Alternative Energy / Biofuels

• Obama Orders 100% Alternative Fuels in Government by 2015

  In Washington, President Barack Obama has issued a Presidential Memorandum that all federal car fleets must buy only 100% alternative fuel vehicles by the end of 2015. The memo included issues such as vehicle size, engine size, optional equipment, and optimum fleet size as well as leveraging purchasing dollars “to build manufacturing capacity for more alternative fueled vehicles.” The National Biodiesel Board “applauded the White House’s directive, ordering the federal government to move toward alternative-fuel vehicles, pointing out biodiesel’s unique position as a widely available advanced biofuel that significantly reduces emissions and can be used in existing vehicles.” Chris Thorne…

• Can 60% of India's Transport Gasoline Come from Waste Biomass?

  Transforming agricultural waste into biofuel in India could meet up to 59% of the country’s demand for transport gasoline while creating up to one million jobs, according to a new study by Bloomberg New Energy Finance, commissioned by enzyme company Novozymes. _GCC It is important that societies do not push new forms of energy beyond their economic ability to support themselves. Too many mandates, rebates, taxes, regulations, punitive fees, and other top-heavy government incentives can be the "kiss of death" for any technology which is not economically ready for prime time. India is the world’s 6th largest consumer of energy…

• Are Ethanol Subsidies on the Way Out?

  As recently as last December, the coalition backing U.S. ethanol subsidies appeared to be alive and well, despite the fact that everyone knew they were bad for the environment, bad for energy efficiency, and bad for the budget. The largest subsidy, a tax credit for blending ethanol into gasoline, was set to expire at the end of 2010. At the last minute, though, ethanol's friends rallied to slip a little-noticed one-year renewal of the subsidy into a bill extending the Bush tax cuts and benefits for the long-term unemployed. As I blogged at the time, it looked like ethanol subsidies…

• Amber Light for Greener Flight: Lufthansa’s Extended Biofuel Project

  Keen-to-be-greener airlines really do want biofuel to fly. Lufthansa was set to start using it from April, for a six month trial period, in a 50/50 mix with kerosene on its Hamburg to Frankfurt run. The company was keen to chalk this up as a first for a scheduled passenger service, after a spate of successful in-flight tests. These tests were carried out over the last two years with various biofuel blends by half a dozen operators around the world, along with the US military. Lufthansa had anticipated approval by now from ASTM International, the regulatory standards body. But it’s…

• IEA: Biofuels Could Meet a Quarter of Transportation Fuel Demand By 2050

  Global biofuel use could increase more than 13-fold by 2050 and meet more than a quarter of demand for transportation fuel, without jeopardising food and environmental security, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has said. In a biofuel roadmap released on Wednesday, the IEA says worldwide biofuel consumption could rise from 55 million tonnes of oil equivalent (Mtoe) today, to 750Mtoe by 2050 – provided the right policies and technology developments are in place. The IEA puts the cost of meeting the roadmap targets at between $11 trillion and $13 trillion from 2010 through 2050, “depending on production costs”. However, it…

• Biofuel Real Estate – Where Should the Algae be Grown?

  High oil prices, environmental and economic security concerns motivate a powerful interest in using algae-derived oils as an alternative to fossil fuels. Keep in mind that growing algae can require a lot of water at least to start, and that relatively level land will be helpful. So being smart about the basic conditions is a good first indicator about the real estate maxim, location, location, location.  The new PNNL study shows that being smart about where we grow algae can drastically reduce how much water is needed for algal biofuel production.  PNNL is suggesting growing algae for biofuel, while being…

• Just How Energy Efficient is Corn Ethanol

  The race is on to find alternate sources of fuel and energy and quit dependence on oil, especially with ever increasing and volatile oil prices. But are alternate energy sources as clean and green as most might think? Here are the pros of cons of corn ethanol, and the truth about just how energy efficient it really is: Source: Online Schools David Caploe PhDChief Political EconomistEconomy Watch

• Ethanol and Corrosion: What Are We Not Being Told?

  History is littered with examples of ideas that seemed to be good for a while, but were later discovered to have unpleasant consequences. The pharmaceutical industry is full of cases of promising drugs that went through testing, received FDA approval, and then when they were rolled out on a large scale were found to have serious side effects. In the energy business, for example, the addition of MTBE to the fuel supply at one time seemed like a good idea. It served as an oxygenate and provided another market for natural gas, but as we now know there were negative…

• Butanol Breakthrough – Could This Biofuel One Day Replace Gasoline?

  Butanol may be used as a fuel in an internal combustion engine. Because its longer hydrocarbon chain causes it to be fairly non-polar, it is more similar to gasoline than it is to ethanol. Butanol has been demonstrated to work in vehicles designed for use with gasoline without modification. University of California, Berkeley, chemists have engineered bacteria to churn out a gasoline-like biofuel (butanol) at about 10 times the rate of competing microbes, a breakthrough that could soon provide an affordable transportation fuel. The potential feedstocks are the same as for ethanol: energy crops such as sugar beets, sugar cane,…

• BP Biofuel Breakthrough Imminent

  BP is poised for a major advance in its biofuel operations, as it is completing commissioning of the world’s first biobutanol pilot plant and plans to begin full–scale production later this year at its Vivergo Fuels facility, one of the world’s largest ethanol production plants. The Vivergo facility will convert around 1.1 million tonnes of high-starch UK wheat into 420 million litres of ethanol each year. This will represent around one-third of the UK’s ethanol demand under the government’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, said Phil New, CEO of BP Biofuels, speaking at a meeting of the UK’s Parliamentary Low Carbon…