Other News

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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Roxol Bioenergy is investing P1.433 billion (23.2 million Euro's) for the production of bioethanol and potable ethanol to be sold to local oil refining companies and manufacturers in the Philippines. The project, which is 99.99% owned by the publicly-listed Roxas Holdings, led eight project approvals by the Board of Investments (BOI). Based on its registration with the BOI, the company…
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UK-based Isis Innovation, the technology transfer company for the University of Oxford, has announced that researchers in the University's Department of Chemistry have discovered a new way to produce methanol from an industrial waste chemical, glycerol. Presently, 90% of methanol is produced from natural gas, and this new process offers an alternative which does not rely on fossil…
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The transshipment of biofuels in the port of Rotterdam increased in the first half of 2008 from 1 to 2.5 million tonnes. The ratio of ethanol to biodiesel was almost 50/50. The products were manufactured mainly overseas: ethanol in Brazil and biodiesel largely in the US. Part of the incoming trade was used on the continent and some shipped on further by smaller sea-going vessel to England, UK,…
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US-based agricultural company Monsanto will purchase Brazil-based Aly Participacoes for $290 million (225.3 million Euro's) to invest in sugarcane to feed global demand for raw sugar and biofuels. Aly Participacoes operates the sugarcane breeding and technology companies, CanaVialis, the world's largest private sugarcane breeding company, and Alellyx, an applied genomics company that…
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A tree fungus discovered in the Patagonian rainforest in South America has been found to naturally produce a mixture of hydrocarbon molecules similar to diesel. 'This is the only organism that has ever been shown to produce such an important combination of fuel substances,' Gary Strobel, a plant scientist from Montana State University, comments. 'We were totally surprised to learn…
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Houston-headquartered GreenHunter Energy is mulling plans to construct a $70 million (54.8 million Euro's) facility that would store and produce biofuels at the Port of Tampa. The company recently paid $1 million for an option to lease the 22-acre site. The project will give GreenHunter a foothold in a deep-water port that handles over half of the transportation fuel used in the state of…
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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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