A bacterium found in the remote Gobi Desert may become a valuable partner for researchers working with biofuels. The bacterium has shown talents for using the sun's light as energy and now researchers have revealed that it can be found in surprisingly many different places, including water treatment plants. To date, species capable of performing photosynthesis have been... [Read More]

A team from US Grains Council (USGC), a US grains export advocate, and two ethanol industry representatives have completed an overview of ethanol’s possibilities in East Asian markets. The group traveled to Japan, Korea, and Taiwan is December 2015 to review the ethanol markets in these countries and evaluate potential for ongoing US ethanol export promotion programmes... [Read More]

The UK Government has pledged to do more to increase the proportion of renewable energy used to heat the nation's buildings and fuel its cars, trucks and trains as it aims to meet binding EU targets by 2020. The Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) made the pledge in its recently published report entitled Third progress report on the promotion and use of energy... [Read More]

Dutch GoodFuels Marine, the first marine biofuel company focused on the global commercial fleet, has received the highest standard of certification from the Roundtable of Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB). The two-year certification, which assesses the sustainable viability of the biomaterials used by GoodFuels to generate marine bunker fuel, enables the company to actively... [Read More]

The board of directors of Australian Renewable Fuels (ARFuels), the country’s largest biodiesel producer, has placed the company into voluntary administration. Under Australian law, voluntary administration is a form of insolvency arrangement, which creates an opportunity for flexible approaches to bring about a better outcome for stakeholders than may otherwise... [Read More]

Researchers from the Melbourne School of Engineering, in Australia, have discovered a new way to deliver carbon dioxide to microalgae, which in turn, can be harvested to make renewable fuels such as biodiesel. Carbon dioxide is well known to speed up the growth of microalgae, according to the scientists. However, the carbon dioxide has to be free of contamination or the... [Read More]

Oasis Group, an India-based technology, engineering and construction company, will build a wheat-based ethanol plant in Punjab. The facility is worth around £51m (INR 500 crore), according to news agency Press Trust of India. The ethanol will be producing wheat which is unfit for human consumption, the media outlet stated. Currently, India relies mainly on sugar... [Read More]

The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has announced that the share of liquid biofuels consumed in road transport, in the UK, fell from 4.2% during the third quarter of 2014 to 3.3% during the third quarter of 2015. DECC unveiled the statistics in its latest 'Energy Trends' publication. Figures from DECC also showed that biodiesel consumption was 35% lower... [Read More]

Kolmar Group, a Switzerland-based petrochemicals specialist, has acquired a biodiesel plant in Connecticut, US. The company bought the Greenleaf Biofuels facility via its US arm and hopes to expand into the renewable energy sector, according to Bloomberg. The plant, now called American GreenFuels, marks Kolmar's first foothold in physical production. It is expected that... [Read More]

Bioenergy France 3, the French arm of Spanish biofuels producer Ambene, has obtained permission from local officials to build a 41MW biomass-fired cogeneration plant in the south of France. According to SeeNews, the plant will be constructed in the Torremila industrial zone of Perpignan. At the end of December, the Pyrenees-Orientales prefecture gave the green light to... [Read More]

Researchers from US-based Indiana University have developed a virus-like biomaterial that catalyses the formation of hydrogen for the production of biofuels. The biomaterial or 'nano-reactor', as scientists at Indiana University describe it, is produced by placing a modified enzyme inside the protective protein shell of a virus, called a capsid. The resulting 'nano reactor'... [Read More]

British Airways (BA) has announced that it has been forced to abandon plans to turn landfill waste into green jet fuel, partly due to lack of government support. The airliner and green fuels specialist Solena Fuels announced last year that it would move forward with long-standing plans to develop a state-of-the-art facility called GreenSky at an ex-oil refinery in Thurrock,... [Read More]

The Turley family have bought out their 50% partner in Ethanol Europe Renewables — one of the continent's biggest producers of bioethanol. The company was a joint venture between the Turleys and Fagen, an American developer of energy plants. According to The Sunday Times, accounts show that the Turley family, who made more than €100m from the sale of the online... [Read More]

India has doubled its target of blending ethanol with gasoline to 10%, as it aims to promote cleaner fuel to tackle pollution. According to Reuters, oil companies have never met the current 5% blending target as ethanol derived from molasses - the thick syrup produced by boiling down sugarcane juice in sugar refining - costs more than gasoline without including taxes.... [Read More]