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Residents in Stockholm are divided over reports that rabbits are being used to make biofuel. The bodies of thousands of rabbits are fuelling a heating plant in central Sweden, local newspapers say. The city of Stockholm has an annual cull of thousands of rabbits to protect the capital's parks and green spaces.

Energy Policy: The heavily subsidized ethanol industry is the latest to seek a federal bailout. If there is any industry that deserves to go bankrupt, it's this one. Time has come to stop putting food in our gas tanks.The bailout-seeking domestic auto industry has been criticized as being unproductive and inefficient. It hasn't been helped by mandated fuel economy standards that have done little to reduce our dependence on foreign energy or help the environment. Now the fuel we have been mandated to put in our cars, equally unproductive and inefficient, is also seeking a bailout. Ethanol never made much...

Enlarge ImageGrowing problem. Increasing reliance on biofuels is expected to further deplete dissolved oxygen in the Gulf of Mexico. Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio The push to ramp up biofuel production may reduce oil imports, but it's likely to come at a high environmental cost: It will boost the size of the Gulf of Mexico's dead zone, a huge swath so depleted of oxygen that almost nothing can live there, according to a new analysis. The gulf's dead zone is already a major environmental problem. First spotted in 1971, it now spans 14,600 square kilometers, or...

It appears that the EPA, under the "RFS2 - Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007," is going to cause problems with how biodiesel will be viewed as a source of pollution, rather than as a means to reduce it. According to the National Biodiesel Board, the EPA has wrongly calculated the negative impact of biodiesel. As a result, the Board would like to enlist the help of supporters of biodiesel in a mail campaign to the EPA and, I assume, others. The points they most want to drive home are mentioned in the following letter: Honorable Lisa Jackson Administrator...

Stimulus: Brazil, a leader in the use of biofuels such as ethanol and in the face of falling oil prices, still plans to spend huge sums to expand its offshore oil resources. Drilling rigs are infrastructure too.With oil prices scraping the bottom of the barrel, pun intended, there wouldn't appear to be much incentive to pursue the development of new oil resources. And in tough economic times worldwide, the necessary investment required would appear to be prohibitive. As the U.S. seeks to get its economy going by building roads, bridges and bicycle paths, Brazil has decided to create jobs and...

Abstract: Prior studies have estimated that a liter of bioethanol requires 263−784 L of water from corn farm to fuel pump, but these estimates have failed to account for the widely varied regional irrigation practices. By using regional time-series agricultural and ethanol production data in the U.S., this paper estimates the state-level field-to-pump water requirement of bioethanol across the nation. The results indicate that bioethanol’s water requirements can range from 5 to 2138 L per liter of ethanol depending on regional irrigation practices. The results also show that as the ethanol industry expands to areas that apply more irrigated water...

Energy Policy: California regulators are ready to conclude that corn ethanol cannot help the state fight global warming. It seems they've discovered putting food in our cars would destroy the earth in order to save it. California regulators have apparently discovered it ain't easy being green. The California Air Resources Board began two days of hearings in Sacramento on Thursday on a proposed Low Carbon Fuel Standard which considers the carbon intensity of fuels during a given fuel's entire life cycle. The California Environmental Protection Agency apparently has concluded that corn ethanol would not help the state implement Executive Order...

Oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp. is making a major jump into renewable energy with a $600 million investment in algae-based biofuels. Exxon is joining a biotech company, Synthetic Genomics Inc., to research and develop next-generation biofuels produced from sunlight, water and waste carbon dioxide by photosynthetic pond scum.

As Congress, the administration and the private sector look for ways to reduce our consumption of imported oil, we should not overlook the most readily available domestic alternative to imported oil: biofuels. The development of the biofuels industry has created jobs across the nation and given agricultural producers new, reliable crop markets, while decreasing our demand for fossil fuels.

Another bold Locke/Gregoire move. Set a high goal, then miss it by a mile. Then say... What do they say? Governor Locke set the goal of the state's fleet of vehicles using 20% biodiesel by June 1, 2009. No single agency will meet that goal, let alone the total fleet. They got to 2.1%. Hey, that's over 10% of their goal! A subsequent law, HB2424, signed by Chris Gregoire in 2006 has no penalties for noncompliance. This is the government! Penalties are for citizens and private industry. What does Chris Gregoire say now? "I don't want to lose the momentum...

President Obama's plan to move quickly to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy sources relies on technology that analysts agree is neither affordable nor available on a commercial scale and won't be for many years to come. Expensive, small-scale pilot projects are under way that convert vegetation into fuel for cars and capture carbon dioxide before it is released into the air from coal-burning power plants. But these prototypes have not been proved at levels that would make even a dent in the U.S. appetite for fossil fuels, casting doubt on the viability of the president's plans. Still, the administration...

THE Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to make an important and far-reaching decision this year that will affect more than 500 million gasoline engines powering everything from large pickups to family cars to lawn mowers: whether to grant the ethanol industry’s request to raise the maximum amount of ethanol that can be added to gasoline. ... Specifically, ethanol producers are asking that the maximum ethanol content in the most common blend of gasoline be increased from 10 percent — a limit set about three decades ago — to as much as 15 percent. The blend the industry hopes will become...

Earlier in the decade, biofuels were hailed as the energy panacea, the silver bullet to solve oil shortages and abide by environmental concerns. The European Union recently took the lead in imposing the use of these liquid or gaseous fuels made from plants. But the green credentials of biofuels have since been disputed. The total amount of energy needed to transform biomass into ‘‘green’’ fuels offsets most of the energy biofuels save when the entire process or life-cycle is considered. Soils must be fertilised. American corn and soybeans, French sugar beet, Brazilian sugar cane or peanuts from Benin must undergo...

In September, ethanol giant VeraSun Energy opened a refinery on the outskirts of this eastern Iowa community. Among the largest biofuels facilities in the country, the Dyersville plant could process 39 million bushels of corn and produce 110 million gallons of ethanol annually. VeraSun boasted the plant could run 24 hours a day, seven days a week to meet the demand for home-grown energy. But the only thing happening 24-7 at the Dyersville plant these days is nothing at all. Its doors are shut and corn deliveries are turned away. Touring the facility recently, I saw dozens of rail cars...

Two years ago Imperium Renewables feted U.S. senators and other bigwigs at the opening of a biodiesel plant at the port of Grays Harbor, Wash. The $88 million plant was heralded as a great green hope in the fight against global warming. At the event, Imperium chief executive Martin Tobias dipped his finger in a container of biodiesel and took a taste for the crowd. Imperium's prospects aren't looking so sweet today. The plant at Grays Harbor is sitting idle. Most of Imperium's employees (110 two years ago), including Tobias, have been sent packing. The company has not much to...

At a time when water supplies are scarce in many areas of the United States, scientists in Minnesota are reporting that production of bioethanol — often regarded as the clean-burning energy source of the future — may consume up to three times more water than previously thought. Sangwon Suh and colleagues point out in the new study that annual bioethanol production in the U.S. is currently about 9 billion gallons and note that experts expect it to increase in the near future. The growing demand for bioethanol, particularly corn-based ethanol, has sparked significant concerns among researchers about its impact on...

Farming biofuels produces nitrous oxide. This is bad for climate change MANY people consider the wider use of biofuels a promising way of reducing the amount of surplus carbon dioxide (CO2) being pumped into the air by the world’s mechanised transport. The theory is that plants such as sugar cane, maize (corn, to Americans), oilseed rape and wheat take up CO2 during their growth, so burning fuels made from them should have no net effect on the amount of that gas in the atmosphere. Biofuels should not contribute to global warming. Theory, though, does not always translate into practice, and...

British Airways could not find sufficient sustainable biofuels for a joint ground testing program with engine manufacturer Rolls Royce and is therefore extending the search, a spokeswoman with the airline said Tuesday. The problem highlighted the lack of commercial availability of second-generation or sustainable biofuel feedstocks for long-term testing due to the absence of incentives for private initiative to put up considerable investment in these high-risk ventures. This, industry experts have said, is a challenge to their developments. "To take part in trials, suppliers had to commit to producing 60,000 liters of their alternative fuel and demonstrate that the fuel...

Shell will no longer invest in renewable technologies such as wind, solar and hydro power because they are not economic, the Anglo-Dutch oil company said today. It plans to invest more in biofuels which environmental groups blame for driving up food prices and deforestation. Executives at its annual strategy presentation said Shell, already the world's largest buyer and blender of crop-based biofuels, would also invest an unspecified amount in developing a new generat­ion of biofuels which do not use food-based crops and are less harmful to the environment. The company said it would concentrate on developing other cleaner ways of...

The Uses of Wood Rot Feb 16, 2009 — Wood rot fungus doesn’t sound like a useful thing. Most people would rather get rid of it – especially those who have seen their houses decay because of it. Some scientists, however, are intrigued by it. It may have properties that could some day help power your car...

<p>Energy: A fortune was spent on ethanol development last year when gas prices were in the stratosphere. Now a lesson has been learned: Worshiping the false god of ethanol carries a high price.</p> <p>A funny thing happened on the way to all the green profits that were supposed to be in the offing thanks to high prices at the gas pump.</p>

The first real-world, demonstration-scale project in Nevada for turning algae into biofuel has successfully completed the initial stage of research at the University of Nevada, Reno. The project is on track to show the process is an economical, commercially viable renewable energy source in Nevada.

The clearing of Indonesia's rainforest for palm oil plantations is having profound effects – threatening endangered species, upending the lives of indigenous people, and releasing massive amounts of carbon dioxide ___ Not long ago, biofuels were billed as a green dream come true, a way to burn less fossil fuel and shrink our carbon footprint. But today, mounting evidence indicates that producing biofuels — particularly those derived from food crops such as corn and oil palm — may be doing considerably more harm to the planet than good, actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions and driving up food prices worldwide. Some...

Everyone wants a bailout. Last week, a coalition of mostly farm energy lobbyists sent a letter to the Congressional Democratic leadership begging for billions in subsidies and tax credits. Farm energy is an umbrella term that encompasses everything from the growing of crops for biofuel production to the infrastructure that turns those crops into fuels, and additional energy sources such as farmer-owned windmills. In their letter, the lobbyists claim that a farm energy bailout would "help resuscitate our nation's economy and create hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs." First, the renewable energy lobbyists ask for $1.2 billion per year to...

By Richard BlackEnvironment correspondent, BBC News website Farmers could help curb rising global temperatures by selecting crop varieties that reflect solar energy back into space, researchers say.Scientists at Bristol University calculate that switching crops in North America and Europe could reduce global temperatures by about 0.1C. Temperatures have risen by about 0.7C since the dawn of the industrial age. Other experts say the idea is feasible but could not cool the world enough to combat rising greenhouse gas levels. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that by the end of the century, the average global temperature will have...

Oil prices have tumbled, and the economy has elbowed the environment from the headlines, but aviation's drive toward alternative fuels shows no sign of slowing down.On Dec. 30, Air New Zealand conducted the first flight test of a second-generation biofuel blend. Continental Airlines on Jan. 7 and Japan Airlines on Jan. 30 will flight-test additional biofuel mixes that meet the airline industry's criteria for environmental sustainability, which include not competing with food crops for resources.Three biofuel flights in a month was unthinkable just two years ago, and these tests will generate much-needed data for those charged with rewriting the jet-fuel...

When a manufacturer expressly tells you that using certain types of fuel in a vehicle will cause damage and using said fuel will void the warranty, it's probably a good idea not to use the fuel in question. The city of Portland, Oregon certainly deserves credit for its aggressive use of biodiesel in its municipal truck fleet. However, if Portland or any other city is going to pursue such a program, they really should make sure the diesel engines in its vehicles are compatible with the fuel. Six of the 50 2008 Ford Super-Duty trucks purchased by Portland have suffered...

The use of ethanol and other renewable fuels supposedly helps gasoline burn cleaner creating less pollution. It also reduces America's reliance upon foreign oil. Last Monday the Environmental Protection Agency increased the amount of renewable automobile fuels required to be sold in the United States next year from 7.8 percent to 10.2 percent of the 138.5 billion gallons of gasoline projected to be consumed. This mandate mainly directs that higher levels of ethanol be mixed with gasoline. The higher standard is required by the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, a law that requires the increased use of renewable...

A fungus found in a Patagonian rainforest could provide an alternative source of biofuel, according to new research. "Many fungi make ethanol, but none to date produce this kind of mixture of diesel hydrocarbons," lead author Gary Strobel, professor of plant sciences and plant pathology at the US-based Montana State University (MSU), told SciDev.Net. A promising aspect of this discovery is that G. roseum produces myco-diesel directly from cellulose-rich products, skipping the fermentation step needed to produce ethanol, he says

According to a VeraSun press release, a “series of events” had shrunk its liquidity, impairing its ability to invest in production facilities and operate its business. “A dramatic spike in corn costs,” partly due to its hedging arrangements and “worsening capital market conditions and a tightening of trade credit resulted in severe constraints on the company’s liquidity position,” the release said The statement went on to say that the Sioux Falls, S.D.-based company said it planned to maintain operations while the company and 24 of its subsidiaries reorganize. In addition it expects to reach a deal with lenders on additional...

The collapse of the ethanol boom continues as a Pratt-based ethanol producer is the latest to file bankruptcy. Gateway Ethanol LLC has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, estimating it owes between $50 million and $100 million. The filing comes weeks after Minneapolis-based Dougherty Funding LLC sought to have Gateway placed in emergency receivership to preserve any money being returned to creditors. It moved to foreclose on the company’s plant in May, saying Gateway defaulted on a $54.3 million loan used to build the facility. In a motion field in the U.S. District Court of Kansas in September, Dougherty noted...

The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture's Biofuels Initiative is between five and 10 years away from reaching the farms of Greene County and Upper East Tennessee. That was the word Saturday from Ken J. Goddard, of Knoxville, extension biofuels specialist at the University of Tennessee, during the 2008 Greene County Farm and Garden Expo at the Greene County Fairgrounds. "This is an excellent thing and I'm more excited right now than I've been at any time in my extension career, which spans more than 30 years," Goddard said privately after his presentation at the conclusion of the expo. "I...

Calculated bioethanol yield per hectare. A study by Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists found that sweet potatoes grown in Maryland and Alabama, and tropical cassava grown in Alabama, yielded between two to three times as much carbohydrate (starch, sucrose, glucose) for fuel ethanol production via fermentation as field corn grown in those states. Dr. Lew Ziska, a plant physiologist at the ARS Crop Systems and Global Change Laboratory in Beltsville, Md., and colleagues at Beltsville and at the ARS National Soil Dynamics Laboratory in Auburn, Ala., performed the study. The research is unique in comparing the root crops to...

Forget food crops. Future fuels will come from more practical feedstocks. Plus, each generation will use fewer resources and pack more energy than the last. PM crunches the numbers on alternative fuels for the real world.By Chris Ladd Photograph by Bill DiodatoPublished in the September 2008 issue. Eric Meek of the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, N.Y., created this handblown beaker for our cover story. Watch the beaker take shape on PopMech TV right here. RELATED STORIES • NEW COVER STORY: "The Shape of Fuels to Come," On Sale Now! Process*: Raw biomass is typically ground up and pretreated...

A Georgia company looking to solve America's energy problem has finally teamed up with the federal government, hoping to make millions of barrels of oil every day from virtually anything that grows out of the Earth. Bell Bio-Energy, Inc. says it has reached an agreement with the U.S. Defense Department to build seven test production plants, mostly on military bases, to quickly turn naturally grown material into fuel. "What this means is that with the seven pilot plants – the military likes to refer to them as demonstrations – with those being built … it gives us the real-time engineering...

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Up to 12.3 billion bushels of corn are expected to be harvested this season in the U.S., despite the recent Mississippi flooding which inundated many farms in the Midwest. With 600 million extra bushels for the summer harvest, it will be the second-highest corn yield on record, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.Prior to the confirmation of the bountiful harvest, there were fears the Midwest flooding could lead to food shortages and major economic losses for American farmers. Before perfect weather was enjoyed by farmers recently, corn future prices rose to $8 per bushel. On...

Des Moines, Iowa (AP) -- Republican presidential candidate John McCain didn't mince words Friday at the Iowa State Fair, telling corn producers he didn't want to subsidize their ethanol but was eager to help market farm products around the world. "My friends, we will disagree on a specific issue and that's healthy," McCain said as he stood near bales of straw at one of the nation's premier farming showcases. "I believe in renewable fuels. I don't believe in ethanol subsidies, but I believe in renewable fuels." McCain has never been shy about speaking against subsidizing ethanol when he is in...

HOUSTON -- A company based near the Woodlands has carved out a nifty niche in the renewable energy market by converting animal and vegetable waste nobody wants into ''green" electricity. Bio Fuels Power once hoped to make renewable fuel for vehicles but switched direction when high commodity prices made the process too expensive. Instead, the company focused on converting very low cost feedstock like pig lard and chicken fat into a biofuel that could be burned to produce electrical power. "Power generation does not need the quality fuel thats required for transportation," says Bio Fuels Power founder Steve McGuire. Two...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — In the largest field trial of its kind in the United States, researchers have determined that the giant perennial grass Miscanthus x giganteus outperforms current biofuels sources – by a lot. Using Miscanthus as a feedstock for ethanol production in the U.S. could significantly reduce the acreage dedicated to biofuels while meeting government biofuels production goals, the researchers report. The new findings, from researchers at the University of Illinois, appear this month in the journal Global Change Biology. Using corn or switchgrass to produce enough ethanol to offset 20 percent of gasoline use – a current White...

The biomass gasifier at Chippewa Valley Ethanol Co. is fuel-flexible by design. Thisrequires a handling system engineered to move feedstocks of varying volumes and densities. Biomass Magazine speaks with Rapat Corp., the engineer of the bulk conveyance system, and equipment vendor Robert White Industries Inc., about the project. The idea was fairly simple. Use the organic material left over from processing an agricultural product, such as potatoes or sugar beets, to produce methane. The methane can then be used as a heat source for the processing facility, or turned into electricity and sold back to the power grid. A team...

Imagine a three-way chicken and egg question. What came first: the chicken, the egg or the nest? That is the latest conundrum facing anyone trying to get started in the biodiesel business. How does one ensure that over a plant’s life that production will find an open market, access to feedstock, will not contravene local ordinances, and will have a trained and efficient pool of employees? The best answer begins with feedstocks because they determine how far and how fast one can adapt to changing market conditions. Feedstock prices typically represent approximately 85 percent of the price of biodiesel. Never...

Mark Rosenzweig, owner of San Jose Tallow, was driving home through suburban San Jose, Calif., one mid-April day when he noticed a pumper truck pulling into a shopping center. He was immediately suspicious. Rosenzweig knew the only eatery in that center was a Burger King because he held the contract for grease removal. “I followed him until he pulled into the Burger King where I watched him steal the grease,” he says. Rosenzweig is no stranger to grease theft. “It’s a common problem out here,” he says. He told Biodiesel Magazine that in one week during the month of June...

he steep rise in fuel prices is creating opportunities for entrepreneurs to innovate and discover new low-cost feedstocks for biofuels production. Neptune Industries, a Florida company, is looking to collect waste generated byits fish farming operation to fertilize algae production for biodiesel feedstocks.

Advocates claim that ethanol mandates and subsidies protect our planet, enhance U.S. security, and ease our pain at the pump. In fact, ethanol policy hurts all Americans except for the tiny slice of the population that grows corn or distills it into ethanol. What is ethanol? Basically, in the United States, it is moonshine derived from the starch in corn. You can drink it. Rowdy collegians have been known to mix 1 part ethanol with 40 parts fruit juice to make huge vats of punch for parties. The law does not allow you to drink and drive, but it now...

WHEN it comes to global warming, extreme scare stories abound. Al Gore, for example, famously claimed that a whopping six metres (20 feet) of sea-level rise would flood major cities around the world. Gore’s scientific advisor, Jim Hansen from NASA, has even topped his protégé. Hansen suggests that there will eventually be sea-level rises of 24 metres (80 feet), with a six-metre rise happening just this century. Little wonder that fellow environmentalist Bill McKibben states that “we are engaging in a reckless drive — by drowning of much of the rest of the planet and much of the rest of...

The world of biofuels has been turned on its ears in the past twelve months, as environmentalists finally realized policies they supported to reduce use of petroleum had literally created a subsidized global market for biofuel - leading to massive new rounds of rainforest destruction to grow, for example, oil palms. Suddenly biofuels is not being described as the answer to everything. Yet through all this there has always been the promise of sustainable biofuel - a crop that stablizes soil, serves as a windbreak, and grows in arid land where nothing else will survive. A fuel crop that not...

As Price of Grain Rises, Catfish Farms Dry Up By DAVID STREITFELD LELAND, Miss. — Catfish farmers across the South, unable to cope with the soaring cost of corn and soybean feed, are draining their ponds. “It’s a dead business,” said John Dillard, who pioneered the commercial farming of catfish in the late 1960s. Last year Dillard & Company raised 11 million fish. Next year it will raise none. People can eat imported fish, Mr. Dillard said, just as they use imported oil. As for his 55 employees? “Those jobs are gone.” Corn and soybeans have nearly tripled in price...

From his Cessna a mile above the southern Amazon, John Carter looks down on the destruction of the world's greatest ecological jewel. He watches men converting rain forest into cattle pastures and soybean fields with bulldozers and chains. He sees fires wiping out such gigantic swaths of jungle that scientists now debate the "savannization" of the Amazon. Brazil just announced that deforestation is on track to double this year; Carter, a Texas cowboy with all the subtlety of a chainsaw, says it's going to get worse fast. "It gives me goose bumps," says Carter, who founded a nonprofit to promote...

Tastiota, Mexico-A few miles inland from the Sea of Cortez, amid cracked earth and mesquite and sun-bleached cactus, neat rows of emerald plants are sprouting from the desert floor. The crop is salicornia. It is nourished by seawater flowing from_a_man-made_canal. And if you believe the American who is farming it, this incongruous swath of green has the potential to feed the world, fuel our vehicles and slow global warming. He is Carl Hodges, a Tucson-based atmospheric physicist who has spent most of his 71 years figuring out how humans can feed themselves in places where good soil and fresh water...

Could an annoying plant hold the key to reducing our dependence on foreign oil? A Cleveland, Tennessee man who knows how to make ethanol out of kudzu may soon bring his refining process to market. This time next year, the gas you fill-up with in Chattanooga may be cheaper than other parts of the country. Tom Monahan with Agro*Gas says Chattanooga will be number one and then it will spread out from there. In the basement of a Cleveland, Tennessee home, Doug Mizell's experiment in energy appears to be taking off. He's found a way to turn kudzu into fuel....