Other News

Pennsylvania, US-based Thar Technologies plans to build a biodiesel plant in Rajasthan, India, using the region's karanj and jatropha crops. Karanj is a herb commonly found in India. The region has a policy to give 30% of wasteland to private companies seeking to grow the two biodiesel feedstocks. Thar plans to grow some of its own feedstock and buy the rest from area farmers. The company…
Read More »

France is preparing a national plan for renewable energy, which has set aside any assessment of the EU's biofuels draft directive to generate a 10% share of biofuels in transport by 2020. France's Environment and Energy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo offered the national plan for renewable energies on 17 November. The plan aims to bring the share of renewables in the energy mix by 2020 to…
Read More »

Germany's sugar farmers are targeting sales to the bioethanol industry to shift a large crop this season. Germany is forecast to produce 3.6 million tonnes of refined sugar from its 2008/09 crop, in excess of the country's European Union sugar production quota of 2.7 million tonnes, which has been cut as part of EU reforms to curb farming subsidies. The bioethanol market is a growing…
Read More »

Raven Biofuels International has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Price Biostock (Price) to develop an ethanol biorefinery located in the Gulf Opportunity Zone of Mississippi, US. The agreement calls for a biorefinery output of 33 million gallons a year based on a projected 21 million gallons a year of fuel grade ethanol and 12 million gallons a year of furfural products,…
Read More »

Brazilian state-run oil company Petrobras expects to export 605 million litres of ethanol in 2008. Petrobras downstream director Paulo Roberto Costa says that 505 million litres will be shipped to the US, with the remaining 100 million litres sailing to Japan. Brazil is the world’s largest exporter of ethanol and second largest producer after the US. The country’s large sugarcane market…
Read More »

Ineos Enterprises has postponed plans to build a £65 million (€77.6 million) biodiesel plant in Scotland, UK, due to unfavourable economic conditions. The plant, to be located in Grangemouth near Falkirk, had a nameplate capacity of 500,000 tonnes. Market volatility has led the company to return a £9 million grant which had been allocated by the Scottish government for the project. The…
Read More »

US Green Energy Technology (GET) and the Philippines-based biotechnology firm Secura International (SIC) have signed an agreement to construct a $30 million (€23.7 million) biodiesel plant using malunggay oil as feedstock. Malunggay is a versatile plant that can grow anywhere, except in rice-growing, flooded areas. It is suitable for rainfall of less than 1,000 millimeters a year and needs…
Read More »

Stratos Renewables, an agro-energy company developing a South American sugarcane ethanol operation, has secured sufficient land in the northern coastal region of Peru required for the production of up to 90 million gallons a year of sugarcane-based ethanol. Stratos intends to use this land for extensive sugarcane cultivation, milling and distillation into ethanol primarily for export. Peru has…
Read More »

Malaysia’s government has approved 91 biodiesel production licences with a total capacity of 10.2 million tonnes of biodiesel. Deputy minister of Plantation Industries and Commodities senator A. Kohilan Pillay says that to further promote the use of renewable and sustainable forms of energy on 30 October the government approved the mandatory blending of 5% palm methyl ester with petroleum…
Read More »

The government of South Korea has announced plans to increase the biodiesel blend ratio from its current level of 1% to 3% by 2012. In an effort to meet these targets, the government has extended industry tax breaks and has taken steps to increase local feedstock production to minimise import dependency, according to a report by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) Foreign Agricultural…
Read More »

Espoo, Finland-based VTT Technical Research Center, the largest applied research organisation in Northern Europe, has launched a three-year project to produce biodiesel from waste generated by a Vietnamese fish processing plant. VTT is working with organisations in France, Germany, the UK and Vietnam on the project known as ENERFISH to construct a biodiesel facility next to the Hiep Thanh…
Read More »

Norway-based biofuels firm ScanFuel is due to begin a jatropha-based biodiesel production project outside Ghana's second largest city. ScanFuel expects to start commercial operations in Kumasi, Ghana, early in 2009, producing 5,000 barrels a day of crude oil equivalent by 2015. ScanFuel's operation will plant 10,000 hectares of the high oil-yielding jatropha plant, with another 10,000…
Read More »

A new joint venture between a unit of Kawasaki Heavy Industries and an agricultural public corporation led by the prefectural government of Akita in northern Japan is the country’s third waste to ethanol project. The projects, making ethanol from farm waste with subsidies, will pay for building and running of plants totalling about €24.8 million over 5 years. The ministry set aside 3.2…
Read More »