Other News

In California Envirepel Energy plans to reopen the company’s first renewable energy facility after it temporarily closed in June last year to deal with a shareholder proxy effort. The company hopes the facility, which generates 2.5MW of power from biomass resources, will be operational again by the middle of April 2010. The plant, which was built in the centre of a commercial business park,…
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In North Carolina, US, the city of Charlotte’s first biomass power plant is due to be complete by 31 December. The North Carolina Utilities Commission has approved a $12 million (€8.87 million) 3.2MW proposed facility by Orbit Energy Filings with the commission that Orbit intends to sell the energy produced, a total of 23 gigawatt-hours annually, to Duke Energy for the next 20…
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A new anaerobic digestion (AD) facility in Suffolk, UK, will convert business food waste into bioenergy to heat homes and power cars. The facility which will be the first of its kind to generate renewable energy for the gas grid, will be sited on land owned by Southwold-based independent brewery Adnams, which will use the facility to recycle its brewery waste. Food waste will be sourced from…
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The Growing Power Hairy Hill biogas facility’s plans to expand are being supported by the Canadian Government. Expansion of the existing demonstration-scale biogas plant represents the first phase in developing a larger integrated biorefinery capable of producing products such as green power, bio-fertiliser and fuel ethanol. The project includes the construction of new biogas capacity, the…
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The devastating earthquake that hit Haiti on 12 January has meant a desperate lack of sanitation facilities but now Brazilian group Viva Rio is turning human excrement into biogas for use as fuel. The Kay Nou camp in Port-au-Prince is one of many to have flourished in the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince since the earthquake. The camps are absorbing many of the estimated 1 million people made…
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A sewage work upgrade project planned by UK utility provider Thames Water will also introduce an anaerobic digestion process, where solid waste is broken down in enclosed tanks in the absence of oxygen. This process forms biogas which can be used to generate renewable energy, and it is intended to produce enough energy to power the entire site. Thames Water began the £85 million (€94.7…
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Vancouver-based Fortress Paper will buy a disused pulp mill in Quebec and spend $153 million (€111 million) to reopen it as a biomass plant. A 25MW power plant fed by waste from its operations and from an extensive local network of chip and other biomass suppliers is expected to begin supplying electricity by late 2012. The company further plans to begin production of dissolving grade…
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In the US the newly-passed Forest Biomass Supply Agreements Bill (SB 6236) will allow the Washington State Department of Natural Resources (DNR) to enter into long-term agreements to supply forest biomass from trust lands for energy projects/purposes. There are approximately 3 million acres of state trust land in Washington. The bill goes hand-in-hand with HB 2165, which was passed in 2009 to…
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Bioenergy International expo & conference is organised by leading publication Biofuels International (BI) magazine, and here Jan Stambasky (JS), executive board member of the European Biogas Association, provides an insight into what he will be speaking about at the event in Prague, Czech Republic, on 5-6 May. Founded just a year ago the association is growing fast, echoing the development…
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A new project has been launched in France to produce biodiesel and bio-kerosene. BioTfueL is composed of five French partners and German engineering company Uhde. With a global reliance on energy and the need to increase our consumption of renewable resources, the BioTfueL scheme will be the first to meet these requirements with a technically innovative solution. Uhde has set aside €112.7…
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Vietnam state president Nguyen Minh Triet attended a ceremony for the construction of an ethanol plant in Minh Hung commune, Bu Dang district, the southern province of Binh Phuoc. The $81 million (€60 million) ethanol plant, which has the capacity to produce 100 million litres of ethanol annually, will utilise 240,000 tonnes of dried cassava. The company hopes that around 15,000 households…
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In Sao Paulo, Brazil, Grupo Bertin is to purchase 71% of sugar and ethanol manufacturing company Infinity Bio-Energy for an undisclosed sum. After having sold its meat department to JBS SA, Bertin transferred into the renewable energies sector. The agreement between the two companies is part of Infinity’s judicial recovery proceedings and Bertin will be issued shares as part of the…
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Brick-by-brick the wall standing in the way of biodiesel production is finally being removed. The US Senate voted 62-36 on Wednesday 12 March to pass a tax bill that included a one-year extension of the $1-a-gallon (€0.72) biodiesel tax credit, retroactive to 1 January. When the tax credit expired on 31 December profitable biodiesel operations became a distant reality. The House still must…
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