Other News

South Korea will spend €208 million over the next ten years to create new seaweed forests that can help increase the country's ability to produce biomass energy. The plan calls for 35,000 hectares of seaweed forest to be created in waters in the east and south coasts and near Jeju Island that can produce up to 1.56 billion litres of ethanol per year by 2020. The total is equivalent to…
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British Columbia-based Lignol Energy, a technology company in the cellulosic ethanol and biorefining sector, recently announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Lignol Innovations, was awarded €2.6 million to produce cellulosic ethanol and other biochemical products from under-used forest resources. Lignol will use the funding to support production runs at its industrial-scale biorefinery…
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Automotive fuels supplier FCL Petroleum has signed an agreement with Petrochem Carless releasing FCL biodiesel to the UK market. The advanced fuels will be pre-blended biodiesel made from fully sustainable sources. Blending will take place at the Petrochem Carless refinery at Harwich where blends from B5 (5% sustainable fuel) to B50 (50% sustainable fuel) will be produced. The announcement…
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BP has called for the California Air Resources Board (CARB) to end US import duties on Brazil's sugarcane-based ethanol. The letter has highlighted BP’s belief that ‘sugarcane-based ethanol will be the lowest-carbon biofuel available in the first years of the Low-Carbon Fuel Standard’. By supporting the end of import taxes on Brazil's ethanol, the letter states, California would…
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Australian biofuels producer Mission NewEnergy has raised €2.7 million from international investors. In conjunction with the recently announced €12.8 million debt financing, Mission has sufficient funds to complete its second biodiesel facility. This capital raise also provides Mission with further operational flexibility. Mission will issue 24,137,931 units raising €2,600,000. Mission…
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In anticipation of the second annual Biofuels International expo & conference on 27-28 May in Amsterdam, a pre-conference webinar is being held to discuss algae production trends, updates on government biofuel targets, demand for algae and commercial opportunities. The webinar is scheduled for Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 3pm GMT (UK) 9am EST (New York) and 8am CDT (Houston). For full details…
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France-based oil and gas company Total has invested in US renewable hydrocarbons producer Gevo. Gevo is commercialising technology to produce renewable jet fuel and renewable, fungible hydrocarbons such as petrol blendstocks, and renewable diesel blendstocks. Gevo’s commercialisation approach includes retrofitting existing ethanol facilities to produce hydrocarbon products readily used in…
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Panda Ethanol’s subsidiary in Hereford, Texas, has sold its unfinished 115 million gallon per year ethanol plants to creditors for €18.7 million. Panda put the plant up for sale and filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy in later January 2009. The ethanol plant was destined to be a unique operation in Hereford, unofficially known as ‘the beef capital of the world’, due to it being…
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State senators in Iowa have passed a standard that would require all diesel fuel sold in the state to contain a 5% biodiesel blend. Iowa will become the eighth state in the US to introduce standards mandating the use of domestically produced biodiesel, should it be approved by the State House. State officials claim that the biodiesel requirement will drive demand for 45 million gallons of the…
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An ethanol tank explosion at Bartow Ethanol Florida has led to the plant being closed until further investigation. The explosion was in a 50,000-gallon tank that contained about 1,000 gallons of ethanol, says David Wyant, a spokesman for the Bartow Police Department. The fire following the explosion forced the evacuation of employees at Bartow Ethanol and at three other nearby companies -…
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The Bulgarian government has taken steps to draft new renewable energy legislation, due to unsatisfactory statutory regulations currently in place. The State Agency for Metrological and Technical Surveillance (SAMTS), which regulates the sector, has called for the rethink citing the slow down in the alternative fuels market as one of the main causes. Representatives from the ethanol industry…
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New York State-based Buffalo Biodiesel has completed the expansion of its processing facilities, increasing its capacity from 1 to 5 million gallons of biodiesel annually. By doing so the subsidiary of alternative energy company HydroGenetics has increased its production capacity by 500%. Such a move indicates that HydroGenetics anticipates the already solid demand for biodiesel will…
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The Canadian federal government’s ecoEnergy for Biofuels programme is set to offer €45 million in incentives to the GreenField Ethanol plant in Ontario. The 35 million gallons a year (mgy) ethanol plant based in Chatham, which also produces 24 mgy of industrial alcohols, would contribute to an undisclosed improvement in the plant, and speculation pointed towards a cellulosic ethanol add-on…
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