Category: Biofuels

The International Energy Agency released its latest World Energy Outlook 2015, saying there are clear signs that an energy transition is under way. The report finds that the plunge in oil prices has set in motion the forces that lead the market to rebalance, and cautions that strong direction is needed from the upcoming United Nations conference on climate change in Paris, COP2. “It would be a grave mistake to index our attention to energy security to changes in the oil price,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol. “Now is not the time to relax. Quite the opposite: a period of low oil prices is the moment to reinforce our capacity to deal with future energy security threats.” The World Energy Outlook 2015 examines all energy sectors, looking at global energy trends to 2014, the oil market, natural gas, unconventional gas, coal, power, renewables and energy efficiency, along with […]

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November is the month of Thanksgiving in the US, and if historical trends hold up, we’re about to see a price recovery that producers will appreciate. Before I dive into the evidence, I would first like to apologize for being wrong in September. I guess my crystal ball was a little fuzzy when I suggested that we were about to see a downturn in prices. US ethanol prices for four consecutive years had lowered in September, but thanks to crop concerns and rallying corn prices, that streak was broken. Similarly, we saw another minimal gain in October. So let’s try this again. Across the last four years, the Platts Chicago Argo benchmark ethanol assessment has averaged a 37.5-cent rise in November. Before you get too excited about that, understand that the bulk of those gains were made in the past two years. In 2014, the assessment rallied 98 cents […]

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NEW YORK The Obama administration has found an unlikely ally in its efforts to keep pushing more biofuel into the nation’s gasoline supply: OPEC. The lowest oil prices in over six years have fueled a resurgence in U.S. gasoline use in recent months as more Americans take to the road. Demand is expected to climb 1.5 percent this year to nearly 139 billion gallons (526 billion liters) according to the government’s most recent forecasts, enough to easily accommodate small increases in ethanol quotas without breaching the so-called "blend wall" that refiners say puts a cap on blending at around 10 percent of total gasoline and diesel supply. It may be even higher, based on data from the first quarter, when gasoline use surged by more than 3 percent, the fastest in over a decade. Those calculations help explain why biofuel backers are up in arms over the Environmental Protection […]

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The US Environmental Protection Agency proposed renewable fuel quotas for 2014 that it said reflect the year’s actual biofuel use, and for 2015 and 2016 and, for biodiesel, quotas through 2017 that increase steadily over time. It proposed using authority granted by Congress to reduce quotas below federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) levels established under the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA). The proposal’s steadily increasing volumes indicate that biofuels remain an important part of the nation’s strategy to improve energy security and address climate change, it said. Under the notice of proposed rulemaking , which Administrator Gina McCarthy signed on May 29, EPA proposed adjustments to advanced biofuel and total renewable fuel targets for all 3 years. The proposed quotas for 2015 and 2016 “are expected to spur further progress in overcoming current constraints in renewable fuel distribution infrastructure, which in turn is expected to lead to […]

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NEW YORK In a long-running battle between oil refiners and the U.S. farm lobby over the future of ethanol fuel, biofuel producers may have just made a small, but important dent in big oil’s formidable defenses. Over the past few months, privately held retailers Kum & Go and Sheetz have become the first significant chains to announce plans to start selling E15, a gasoline with 15 percent of ethanol, 50 percent more than the typical U.S. blend. By the end of 2016, those two retailers plan to add E15 at pumps at 125 stations. That will more than double the number of U.S. outlets offering cheaper fuel with a higher ethanol content than the standard E10 blend that contains 10 percent of ethanol. If retailers continued to add stations at a similar pace over the next five years, there would be some 1,300 stations offering E15. That would still […]

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Clean Energy Fuels produces a product called Redeem, which is the first renewable natural gas available in commercial quantities. The RNG will be used in stations across California beginning this month to fuel tractors and delivery vehicles. The stations in Sacramento, Los Angeles and Fresno will provide about 1.5 million gallon equivalents of RNG fuel to about 400 vehicles in the state. The company already uses natural gas on tractors in the U.K. RNG, or biomethane, can be created from sources such as decomposing organic waste in landfills. “Renewable natural gas is critical to our effort to minimize UPS’s environmental impact while meeting the growing demand for our services,” said Mitch Nichols, UPS senior vice president of transportation and engineering. The Atlanta-based delivery giant said in April that revenue for U.S. ground packages grew 5.3% to $6.36 billion in the first quarter. That helped buoy total U.S. domestic-package operating […]

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ENLARGE Corn is delivered to the Green Plains ethanol plant in Shenandoah, Iowa, earlier this year. Despite lower crude prices, ethanol plants across the nation continue to operate at a brisk pace. Photo: Associated Press For decades, presidential candidates have bowed to Iowa’s corn-based ethanol industry while campaigning in a state where corn is king. But several of the likely Republican candidates slated to address the state’s agricultural industry on Saturday backed the sunset of ethanol subsidies in 2011, and many oppose the industry’s new sacred cow: the renewable-fuel standard, which requires blending ethanol and other biofuels into the gasoline supply. How the likely White House contenders navigate the issue will signal how much Republican politics are now driven by the party’s conservative base, which balks at government interference in the marketplace. Two GOP contenders who want to phase out the renewable-fuel standard, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Louisiana […]

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Eduardo Porter Does combating climate change require burning the world’s forests and crops for fuel? It certainly looks that way, judging from the aggressive mandates governments across the globe have set to incorporate bioenergy into their transportation fuels in the hope of limiting the world’s overwhelming dependence on gasoline and diesel to move people and goods. While biofuels account for only about 2.5 percent today, the European Union expects renewable energy — mostly biofuels — to account for 10 percent of its transportation fuel by 2020. In the United States, the biofuel goal is about 12 percent by early in the next decade. The International Energy Agency envisions using biofuels to supply as much of 27 percent of the world’s transportation needs by midcentury. The reasons for such ambitions are clear: It is nearly impossible under current technology to run cars, trucks, ships and jet planes on energy generated […]

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« Lufthansa Group aircraft will fly from Oslo on biokerosene beginning in March; deal with Statoil | Main | Toyota introduces all-new Tacoma with new 3.5L non-hybrid Atkinson cycle engine » Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have developed an enzyme that can enable the conversion of biomass to sugars up to 14 times faster and more cheaply than competing catalysts in enzyme cocktails today. The enzyme called CelA, a cellulase from the bacterium Caldicellulosiruptor bescii , could thus could change the economics of biofuel conversion. In one scenario, the best commercially used enzyme converted sugars at a 30% extent in seven days. CelA converted to double that extent. And while it took the alternative enzyme seven days to achieve that conversion, CelA, with a small boost from an extra beta glucosidase, achieved double in just about two days. Among CelA’s many […]

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ENLARGE Falling profit margins for the $40 billion U.S. ethanol industry may cause some companies to scale back production in 2015. Bloomberg News Tumbling oil prices are bringing unwelcome tidings to one of the U.S. Farm Belt’s hottest industries. Ethanol makers are bracing for a drop in earnings as cheap crude pushes down the prices they fetch from refiners to blend the corn-based fuel additive into gasoline. Ethanol producers also face a recent jump in the price of corn, their main raw material. Falling profit margins for the $40 billion U.S. ethanol industry may cause some companies to scale back production in 2015, analysts and industry executives say. Still, many observers think ethanol demand may remain steady or even rise if cheap gasoline spurs U.S. motorists to drive more, tempering the hit to ethanol earnings. Crude-oil prices slid 20% in December to about $53 a barrel and fell 46% […]

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A spike in supplies has sent U.S. ethanol prices tumbling to four-year lows and curbed profits for an industry that had posted robust earnings for most of this year.  Ethanol Continue Reading

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae plays a central role in global biofuel production; currently, about 100 billion liters of ethanol are produced annually worldwide by fermentation of mainly sugarcane saccharose and corn starch by the yeast. There are also efforts underway to use the yeast with cellulosic biomass. Boosting the yield and lowering the cost of fermentative production of biofuel would not only result in a significant immediate financial impact to commercial ethanol operations, but also support cost reductions that would be helpful to advance other advanced biofuels using the same or a similar pathway. However, boosting production has been gated by two key conditions: the ability of the yeast to tolerate higher temperatures, and the ability of the yeast to survive high concentrations of ethanol. Now, two new separate studies report progress on each of those fronts; the findings could have a significant impact on industrial biofuel production. Both […]

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Source: U.S. Navy, used with permission Note: Above, clockwise from left: Fleet replenishment oiler USNS Henry J. Kaiser (T-AO 187), aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68), destroyer USS Chung-Hoon (DDG 93), and cruiser USS Princeton (CG 59). Great Green Fleet demonstration, July 2012. Recently the Department of Defense (DoD) released its annual procurement for bulk fuels to be delivered to its facilities in the eastern and inland United States and Gulf Coast. For the first time, this procurement requests military-specification diesel fuel and jet fuel that are blended with biofuels. The biofuels components, however, are optional and will only be accepted if certain cost and performance requirements are met. A similar procurement for the Rocky Mountain and West Coast regions is expected to be released later this year. The U.S. Navy’s interest in biofuels is part of its goal to generate 50% of its energy from alternative sources by […]

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The U.S. Energy Department said it was spending $6.3 million on research aimed at generating a biofuel that could be cost competitive by 2017. SRI International of California and Research Triangle Institute of North Carolina received funding from the Energy Department for research and development projects meant to drive down the cost of producing gasoline, diesel and jet fuels from biomass. The funding is part of an effort to make biofuels competitive with regular fuels. The Energy Department said it wants to produce a drop-in biofuel that would cost about $3 per gallon by 2017. Data from 2011 show some biofuels were close to the point at which they’d be competitive with regular fuels. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said the government is looking for ways to increase energy security and reduce greenhouse-gas emissions by advancing a low-carbon economy. The transportation sector in the United States accounts for nearly 60 […]

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Ethanol declined to a six-week low after a government report showed production of the biofuel rose to a record. Futures fell after the Energy Information Administration said output rose 3 percent to 972,000 barrels a day last week, the most in four years of weekly data from the Energy Information Administration. Corn prices that have dropped 34 percent in the past year have helped reduce production costs for ethanol makers and allowed them to boost operations. One bushel of the grain makes at least 2.75 gallons of the renewable fuel. “People are looking to place gallons and get rid of supply that they may have laying around,” Mark Ruyack, a manager at StarFuels Inc., a Jupiter, Florida-based broker, said today in a telephone interview. Denatured ethanol for July delivery slumped 8.5 cents, or 4 percent, to settle at $2.057 a gallon on the Chicago Board of Trade, the lowest […]

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Six months ago the U.S. oil industry scored a surprise win against farm groups when the Obama administration proposed slashing the amount of ethanol refiners must blend into gasoline, a move that could save them billions of dollars. Stunned by the reversal, producers of the corn-based biofuel and their supporters are now fighting back ahead of a June deadline for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to make a final decision on the cut. The clash has been portrayed as a battle between "Big Oil" and "Big Corn," two powerful and deep-pocketed lobbies. But a Reuters review of public records and interviews with lawmakers, lobbyists and executives reveals a more complex picture. A private equity firm and an airline helped convince the Obama administration to backtrack, at least temporarily, on a policy it has supported for years: requiring steadily-rising volumes of ethanol to be blended into […]

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Six months ago the U.S. oil industry scored a surprise win against farm groups when the Obama administration proposed slashing the amount of ethanol refiners must blend into gasoline, a move that could save them billions of dollars. Stunned by the reversal, producers of the corn-based biofuel and their supporters are now fighting back ahead of a June deadline for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to make a final decision on the cut. The clash has been portrayed as a battle between "Big Oil" and "Big Corn," two powerful and deep-pocketed lobbies. But a Reuters review of public records and interviews with lawmakers, lobbyists and executives reveals a more complex picture. A private equity firm and an airline helped convince the Obama administration to backtrack, at least temporarily, on a policy it has supported for years: requiring steadily-rising volumes of ethanol to be blended into […]

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GMT US biodiesel production fell to 70 million gallons in January, down 48% from December, Energy Information Administration data showed Wednesday. Production was up 6.1% compared with January 2013. Of the 530 million lb of feedstock used to produce US biodiesel in January, soybean oil’s share reached 45.47%, down 8.85 percentage points from December, the EIA said. Article continues below… Platts Biofuelscan is a daily report, covering the latest worldwide biofuel news and prices. It provides a daily summary of market events and developments, along with closing market price assessments from the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Platts Biofuelscan includes prices assessmenst for ethanol, ETBE, renewal indentification number (RIN) biofuels (US market0 and biodiesel. It also includes graphs depicting historic and current trends for major assessments. Soybean oil remained the largest biodiesel feedstock, with 241 million lb consumed. The next three largest feedstocks were corn oil […]

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The US Environmental Protection Agency lowered the amount of cellulosic ethanol required in 2013 to the amount actually produced, relieving refiners and importers of the need to buy credits to cover shortfalls against the earlier mandate. The adjusted volume is 810,185 ethanol-equivalent gal. The earlier requirement, published on Aug. 15, 2013, was 6 million gal. EPA made the change in response to petitions for reconsideration from the American Petroleum Institute and American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers. AFPM welcomed the move. “I expect EPA to use the same rational thinking to revise its proposed 2014 ethanol and biodiesel requirements, which are already long overdue,” said AFPM Pres. Charles T. Drevna. He said EPA has proposed a mandate of 17 million gal of cellulosic ethanol for 2014 and noted production of the material in the first quarter totaled less than 75,000 gal. Because commercialization of cellulosic ethanol has been slow to […]

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The estimated production margin for a typical US Midwest dry-mill ethanol plant for the week ended Friday fell 20.06 cents, or 15.6%, to a six-week low of $1.0854/gal, a review of US Department of Agriculture and Platts data showed. As weekly stocks data and added imports had a starkly bearish effect on ethanol prices, the margin retreated for a fourth straight week from an eight-year high hit in the last week of March. The estimated ethanol price used in calculating the margin was the weekly average of the Platts Chicago Argo ethanol assessment, which tumbled 19.4 cents, or 8.13%, to a seven-week low of $2.3870/gal. Article continues below… Platts Biofuelscan is a daily report, covering the latest worldwide biofuel news and prices. It provides a daily summary of market events and developments, along with closing market price assessments from the Americas, Europe, and Asia. […]

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Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, a study shows, challenging the Obama administration’s conclusions that they are a much cleaner oil alternative and will help combat climate change. A $500,000 study paid for by the federal government and released Sunday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change concludes that biofuels made with corn residue release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with conventional gasoline. While biofuels are better in the long run, the study says, they won’t meet a standard set in a 2007 energy law to qualify as renewable fuel. The conclusions deal a blow to what are known as cellulosic biofuels, which have received more than a billion dollars in federal support but have struggled to meet volume targets mandated by law. About half the initial market in cellulosics […]

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There is an old joke in the energy business that advanced biofuels are the fuel of the future, and always will be. A Spanish company, Abengoa Bioenergy , has bet $500 million on robbing that joke of its punch line. In the middle of a cornfield here it is building a 38-acre Erector set of electrical cable and pipe that will soon begin producing cellulosic ethanol, which it calls a low-polluting alternative to petroleum products. This is just as the George W. Bush administration and Congress intended seven years ago with legislation promoting energy independence. But even as Abengoa and other companies prepare to produce significant amounts of cellulosic ethanol, using corn stalks and wheat straw as opposed […]

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In 2012, the combined global production of ethanol and biodiesel fell for the first time since 2000, down 0.4% from the figure in 2011, according to the Worldwatch Institute’s latest Vital Signs Online report. Global ethanol production declined slightly for the second year in a row, to 83.1 billion liters (22 billion gallons US), while biodiesel output rose fractionally, from 22.4 billion liters in 2011 to 22.5 billion liters (5.9 billion gallons US) in 2012. Biodiesel now accounts for more than 20% of global biofuel production, according to the report. Biofuels for transport—essentially ethanol and biodiesel—account for about 0.8% of global energy use, 8% of global primary energy derived from biomass, 3.4% of global road transport fuels, and 2.5% of all transport fuels. […]

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Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration based on Oil Price Information Service (ethanol prices) and Thomson Reuters (RBOB prices). Note: RBOB is reformulated blendstock for oxygenate blending gasoline, a motor gasoline blending component intended for blending oxygenates to produce finished reformulated gasoline. Ethanol spot prices have increased steadily since early February. By late March, New York Harbor (NYH) spot ethanol prices exceeded prices for RBOB (the petroleum component of gasoline) by more than $1 per gallon. Ethanol spot prices in Chicago and Gulf Coast markets also rose above NYH RBOB prices. The premium of New York Harbor over Chicago spot ethanol prices, which averaged 25 cents per gallon in January (close to the typical transportation costs of moving ethanol from production centers in the Midwest to terminals on the East Coast in recent years) widened to $1 per gallon in early March. Logistical constraints in and around ethanol production centers […]

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An ethanol plant in Stockton, Calif. Analysts say a backup of railcars has kept ethanol from making it to coastal refineries that mix it into gasoline. U.S. ethanol and railroad industry groups clashed Thursday over transportation constraints that have triggered soaring prices for the biofuel in recent weeks. Renewable Fuels Association President Bob Dinneen said in a letter to the Association of American Railroads that the "sheer chaos" of the rail system has pushed up prices for ethanol—a corn-based biofuel that is blended into gasoline—and caused consumers to pay more at the pump. The higher costs, he argued, have damaged the image of the ethanol industry. Ethanol prices have jumped in recent weeks as supplies have declined amid transportation snarls. A bitterly cold winter and rising crude-oil shipments have slowed rail traffic in the Midwest. Most ethanol is made from corn grown in that region. The backup of railcars […]

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February production of corn-based ethanol in the US lowered by 125.01 million gallons, or 10.76%, to an 11-month low of 1.04 billion gallons, US Environmental Protection Agency data showed Friday. The drop in ethanol production was unsurprising to sources as delayed rail return times to plants forced reduced run rates and a significant drop in production. "If you think those numbers are nuts, wait until March comes out," one trader said. "We’ll be lucky if we hit 900 [million gallons]." US ethanol prices have soared in recent weeks as supply concerns continue to send a resounding bullish sentiment throughout the market. Delayed return times on railcar deliveries, caused primarily by severe freezing weather and a higher demand for railcar space, was the root of the price surge throughout February, sources said. The Platts Chicago Argo ethanol assessment hit $3.24/gal Friday, up $1.1850/gal from a […]

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US railroads are rerouting ethanol shipments to avoid bottlenecks in Chicago, particularly for delivery to the East Coast, where supplies are running low, rail company officials said Thursday. David Garin, BNSF’s vice president of industrial products, said Chicago — already congested as the US’ busiest freight rail hub — has been severely impacted by winter weather, leading to delays on routes using interchanges there for all commodities. Though BNSF does not serve East Coast markets, Garin was speaking at a meeting of the US Surface Transportation Board’s Rail Energy Transportation Advisory Committee as a representative of the rail industry. "Chicago is a big challenge for us," Garin said. "We’ve looked at longer routing. It may not seem to make sense to [ship ethanol on rail] through Arkansas to the East Coast, but right now where we’re trying to avoid interchanges in Chicago." Ethanol inventories […]

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U.S. ethanol makers are banking on export markets as they grapple with Obama administration plans to cut U.S. consumption requirements, but the industry is hampered by a distribution structure built almost exclusively around the domestic market. Archer Daniels Midland Co. , Green Plains Renewable Energy Inc. and other ethanol producers are trying to boost sales to Brazil, Mexico, Asia and the Middle East, in part by cutting costs to make the corn-based biofuel more price-competitive overseas. Exports could reach one billion gallons this year, increasing their share of U.S. output to 7% from 5%, as lower corn prices help producers sell ethanol more cheaply to foreign buyers, according to the Renewable Fuels Association, a trade group. But the $44 billion industry’s efforts to expand could be limited, analysts say, because the bulk of U.S. ethanol plants are located in the Midwest to be close to the corn supply rather […]

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«Study cautions on sole focus on energy crop biomass yield; perennial grasslands deliver greater ecosystems services than corn A study by a team from the DOE’s Great Lakes Bioenergy Center has concluded that focusing on the yield of an energy crop alone can come at the expense of many other environmental benefits. The study, published as an open access paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), found that switchgrass and prairie plantings harbored significantly greater plant, methanotrophic bacteria, arthropod, and bird diversity than corn. Although the corn biomass yield was higher, all other ecosystem services, including methane consumption, pest suppression, pollination, and conservation of grassland birds, were higher in perennial grasslands. Agriculture is being challenged to provide food, and increasingly fuel, for an […]

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Ethanol’s discount to gasoline narrowed as ice and snow are slow railroad deliveries across North America. The discount to the motor fuel tightened 2.57 cents to 71.76 cents as ethanol deliveries by rail are taking twice as long as normal, according to Chad Conn, a vice president of operations for Franklin, Tennessee-based Eco-Energy Inc. “Logistical issues are playing a role in the surprising firmness of the market,” said Sean Wever, a biofuels broker at Green Key Markets LLC in Chicago . Denatured ethanol for February delivery gained 1.2 cents, or 0.6 percent, to settle at $1.925 a gallon on the Chicago Board of Trade. Prices have dropped 14 percent in the past year. The cold snap pummeled energy infrastructure and prompted railroad companies BNSF Railway Co., Union Pacific Corp. and Norfolk Southern Corp. to warn customers earlier this week to expect delays. About 70 percent of U.S.’s ethanol is […]

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Ethanol advanced as icy, snowy conditions sweeping across the Midwest caused rail delays and terminal closures that may force companies to reduce operations. Futures rose 1 percent as Kinder Morgan Inc. said it’s working under force majeure at its Argo, Illinois, ethanol terminal. Union Pacific Corp., BNSF Railway Co. and Norfolk Southern Corp. have also said their operations are affected. Rail is a virtual pipeline for ethanol in the U.S. “They’re having to dial back because they can’t move production quick enough,” said Mike Blackford, a consultant at INTL FCStone in Des Moines , Iowa . “We’ve had rail issues. With this cold snap all of a sudden you’re shutting down truck, too.” Denatured ethanol for February delivery climbed 2 cents to $1.944 a gallon on the Chicago Board of Trade. Gasoline for February delivery gained 3.26 cents, or 1.2 percent, to $2.6786 a gallon on the New York […]

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« Bosch sponsoring Driverless Car Experience at CES | Main Print this post ARPA-E piloting crowdsourced energy challenge in biofuels The US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) is piloting a crowdsourced energy challenge , focused on ARPA-E’s PETRO (Plants Engineered To Replace Oil) program, which aims to increase the viability of biofuels by investing in research to double the energy-capture-per-unit area from that of corn ethanol. ( Earlier post .) The challenge asks “solvers” to present a detailed description and scientific rationale for a simple, rapid, and minimally invasive method to determine the energy content of plant material. Winners could receive up to $30,000. The goal of the PETRO program is to engineer new crops to produce fuels that can be extracted from the plant itself, in contrast to traditional research in the area that focuses on breeding larger plants. To do this […]

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In an unmarked greenhouse, leafy bushes carpet an acre of land here tucked into the suburban sprawl of Southern California. The seeds of the inedible, drought-resistant plants, called jatropha, produce a prize: high-quality oil that can be refined into low-carbon jet fuel or diesel fuel. The mere existence of the bushes is an achievement. Hailed about six years ago as the next big thing in biofuels, jatropha attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in investments, only to fall from favor as the recession set in and as growers discovered that the wild bush yielded too few seeds to produce enough petroleum to be profitable. But SGB, the biofuels company that planted the bushes, pressed on. Thanks to advances in molecular genetics and DNA sequencing technology, the San Diego start-up has, in a few years, succeeded in domesticating jatropha, a process that once took decades. SGB is […]

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&KiOR expects to produce 920K gallons of cellulosic biofuels by year end; short-term focus on economics Cellulosic gasoline and diesel company KiOR, Inc. expects that, given current and anticipated operations through the remainder of the year, its Columbus, Mississippi facility will produce approximately 410,000 gallons of renewable fuel during the fourth quarter of 2013, bringing full year production total from the facility to approximately 920,000 gallons. ( Earlier post .) The ratio between gasoline, diesel and fuel oil expected to be produced during the year is approximately 35% gasoline, 40% diesel, and 25% fuel oil. In August, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized the 2013 percentage standards for four […]

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Biofuel consumption in Germany was 2.9 million mt in the calendar year to October, down 8.9% compared with the first 10 months in 2012, according to the most recent data released by the country’s federal economics agency BAFA. The drop came despite a 0.5% tick upwards in total road fuel consumption to 43.75 million mt during the same period, and blending rates were lower for all biofuel types, the data released Friday showed. One positive indicator for biofuel was a 9.5% increase in biodiesel consumption to 189,978 mt. ETBE usage also jumped 26.7% to 33,121 mt in the month of October, bringing the total for the year to 266,945 mt, a 2.6% rise. The total amount of biodiesel consumed in the year was 1.79 million mt, down 10.6%. Meanwhile, ethanol consumption in October was 90,438 mt, down 9.7%, and in the year to October, […]

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it has invalidated 33.5 million renewable-fuel credits sold by an Indiana company for biofuel it didn’t produce, the fourth time the agency has alleged fraud in the program. The filing today follows fraud charges filed against the former owners of the Indiana-based E-Biofuels LLC in September. The U.S. Justice Department accused them of falsely claiming its products qualified under government incentives for renewable fuels. The EPA move, which was posted on its website, may further roil the market for credits used by refiners such as Valero Corp. (VLO) and Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) to meet government renewable-fuel requirements. Before today’s action, the agency had said three companies produced a total of 140 million fraudulent Renewable Identification Numbers, or RINs. The basic credit for ethanol last sold for 28 cents. At today’s value of about 40 cents each for biodiesel, the RINs affected by […]

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se more alternative fuels. Under USDA’s and Navy’s “Farm-to-Fleet” venture, biofuel blends for the first time will now be part of the Department of Defense’s domestic solicitations for jet engine and marine diesel fuels. The Navy said it would seek to purchase JP-5 and F-76 advanced drop-in biofuels blended from 10-50% with conventional fuels. “A secure, domestically produced energy source is very important to our national security,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said in a statement. “The Farm-to-Fleet initiative we are announcing today is important to advancing a commercial market for advanced biofuel, which will give us an alternative fuel source and help lessen our dependence on foreign oil.” […]

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Study shows bamboo ethanol in China technically and economically feasible, cost-competitive with gasoline Bamboo, the composition of which is highly similar to energy grasses used for biofuel production such as switchgrass, is an interesting potential feedstock for advanced bioethanol production in China due to its natural abundance, rapid growth, perennial nature and low management requirements. Now, researchers at Imperial College London have shown that bioethanol production from bamboo in China is both technically and economically feasible, as well as cost-competitive with gasoline. An open access paper on their study is published in Biotechnology for Biofuels . Bamboo2 Bamboo3 China bioethanol pump price for five enzyme loading scenarios in ( a ) 2011 with a 16¢ per liter […]

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A month ago, Steve Walk was on the brink of deals to sell two big oil refiners some of his company’s specialized oil pumps, which serve up fuel that is 85 percent ethanol, a biofuel made mostly from corn. Walk’s company, Protec Fuel, sells and installs the equipment needed to dispense so-called E85. The deals would have nearly doubled Protec’s business, he said. The number of stations across the United States dispensing E85, which is a rarity despite the growing use of biofuels, would have jumped by 10 percent. But those deals are on hold after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal earlier this month to slash the minimum volume of ethanol to be used in the country’s gasoline supply next year. The surprise move by the Obama administration marks a retreat from the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act meant to push increased sales of […]

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Houston (Platts)–18Nov2013/532 pm EST/2232 GMT US biomass-based diesel production production in October passed the federal mandate for full-year 2013, Environmental Protection Agency data showed Monday. Production through October was at 1.39 billion gallons, besting the Renewable Fuels Standard’s 1.28 billion-gallon target for the year. The remaining production throughout 2013 can be partially applied to this year’s ethanol mandate or advanced biofuel mandate, and to 2014’s mandates. Monthly biodiesel production was lower in October for just the third time in a record-breaking 2013, down 3.34 million gallons to 163.78 million gallons. US biomass-based diesel production has been spurred through the year by the return of the $1/gal biodiesel blending tax credit and a 10 cents/gal credit for agricultural biodiesel producers. –Jordan Godwin, [email protected] –Edited by Richard Rubin, [email protected]

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