Mexico, a big producer of petroleum, could be getting into the biodiesel business.
This story from Reuters says a new biofuel law that kicks in next year will encourage the production of biodiesel from crops like beets, yucca root, and sorghum, possibly solving some of the food-versus-fuel debate Mexico has been going through:
“Mexico could develop biodiesel faster than ethanol,” said Agriculture Minister Alberto Cardenas at a news conference.
“We have to seek out other sources for biofuel to differentiate ourselves from Brazil and the U.S.,” said Cardenas.
The law, passed last week, offers unspecified support to farmers that grow crops for the production of any renewable fuel.
Cardenas said a biodiesel industry would help the country’s poorest farmers, and that none of the crops Mexico currently grows for food would be replaced with biofuel plants.
No estimate of how much biodiesel Mexico could produce.
St. Louis-based AmerenUE, which serves 2.4 million electric customers and nearly one million natural gas customers in a 64,000 square mile area of Missouri and Illinois, has announced its first venture into wind energy.
The American Lung Association of Minnesota has teamed up with the Minnesota Soybean Growers Association to offer a scholarship to a senior who writes the best essay on biodiesel.
Current Minnesota high school seniors with plans to attend postsecondary education are eligible and encouraged to submit a personal essay on the topic of biodiesel. Two scholarships will be awarded. The author of the top essay selected will receive a $500 scholarship and the second place essay will be awarded a $250 scholarship. All essays and application materials must be submitted by 4:30pm on Wednesday, April 30, 2008.
Chemical engineers at the University of Arkansas were successful in using so-called supercritical methanol to transform chicken fat and tall oil fatty acid into biodiesel fuel, the university said Wednesday in a news release. The yield was greater than 90 percent, the university said.
The Earthrace, a biodiesel-powered boat out of New Zealand, will be making another attempt to set the world record for circumnavigation of the globe.
The credits are “absolutely critical for making a market in the United States,” said Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association. “What will happen is you will see solar installations start to drop off in the second quarter of 2008 if they are not extended.”
Congressional action in the early part of 2008 is needed “to keep investors from getting nervous,” said Greg Wetstone, governmental affairs director for the American Wind Energy Association.
President Bush’s signing of H.R. 6, the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, has gained the praise of the National Biodiesel Board.
“The U.S. biodiesel industry praises President Bush, Speaker Pelosi, Majority Leader Reid and the bipartisan supporters of biofuels in Congress who worked tirelessly to enact an expanded Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS). This is good public policy that meets the needs of consumers and addresses America’s pressing energy security concerns by increasing the use of clean burning, domestically produced biofuels like biodiesel to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. The nearly five-fold expansion of the RFS in this legislation is truly a landmark achievement.
The “2 Million Mile Haul”… halfway through the study at this point… is looking at the benefits of using 20 percent biodiesel blend (B20) and is being conducted by the Iowa Soybean Association (ISA) in partnership with Iowa Central Community College, Decker Truck Line Inc., Caterpillar Inc., the National Biodiesel Board, Renewable Energy Group, Inc. and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 
“The trucking industry is by far the single largest consumer of diesel fuel, using 38 billion gallons annually,” said Grant Kimberley, ISA director of market development. “This study demonstrates in a real-world environment that biodiesel can be used successfully year-round.”
Don Heck, coordinator of biotechnology and biofuels programs at Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge, Iowa, said, “Although we have data from only the first year of the study, we are pleased with the results to date. Preliminary results are that B20 biodiesel performs similarly to 100 percent diesel. We found a slight decrease in overall fuel efficiency for the B20 group of trucks, but it was not statistically significant. In fact, the difference was several times smaller than the driver-to-driver variability in fuel efficiency within each group.”
Smiling Earth Energy has plans to build a 320-million-gallon-a-year biodiesel plant along the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia. But the company has had its troubles recently, including a lawsuit by an Oregon biodiesel company for failing to provide the promised $310 million in financing for a West Coast biodiesel plant… and then refusing to return a $100,000 deposit to the Oregon company (see