Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have created a new enzyme that has the potential to create plants that are easier to convert into cellulosic ethanol.
“Increasing the ‘digestibility’ of plant matter is one main approach to making plants a viable alternative energy source,” said Brookhaven biochemist Chang-Jun Liu. Plants with less lignin in their cell walls are easier to break down and convert to fuel products.
The next step will be to see if it works in plants. The scientists will engineer plants with the gene for the new enzyme to see if it reduces the amount of lignin in the plant cell walls.
“Since we know less lignin makes cell walls easier to digest, this may be an effective biochemical approach to engineering plants for more efficient biofuel production,” Liu said.
This week, the 
The first issue of the 
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The report, which was funded by 
A new report indicates there will be enough corn and soybeans for ethanol and biodiesel production, as well as the feed, food and export uses those crops are tasked with.
For 2009-10, the current corn crop estimate points to adequate corn supplies for feed, food, fuel, and export uses. Carryover stocks on August 31 of next year are expected to be about 1 and one-half weeks above minimum working stocks levels. Our early and very tentative normal-yield projections for 2010-11 show corn carryover stocks declining slightly by August 31, 2011 but still remaining marginally above minimum working stocks levels.
According to Opis, two former VeraSun ethanol plants and one Renew Energy plant were approved by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to be purchased by Valero. This will bring the total production of Valero ethanol to 1.1 billion gallons per year.
Car makers put more stock in hybrid systems than biodiesel. 
The keynote speaker for next month’s