This week I’m attending the CMA Music Festival in Nashville, TN to do some work with New Holland and Michael Peterson. The activities culminate for us with the 2nd annual Michael Peterson/New Holland Tractor Race. You can learn more about it on Agwired. While here though I ran into a story I thought you might be interested in.
Pictured here are Joshua Lo (left) and his grandfather, Dick Richie. Josh is a member of the Westmoreland FFA Chapter. Together they’ve helped create a biodiesel business that’s making their chapter money. This is a creative way to support their efforts.
Basically they produce biodiesel and sell it locally. Dick says they can’t make it fast enough to satisfy demand. He says the chapter just bought a van out of the proceeds from their business venture. The chapter has one machine right now which Josh says they can make at least 200 gallons of biodiesel a week as long as they can get a steady supply of good grease to make the fuel with.
I interviewed them outside the New Holland booth here at the CMA Music Festival. Josh’s FFA chapter is helping man the booth and will receive a nice check from New Holland for their efforts.
A race car running on ethanol is winning races and setting some records on the drag racing circuit. Stephanie Eggums, the lady behind the wheel of Eggums Racing’s NHRA SC car posted 
Cindy,
The man expected to replace British Prime Minister Tony Blair has called for more tax incentives for the production of biodiesel. 
Innovator of clean energy technology, Clean Diesel has inked another deal to share its patents with another company to make the technology more widely available.
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The U.S. Departments of Agriculture and Energy have jointly selected 11 biobased fuels research projects to receive $8.3 million in funding grants.
Biodiesel giant Imperium Renewable and algae-to-oil producer Solazyme, Inc. have reached a deal that will have Solazyme producing oil from microbes it developed and providing the oil to Imperium to make into biodiesel.
Harrison Dillon, Solazyme’s Chief Executive Officer commented: “Imperium has publicly expressed interest in the opportunity for algal derived biodiesel for some time and we are pleased to work with them to make this a reality. This agreement not only demonstrates Imperium’s vision to seek out new and innovative sources of biodiesel feedstock but it also provides validation of demand for alternative sources of biodiesel feedstock as well as for our technology. Imperium’s talented team and excellent technology made them an obvious choice to work with.”
Several American journalists are touring Europe, courtesy of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a program that promotes cooperation between the United States and Europe on domestic and international trade policies. 
From 
After seeing the bioethanol plant, Gleason took note of its smaller size compared to its American counterparts, “The plant produced about 35 million liters (10 million gallons) of fuel-grade ethanol. (In the U.S.), A 10-million gallon ethanol plant could not maintain any efficiency, but they also don’t have the input.” He added how surprised he was how efficient that small of operation could be.