The Biodiesel Finance & Investment Summit, January 14th-16th, 2008 in New York, NY, will feature Martin Tobias, the president of biodiesel giant Imperium Renewables, as one of three keynote speakers. Joining Tobias will be James W. Eiler, Managing Director, First National Investment Banking and Gene Gebolys, President and CEO of World Energy Alternatives.
The summit’s web site invites those interested to meet “the leading biodiesel developers, investors, lenders and other industry players who are looking to do deals:”
* What the financing market will look like in 2008
* What it will take to get deals successfully made in the market
* What opportunities exist for developers, investors, and lenders to become involved in upcoming deals
* How new developments—such as feedstocks, renewable diesel, and carbon credits—will impact future opportunities
The Biodiesel Finance & Investment Summit has established itself as the major gathering place where biodiesel developers, investors, lenders, EPC contractors and others in the biodiesel finance & investment community come to meet, gauge the current pulse of the deal-making market and share their perspectives on what it will take to get biodiesel deals successfully financed in the current market environment.
Get more information on the agenda and registration by clicking here.
A truck that runs on biodiesel made from waste chocolate and that I featured during 
Propelled by the unique biodisel, they expect to take about three weeks to drive the 4,500 miles to Timbuktu from London, planning to make it to Timbuktu on December 16.
“It is no secret ethanol production is growing at a record pace, but equally important is the significant increase in public use and acceptance of e10 and e85. Part of what is driving this is a new awareness of ethanol from coast to coast that didn’t exist even two years ago. EPIC, under Tom’s able leadership, has played a major role in this ethanol awakening,” said Steve Ruh, president of ICGA of Sugar Grove. 
ILGA also presented its Ethanol Innovation Award to David M. Christopher, Executive Vice President Finance and Marketing for Gas City, Ltd.
The Midwest is getting three new ethanol production plants. 
Washington Group will provide procurement, construction, commissioning, and start-up services for the facilities in Wahoo, Neb., and Red Oak and Council Bluffs, Iowa. Each of the facilities will be capable of producing 110 million gallons of ethanol per year. The corn-based ethanol will be blended with unleaded gasoline to create motor fuel, and the plant will produce commercially viable products in corn gluten feed and meal, corn germ, and wet and dry distiller grains with solubles.
Bob Dinneen, president of the 
TPI will begin construction next week on a 316,000-square-foot wind turbine blade factory.
Linc Energy and Bio Clean Coal announced the creation of the company last week and said they would spend $1 million over the next year to build a prototype bioreactor.
The University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus is hosting an energy, economic and environmental – or E3 – conference this week. 
Scientists at Stanford University are looking at a way to connect North America’s wind farms, making wind power less intermittent than its source.
Besides providing a steady production of electricity, connecting wind farms would present other cost benefits by “reducing the total distance that all the power has to travel from the multiple points of origin to the destination point” and by combining all the power on a single transmission line.