The jury is still out on cellulosic ethanol, which is made out of grass, wood and non-edible parts of plants, as to how green and even viable it is.

One of the main challenges is to find the right enzyme that breaks down the cellulosic wall that (more…)

Biofuels remain the orphan child of western energy interests – like adopting children, everyone agrees that it’s a good idea, but not many want an alien rugrat in the house.

Now China, arguably the world’s most influential and dynamic economy, is beginning to eye renewables as (more…)

Australia’s Jatenergy Limited energy company is to provide crude jatropha oil to Lufthansa for flight trials.

The Lufthansa tests are the world’s first, long-term trial of renewable jet fuel and will be used on Lufthansa’s regularly scheduled flights between Hamburg and Frankfurt. (more…)

Solazyme is a South San Francisco company that makes oil from microalgae. Instead of providing sunlight and carbon dioxide for direct photosynthesis, Solazyme feeds the algae sugars from various biomass feedstocks in the absence of light using fermentation tanks. (more…)

China’s omnivorous global appetite for energy resources is well known.

While biofuel production is one of the rising energy stars of the 21st century, it is unlikely to become a significant source for China in the near future, as the country’s arable land is devoted first and foremost to feeding the country’s (more…)

Yesterday, President Obama announced that our Departments will jointly invest $510 million over the next three years to develop the domestic capacity for advanced biofuels.  The funds will be leveraged with at least a one-to-one private industry match to construct or retrofit advanced biofuel plants to (more…)

Biofuels may soon be produced quickly, efficiently, and at a cost comparable to gasoline thanks to a discovery from researchers at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center. The research team has identified several genes that improve yeast’s ability to digest the natural sugar xylose. This means that it will soon (more…)

Slowly but surely, an extraordinarily important new industry is slowly taking shape, with the potential to transform the global economy.

After years of existing largely as an environmentalist’s fantasy, commercial production of biofuels for the world civil aviation industry is slowly becoming a fact, (more…)

The U.S. Department of Energy plans to make a $105 million loan guarantee to support the expansion of an Iowa ethanol factory into the nation’s first commercial-scale plant to convert corn waste into motor fuel.

The Emmetsburg, Iowa plant, which is being built by (more…)

Kelp has a high rate of growth and its decay is quite efficient in yielding methane, as well as sugars that can be converted to ethanol. It has been proposed that large open-ocean kelp farms could serve as a source of renewable energy. Unlike some biofuels such as corn ethanol, kelp energy avoids “food vs (more…)