Iogen Energy fueled the final race of the American Le Mans Series this weekend. All of the teams that had signed up to use ethanol blends, competed with cellulosic ethanol in their tanks. Iogen provided 6500 gallons of cellulosic ethanol produced from wheat straw for the season finale, and also provided 7800 gallons of fuel for Drayson Racing’s “Lola-Judd,” which …
BlueFire Finalizes Contract for Cellulosic Plant
BlueFire Renewables (formerly BlueFire Ethanol) has announced that it has finalized and signed an Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract to build a cellulosic ethanol facility in Fulton, MS. The $296 million biorefinery, which includes a $100 million biomass power plant as part of the facility, will be constructed by Wanzek Construction, a subsidiary of MasTec, Inc. This was an …
New Regs Needed for Cellulosic Fuels to See Fruition
According to a new study published today in the October issue of BioScience, “Far-reaching Deleterious Impacts of Regulations on Research and Environmental Studies of Recombinant DNA-modified Perennial Biofuel Crops in the United States,” researchers argue that the current regulatory system will need a monumental overhaul in order for cellulosic bioenergy to reach its true potential. The authors write that cellulosic …
NREL Releases BioEnergy Mapping App
Want to know where are the biorefineries in the U.S. are located? There’s an app for that. The National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) has released a new bioenergy mapping portal, BioEnergy Atlas, that identifies biomass feedstocks, then overlays that information with the ethanol and biodiesel facilities both on and off-line. You can also see map information for transportation infrastructure, power …
Sustainable Oils Leads in Camelina Biojet Fuel
Bozeman, Montana-based Sustainable Oils is working toward an important goal. They are working to produce advanced biofuels using sustainable methods and feedstocks. One of their prime energy crops is camelina, which has a naturally high oil content and relatively low input costs (the crop needs little water or fertilizer and is suited well to grow on marginal land). It is …
Clean Energy Policy Under Fire by Big Oil & Friends
The Center for American Progress Action Fund (CAPAF) has released a new analysis that concludes that Big Oil and other special interests have spent millions of dollars in lobbying and campaign contributions to defeat clean energy legislation. The study, “Dirty Money” found that the top 35 spending companies and trade associations, including oil, mining and electric utility, invested more than …
POET to Keynote at Wisconsin Bioenergy Summit
Next month, Wisconsin will host a summit to focus on the state’s future in bioenergy. The Wisconsin Bioenergy Summit, hosted by the Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative (WBI), will be held on October 14, 2010. This year’s event will focus on fueling Wisconsin’s future and will feature presentations from multidisciplinary university experts, state policymakers and innovators from the private sector. One of …
TMO Renewables Joins Fiberight for MSW Projects
UK-based TMO Renewables has announced that it has entered into a 20-year contract with U.S.-based Fiberight to design and build waste to ethanol plants in the U.S. The contract is estimated to be worth more than $25 million per year. The new plants will combine the TMO Process, which optimizes waste feedstock conversion using a specialty bio-organism, with Fiberight’s fractionation …
BlueFire Signs Deal with Tenaska Biofuels
BlueFire Renewables, Inc. has signed a 15-year “take-off” contract with Nebraska-based power producer Tenaska Biofuels LLC to sell all of the cellulosic ethanol produced at its Fulton, Mississippi facility to the company. The biorefinery under construction in Fulton will use local green waste and wood waste to produce approximately 19 million gallons of ethanol per year. “This off-take agreement is …
Yeast Breakthrough Made for Cellulosic Ethanol
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have made a breakthrough that has some awfully big implications for cellulosic ethanol. They’ve been able to put genes from grass-eating fungi into yeast and created strains that produce alcohol from tough plant material: “By adding these genes to yeast, we have created strains that grow better on plant material than does wild …