About three weeks ago, Boeing officials proclaimed that biodiesel is just fine to use in aircraft. Now, they’ve backed up that claim with a study that proves biodiesel’s effectiveness in flight.
Forbes reports that the Boeing study was released during the Paris Air Show and found that a series of tests by Japan Airlines, Air New Zealand and Continental Airlines has shown that the green fuel performed “as well or better” than traditional petroleum-based jet fuel:
The green fuels met benchmarks for standards such as freezing point, viscosity and fuel density, Boeing said. The tests also found the blends had greater energy content by mass than regular jet fuel, meaning they could help airlines use less fuel per mile. In the three test flights, the fuel blend was half regular fuel, half biofuel.
“This is a huge, huge validation of where biofuels can go,” says John Plaza, the chief executive of Imperium Renewables, a Seattle biodiesel company that supplied fuel for a Virgin Atlantic test flight last year. (That flight wasn’t included in Boeing’s tests.) Plaza stressed, however, that jet biofuels are created with more sophisticated processing techniques than traditional biodiesel, which is also derived from plants but powers cars, trucks and ships.
Still, “this is technology we’re interested in pursuing,” Plaza said in an interview with Forbes. Imperium’s main plant in Washington state is not producing any biodiesel now but hopes to start up again if demand picks up and the credit market thaws.
Boeing officials say they want to subject the biodiesel to international testing standards so that it can be used in commercial airline operations in the next few years.
While it might have been something that farmers have tried to keep out of their fields, stinkweed could prove to be a successful product for those growing feedstocks for biodiesel.
On the heels of its successful launch on 
With more than 100 million users logging on at least once each day, Facebook is the fourth-most trafficked Web site in the United States. Increasingly more people are turning to the Internet for information than any other media source – including television and newspapers.
In recent weeks, the city of Sacramento has added 25 E85 fueling locations. The city is now boasting as being the nation’s ethanol epicenter, at least west of the Mississippi. 
The clean burning alternative is selling for $.66 less per gallon than regular unleaded at the Valero. Sasha Faught of Natomas, who owns a flex-fuel Chevy Tahoe, has been using E85. “I want to be green,” she said. “Let’s face it, we’re using up our resources. It’s smart to get on with it.”
The
In addition to the launch of the ethanol refinery, the government has developed an aggressive plan to expand the country’s sugar production from 800,000 tons per year to over 10 million tons per year. The increased sugar production could support both increased sugar exports and approximately 18 new ethanol plants.
Cows often get a bad rap for emitting methane – a global warming gas. Maybe we shouldn’t be so hard on 
San Jose wants to become energy independent but they’re not going about it in a traditional fashion. Instead, they hope to be the first city in the U.S. to generate its electricity through an organics-to-energy biogas facility. Should this plant come to fruition, it would be sited on a 40-acre site near the San Jose/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant and convert 150,000 tons of organic waste into energy. The plant will be constructed and operated by Zanker Road Biogas.
The 
At this week’s Fuel Ethanol Workshop we had a very large panel discussion titled, “Research, Technology and the Future of Ethanol Production.” This was a pretty serious group of industry leaders and thinkers that was introduced by Tom Bryan, BBI International. Included were: