energy, ” said Tao Wen-lung, secretary-general of Taiwan’s International Cooperation and Development Fund, …

by Gary Pinnell (Highlands Today)   In April 2008, Congressman Tim Mahoney told county commissioners that Highlands was poised to become “the biofuels capital of America.” They were expected to produce hundreds of jobs and millions …

SG Biofuels, a sustainable plant oil company specializing in the development of Jatropha as a low-cost, sustainable source of oil, today announced it has developed the first large-scale Jatropha community-farming initiative in Central America and …

(TheBioenergySite)  Daimler AG has started a new project for the cultivation of the biodiesel raw material jatropha in the south of India and the seedlings for the first 100 hectares have been planted. 
The company is …

by Craig Gima (Star Bulletin)  If the vision of father and son farmers Christian and James Twigg-Smith becomes reality, acres of now-fallow sugar cane land will be growing crops again.  But rather than producing food, …

by Aaron Pickering (KOLD) …The experiment, National Lab Pathfinder-Cells 3, is aimed at learning whether microgravity can help jatropha curcas plant cells grow faster to produce biofuel, or renewable fuel derived from biological matter. Jatropha …

China’s poisonous jatropha shrub is showing promise as biofuel and could boost the country’s efforts to reduce dependency on imported crude oil.
In the past, farmers planted the poisonous perennial only as a barrier to ward …

SG Biofuels, a sustainable plant oil company specializing in the development of Jatropha as a low-cost, sustainable source of oil, today announced the launch of JMax 100, a proprietary cultivar of Jatropha optimized for growing …

by Peter Sur (West Hawaii Today)  A new biodiesel plant that will produce 2.6 million gallons a year is planned for Keaau. …Now an undeveloped property, a little more than a year from now the …

(TheBioenergySite)   Daimler AG has started a new project for the cultivation of the biodiesel raw material jatropha in the south of India and the seedlings for the first 100 hectares have been planted.
 
The company …

(Earth Times)  UK-based Carbon Credited Farming congratulated NASA on the successful launch of the Endeavour Space Shuttle today. It blasted off from Kennedy Space Center taking with it new scientific experiments, including a study of …

by Melody M. Aguiba (Manila Bulletin)  A P100-million Vehicle Testing Research Laboratory (VTRL) has been put up to test the technical viability of the jatropha methyl ester (JME) which has so far gone through successful …

by Patrick Rial (Bloomberg)  Toyota Tsusho Corp., the trading affiliate of Toyota Motor Corp., plans to start growing jatropha next year as it bets that higher crop yields and oil prices will make the plant …

Joelle Dent (Biofuels Digest)  In India, a variety of reports have been published on the medicinal properties of jatropha curcus, most recently a report in the African Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology that found that …

by Jim Lane  (Biofuels Digest) In Australia, Jatoil announced a joint venture to develop high-value crops that will be planted alongside its oilseed bearing jatropha trees, resulting in a dual income stream to boost returns from …

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest)  In California, jatropha pioneer SG Biofuels announced a strategic alliance with Life Technologies Corporation, a provider of innovative life science solutions, to advance the development of Jatropha as a sustainable …

Mission NewEnergy Limited (“Mission”) a biodiesel refiner and one of the world’s largest Jatropha plantation companies by acreage announced that it has entered into a binding five-year biodiesel Supply Agreement with Valero Marketing and Supply …

by Halima Abdallah  (East African)   The National Forestry Research Institute has embarked on a project to test the viability of biodiesel from jatropha, a drought resistant crop.

According to a senior researcher at the institute, Dr …

by Robert P. Walzer (New York Times) 
A Brazilian start-up is testing the possibility of implementing a large-scale biofuels project using jatropha, a family of hardy, succulent plants.
The company, BioVentures Brasil, is getting $1 million from …

by Joel Hood (Chicago Tribune)  Some time ago, Brian Sievers picked up a crazy notion that one simple idea might just change the world. So for the last two school years, the popular science teacher …

(AllAfrica Editorial)  … Rwanda entered a groundbreaking agreement with two international firms Eco-fuels Global LLC, from the United States and Eco Positive Ltd from the UK.  The two firms will invest $250 million to grow Jatropha …

Published by Tamil Nadu Agriculture University, Jatropha Production Technology gives straight-forward answers to frequently asked questions about cultivating and using jatropha curcas for commercial applications.  READ MORE

While it is hard to untangle the impact of the global financial downturn from general disenchantment with jatropha itself, it is fair to say that the investment gotten way ahead of the plant science!
But if …

Biofuel Africa Ltd. has begun commercial production of jatropha oil, the first company in West Africa to move from growing and selling jatropha fruits and seeds to production and sale of jatropha oil on a …

by Joelle Brink (Biofuels Digest)  Despite the Indian Government’s official go-slow policy on Jatropha, several Indian states are now planting the crop in a big way. These are not the old style monoculture plantations that …

(CCTV) After producing aircraft components for Boeing for more than two decades, China is expected to become the US airplane manufacturer’s research and development (R&D) partner for environmentally friendly technologies that will make the aviation industry …

(Discover)  …(A)recent series of articles from Nature News feels like a public service, as the articles investigate the scientific and economic state of affairs for four different kinds of biofuels.  
The first article focused on the …

(UPI)  The Egyptian government is interested in cultivating plants with biofuel potential.  The Egyptian state Wikalat Al-Anbaa’ Al-Sharq Al-’awsat news agency reported Saturday that the jatropha plant is of particular interest to the country’s Ministry …

(Time)  Each of Burma’s states and divisions was ordered to dedicate around 500,000 acres (202,000 hectares) to physic-nut (jatropha) cultivation, pressuring many ordinary citizens into a massive forced-planting campaign, according to human-rights groups. … Puzzlingly, however, …

by Nick Wadhams/Kibwezi  (Time)  Everyone in Kibwezi, a village in southeastern Kenya parched by four years of drought, remembers the promises. It all started in 2000, when the government started preaching the word about a …

by  Amy R. Remo  (Philippine Daily Inquirer)  Trans-Asia Oil and Energy Development Corp. has dropped its alternative fuels operations, citing the problems it encountered with its pilot jatropha project.  “We found out early in the game that …

(M&C Business)  Taiwan’s state-run Chinese Petroleum Corp (CPC) signed an agreement Wednesday to plant 100,000 hectares of crops for biofuels in Indonesia.  … Under the MOU, in the next five years, CPC is due to …

The study “Jatropha! – A socio-economic pitfall for Mozambique” prepared by UNAC and JA for Swiss Aid (referred in the following to as Swiss Aid Study) provides a very one-sided and negative picture of the …

In Honduras, BEI International has demonstrated its mechanical harvesting of jatropha at Agroipsa Farm in Choluteca, Honduras this month, harvesting 550 hectares. “If your field conditions are accommodating you can harvest about one hectare per …

by Happy Lazaro (Arusha Times)  The United States of America has given Tanzania Tsh.6.5 billion (US Dollars 5.4 million) for development of Jatropha farming in rural areas.  The American government issued the money through its …

(Reuters) Egypt plans to expand the cultivation of the jatropha plant to produce biofuels, the state news agency said.  The agency quoted an Agriculture Ministry official as stating that 200 feddans (84 hectares) in the …

(Business Standard)  Emami Biotech, a part of the Rs 2,000-crore Emami Group, will invest Rs 400 crore in a plantation project over five years in Oromia in Ethiopia. The company will engage in plantation of …

(Discover)  The oil-rich and weedy plant jatropha has been hailed as the most promising source of biofuel on the planet, and one airline has already begun testing a jatropha-derived fuel in its jumbo jets. But …

by Eliza Strickland  (Discover) Can a tough and weedy shrub solve all of our energy problems and stop runaway climate change?  Don’t be ridiculous—of course it can’t. But that, briefly, was the hype surrounding Jatropha …

byDavid Biello   (Yale Environment 360)    Biofuels – made from algae and non-food plants – are emerging as a potentially viable alternative to conventional jet fuels. Although big challenges remain, the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions could …

Ag-Oil Announces Plan to Build and Operate a Pilot-Scale Non-Food Oilseed Biodiesel Production Facility and Algae-based Integrated Biorefinery Ag-Oil, has announced its plan to work with United Environment and Energy (UEE), Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), …

Dr. Charles Fishel, Chairman of Abundant Biofuels Corporation, noted that “There are about 100 biodiesel refineries operating below capacity and another 47 idle refineries in the United States, alone.” To help solve this problem, Abundant …

by Robert Ndong, Mireille Montrejaud-Vignoles, Oliver Saint Girons, Benoit Gabrielle, Roland Pirot, marjorie Domergue and Caroline Sablayrolles (Global Change Biology Bioenergy)   In recent years, liquid biofuels for transport have benefited from significant political support due to …

by Rudy A. Fernandez, Checkbiotech      Rural households can increase their income by growing jatropha.  Attesting to this is a study done by the University of the Philippines Los Baños-College of Forestry and Natural Resources …

Jatropha has been labeled the most likely crop for future biofuels. However, it suffers from low seed yield and high plant growth. A comprehensive series of trials has been conducted in Indonesia using AuStar’s  paclobutrazol to …

Green Gold Ray Energies, Inc., aims to double its jatropha crude oil output by 2011 through continuous increase yields of jatropha feedstocks, while the company increases its jatropha plantations. The jatropha plantations are expanding from …

Mexico and countries across Central American have great potential to grow their biofuels industries as governments recognize the opportunity as a chance to stimulate economic growth in rural areas. Biofuels Markets Mexico & Central America …

Following highly successful editions in Bangkok, Singapore and New Delhi, the 4th annual Biofuels Markets & Jatropha Asia will take place in Jakarta.  Over 40 leading biofuels and jatropha thought leaders will provide expert insight …