Other News

Aircraft manufacturer Boeing says biofuel-powered aircraft could be carrying millions of passengers around the world within three years. 'The certification will happen much sooner than anybody thought,' Darrin Morgan, an environmental expert at the US jet manufacturer, says, adding the group was expecting official approval of biofuel use in the near future. 'We are thinking that…
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Several international renewable energy investors are pumping F$174 million (74 million Euro's) into plans to produce biodiesel in Fiji using Pongamia oil. Pongamia is a deciduous tree that grows to about 15-25 metres in height with a large canopy. Bio Fuels International, Evergreen Fuels from Australia and biofuels investors in the US are collaborating with Naitasiri Provincial Council…
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The construction of a government-backed, privately-led bioethanol project in barangays Bayanga and Mambuaya, the Philippines, could pollute the Cagayan de Oro River, an environmental conservation group has warned. The Kagayan Watershed Alliance (Kawal) has vowed to oppose the P2.4 billion (38 million Euro's) project that Alsons Consolidated Resources (ACR) had planned to build on a…
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The first compressed biomethane (CBM) re-fuelling facility in London, UK, has been set up to support a trial of a CBM-powered street cleansing vehicle. Following the launch earlier this year of a commercial trial of the vehicle in the London Borough of Camden Council, the group has now announced that the re-fuelling facility is ready. Gasrec, the UK's first producer of liquid biomethane…
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Biodiesel manufacturer China Clean Energy has experienced civil engineering setbacks and poor Monsoon season weather delaying construction of its Jiangyin biodiesel plant. The 30 million gallon a year plant is now expected to begin production in Q2 2009. The company has another biodiesel plant in China's Fujian Province, which began biodiesel production in 2005 but has since stopped…
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Researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research in Germany have announced a new method of producing high efficiency and easily available biofuels from wood, grass and plants could soon be available. The researchers have devised a more effective method of breaking down the cellulose found in plants into sugar molecules, which can then be used to produce ethanol. The method uses an…
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Construction has begun on a biofuel refinery in east Tennessee, US, which will use switchgrass, a perennial crop, as a feedstock to produce cellulosic ethanol. The pilot plant is a partnership between DuPont Danisco Cellulosic, the University of Tennessee (UT), and Genera Energy, which aims to produce 250,000 gallons of ethanol by the end of 2009. DuPont's Danisco subsidiary will develop…
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Illinois-based renewable energy company Coskata plans to market cellulosic ethanol produced from its novel production process in China. Coskata intends to establish technology licensing and/or partnership agreements to bring the company's ethanol production process to China. Coskata has short- to medium-term goals that focus on developing relationships with potential suitors in China and the…
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Prices of major grains and oilseeds such as corn, wheat, soyabeans, and palm oil that are used to make biofuels are tumbling, indicating green fuels have played virtually no role in the recent global surge in food prices. Corn and soyabeans have lost more than half of their value, whereas wheat now costs 55% less than at its highpoint in March of this year. Canola fell from a high of $730 (568.7…
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Bulgarian biofuel producers have threatened to file a lawsuit against the Customs Agency after the agency said that it would impose an excise on pure biofuel products starting from October, the National Biofuels Association in Bulgaria has announced. Earlier in October, deputy finance minister Kiril Zhelev commented that biofuel producers will be obligated to pay excise duties until the European…
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Kenya expects $500 million (389.4 million Euro's) worth of foreign investments in biofuel crop production over the next two years, a government official has announced. Romano Kiome, permanent secretary in the agriculture ministry, says five multinational firms from the US, Japan, and the UK had applied to be considered in a government land-lease scheme. Crops such as jatropha, croton, sweet…
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California-based Cobalt Biofuels plans to build a pilot plant in the San Francisco Bay Area by next year. In early October the company closed $25 million (19.5 million Euro's) in its third round of funding. It plans to build a pilot plant producing tens of thousands of gallons of biobutanol a year. The commercial project will be located near sources of non-food materials, such as sweet…
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The US will fall short of the Renewable Fuels Standard, the government's Energy Information Administration (EIA) warns. The country will only blend about 30 billion gallons of fuels like corn-based ethanol and advanced fuels into petrol by 2022, 17% short of the US mandate of 36 billion gallons by that year, the EIA forecasts. ‘The key risk factor is the rate of development of cellulosic…
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Cuba will install a modern biogas industrial plant in central Cienfuegos province in 2009. The plant will generate electricity using the excrement of pigs from the General Swine Complex in the town of Palmira, and forms the beginning of a national programme. It is estimated that only 50% of more than 700 biogas plants in the country are in operation, but efforts are being made for their…
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