News

China is the global leader in methanol use and has recently expanded methanol production capacity, according to new figures from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA). The official energy statistics from the US government come from the EIA. Since the early 2000s, China’s methanol consumption in fuel products has risen sharply and is estimated to have been more than 500,000 barrels…
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More than 20 senators pressed President Donald Trump to reject requests from oil refiners to overhaul the Renewable Fuel Standard programme.   Oil refiners have requested that the US government change the programme to push the burden of meeting annual biofuels use requirements downstream, a move that has been met with criticism and backlash from ethanol producers, fuel retailers and…
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Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have approved a resolution calling on the European Commission to phase out the use of vegetable oil for biofuels, ideally by 2020. The resolution has received support from MEPs across the political spectrum. It calls for an end to incentives for rapeseed, palm oil and soy based biofuels, claiming the ingredients cause deforestation and peatland damage.…
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Petróleo Brasileiro SA, aka Petrobras, has voiced strong opposition to the Brazilian government led initiative to increase the use of biofuels, according to Reuters. The news comes shortly after state controlled Petrobras completely withdrew from the biofuels sector. Following calls from the Brazilian government for public feedback and comment on its RenovaBio program to boost biofuels,…
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Aemetis has won a $6 million (€5.5 million) contract to provide biodiesel to Indian government owned oil companies. The Universal Biofuels subsidiary of Aemetis won the bumper contract to supply the Indian government-owned Oil Marketing Companies (OMC) through a public tender process. India’s total diesel market stands at roughly 25 billion gallons a year, but less than 250 million…
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The US National Biodiesel Board (NBB) has testified before Congress on the harm caused by biodiesel imports from Indonesia. At a public hearing at the US Department of Commerce, held in response to executive order 13786 calling for an omnibus report on high trade deficits, NBB described the damage done by the increasing volumes of unfairly traded biodiesel imports. NBB suggests that the trade…
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The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC) has said it is not investigating biofuels credits, despite eight Democrat senators having called for Carl Icahn’s activity in the market to be scrutinised. According to an article from Reuters, the news agency gained access to a letter saying the CFTC was not looking to investigate Icahn. Icahn, an adviser to US President Donald Trump, has…
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A controversial new study claims that using corn for biofuels comes with greater environmental costs and fewer benefits than using it for corn. The study from researchers at the University of Illinois and Urbana-Champaign has been published in the journal Earth’s Future. It aims to determine whether corn is better utilised as a biofuel or as a food source, addressing the food vs. fuel…
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German biofuels producer CropEnergies has reported strong first quarter results. In the company’s statement for the first quarter of the current financial year 2017/18 , CropEnergies said revenues increased by 38% to €231 million, compared to €168 million the year before. The main reasons for the growth were the “significantly increased sales volumes of bioethanol as well as…
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Scientists in Russia have used high-resolution mass spectrometry to determine the composition of a biofuel obtained from the microalgae Spirulina platensis. Two biofuel fractions obtained using a special algal mass treatment method were studied, allowing the researchers to prove algae biofuel has little in common with oil in terms of composition. Published in the Journal of Mass Spectrometry,…
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US biofuels producer Poet has announced that its Marion, Ohio-based bioethanol facility has expanded its production capacity from 70 million gallons per year to 150 million gallons per year. The project will also increase production of dried distillers grains from the current 178,000 tons annually to 360,000 tons, according to the company. With the groundbreaking, site work has officially begun,…
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Scania is set to deliver 140 buses to Norway, all of which can run on biodiesel and 70 of which have hybrid technology. The buses will be used in the public transport system of Kristiansand, a town south-west of the Norwegian capital Oslo. “This is an example of Scania’s wide range of sustainable transport solutions,” says Karin Rådström, Senior Vice President and…
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Scientists from Michigan State University (MSU) are looking for new algae-based technologies to capture power plant emissions and convert them into a range of products including biofuels and other chemicals. “We’ve been running bioenergy experiments with algae on campus for over a decade,” said Wei Lao, associate professor of biosystems and agriculture engineering at…
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Several environmental groups have handed over a petition to the UN’s aviation body, ICAO, urging the agency to scrap its plan for the widespread use of biofuels in planes. Co-ordinated by the conservation group Rainforest Rescue, the petition has been signed by 172,000 citizens from across the globe. It argues that using biofuels on a large scale will inevitably accelerate palm oil…
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