A truck that runs on biodiesel made from waste chocolate and that I featured during a post on November 15th has left England for Timbuktu in Africa.
This update from the Environment News Service says the trip is designed to raise public awareness about biofuels and their potential to ease the impact of climate change:
Andy Pag of London and John Grimshaw of Poole have nicknamed their big Ford Iveco Cargo truck the BioTruck. It will carry their chocolate biodisel fuel and two smaller vehicles for crossing the Sahara Desert.
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.
They aim to encourage UK motorists to fill up on biofuels. “If we use biodiesel to get to Timbuktu with a standard engine, there’s no reason why people in the UK can’t use it for their commute or school run,” said Pag.
The BioTruck team is attempting the first ever carbon negative driving expedition across the Sahara Desert. To reach this goal, they will use a mix of carbon cutting techniques, including biofuels and carbon offsetting.
As an offset, they intend to deliver a small biodeisel processing unit to a Mali renewable energy charity that specializes in developing enterprise through environmental projects.
The group receiving the biofuels processor is Mali-Folkecenter, MFC, which represents the Danish Folkecenter for Renewable Energy.
The team picked Timbuktu, Mali because of the effects climate change has had on the city as it used to be a port on a river. But now, the river has shifted about 10 miles away, leaving Timbuktu even more isolated in the desert. Members are taking a biodiesel processor to Mali, so the Africans have a chance to be energy independent.
Follow the progress of the expedition by clicking here.
“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.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware) has unveiled a five-year, $50 billion energy plan akin to the Apollo project that put men on the moon during a campaign stop in Iowa.