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and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), says that using food for energy oe like sugar cane for biofuels oe must avoid depleting food stocks
These cities of the sea could use algal biofuel production and store energy from wind and the Sun. As designs improve oe
Today, I flew the world's first 100%biofuel flight, said pilot Tim Leslie on landing the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) craft.
However, it could equally have been powered by one of a number of biofuels made from algae, flax, coconut husks or even from used cooking-oil.
In the short term biofuels are looked on as a potential savior as most commercial passenger jets can use them with little to no modification,
and the data collected enables us to better understand the impact of biofuel on the environment,
which partnered with a number of firms oe including biofuel suppliers-for the trial. The NRC test is the latest in a series of demonstration flights aimed at proving the worth of biofuels.
 In 2008, Virgin Atlantic was the first to fly a plane on a blend of biofuel and regular jet fuel.
Since then, the number of trials has increased year on year withat least 15  airlines and several aircraft manufacturers performing flight tests with various blends  containing up to 50%biofuel.
And, in 2011, KLM became the first airline to test it in regular commercial flights between Amsterdam
and Paris. All of these tests oe including Transatlantic flights-have shown that biofuel  works well,
One of his main criticisms is that in some cases biofuels can lead to deforestation and a large increase in greenhouse gas emissions.
showed that emissions from burning biofuels varied hugely depending on the type of land used to grow the fuel-crops.
For example, biofuels made with palm oil from a plantation made by clearing rainforest emitted 55 times more carbon dioxide (over its life cycle) than oil from a previously cleared area.
"The situation is more complex than just looking to biofuels, Â says Prof Barrett.""There are many types of biofuel,
there are many different kinds of biomass which can be used to create biofuel, and there are many different ways of taking that biomass and converting it,
and all of those things have different properties in terms of how much they cost and how efficient they are.
 Other big challenges for biofuels include whether land used for growing the necessary crops is taking land away from growing food,
"We are convinced that sustainable biofuels can provide a way to reduce the CO2 by between 60 and 80%on an airplane,
Â"We really do believe that by 2030,30%of all airplane fuel could be provided by sustainable biofuels.
and use a fraction of the biogas to run the milk chiller. The rest could be used for cooking or lighting.
the slurry that comes out of the biogas can be used to fertilize grass and crops, he says.
Kisaalita found that farmers were convinced not that converting the biogas was worth the money. As an alternative, he developed a milk chiller that runs on propane,
now build me a biogas version, and wean me off of propane.''He now has a pilot up
And when you factor in climate change, limited fresh water supplies and competition for harvests from biofuel makers, it is clear the world faces a major challenge.
In 2011 more corn went to biofuel than to feed for the first time in the US. Another big pressure is climate change.
and a rising demand for the raw materials of biofuels. mroevia sciencedaily. com Share Thissubscribedel. icio. usfacebookredditstumbleupontechnorati t
and Agricultural waste Super-yeast is a significant step toward developing second generation biofuels. A new type of bakers yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) has been developed
Researchers writing in Biomed Centrals open access journal Biotechnology for Biofuels describe the creation of the new S. cerevisiae strain, TMB3130,
oethere is considerable interest in developing second-generation biofuels to refine and upgrade non-food material, especially dedicated energy crops and agricultural residues such as straw, bagasse, stover and corn hulls.
#Study of Biofuel Use Shows Large Climate Benefit Ethanol and biogas use in Sweden shows a large climate benefit,
The study from Lund University s Faculty of engineering punctures the controversial argument against biofuels made from food crops, such as ethanol from grain,
or biodiesel from rapeseed. oeit is pretty irrelevant to rank various sustainable biofuels, there is room for all fuels,
The challenge today is to increase the amount of sustainable biofuels in themselves PÃ¥L BÃ rjesson, researcher in environmental and energy systems at the engineering faculty, in a statement.
The Lund study for the first time looks at the scope of Swedish biofuel use and has analyzed its environmental impact, both in relation to each other and as alternatives to fossil fuels such as petrol and diesel.
Arguments such as that the biofuels use up more resources during food production, and force land reclamation for food in other countries instead,
there is nothing to suggest that biofuels produced from Swedish-grown crops under present circumstances would lead to indirect soil effects,
several national economists insist that it may take 50 years for biofuels to repay their carbon footprint strictly due to the indirect soil impact.
Biogas extracted from manure was considered the best alternative in tests which covered biogas ethanol and biodiesel in different variants.
Biogas performed 140 percent better than gasoline and diesel and had a net carbon benefit.
However, even the weakest-performing alternative still attained twice the EU standard that biofuels reduce greenhouse gases by at least 35 percent compared with fossil fuels.
Each type of biofuel has different restrictions in production volumes, he added. In order to avoid adverse effects,
it is important to know what those limits are. oein the future, we could have adverse indirect effects on the land
if we sharply increase biofuel production from food crops very quickly, said BÃ rjesson. oethere is a limit,
Biogas from sugar beets, grass, maize, including residue in the form of household waste, industrial waste and manure, biodiesel from rapeseed, ethanol from wheat and sugar beets,
A co-production of biogas and ethanol from wheat was analyzed also. In addition to greenhouse gas emissions, environmental impacts such as eutrophication, acidification,
as well as emissions from the use of biofuels in light and heavy vehicles. Direct and indirect soil effects were studied.
biofuels made from Swedish raw materials and sugar-cane ethanol imports account for about five percent of total fuel use in Sweden.
Can you imagine producing a sustainable biofuel that doesnt impact on world food supplies? Charlie Paton, Michael Pawlyn and Bill Watts can
which can be turned into biofuel for transportation and other needs. Commercial Synergies The Sahara Forest Project team tell us that the innovative interaction between the two technologies helps each to function more efficiently:
or even carbon negative, biofuel production. Of course, thats in a test tube. oetheres a whole suite of caveats that come along with those estimates
The researchers found that the burning of household biofuels primarily wood and animal dung for home heating
transportation, household biofuels and animal husbandry will have the greatest warming impact on the climate, while the shipping, biomass burning,
while on-road transportation and household biofuels exacerbate cloud-related warming. More research on the effects of aerosols is needed still,
#Agricultural Scientists Sequence Genome of Grass That Can Be a Biofuel Model Crop John Vogel of the U s. Department of agriculture (USDA) Agricultural research service (ARS) with the first wild grass to be sequenced, Brachypodium distachyon.
of biofuel crops. The research is published in the journal Nature. oeenergy security looms as one of the most important scientific challenges of this century
or any perennial grass as a biofuel crop is the difficulty in breaking down its cell walls,
Analysis Reveals Pathways for Improving Biodiesel, Disease Resistance, and Reducing Waste Runoff Soybean, one of the most important global sources of protein and oil, is now the first legume species with a published complete draft genome sequence.
both targeted because of their promise as biomass feedstocks for biofuels production. oethis is a milestone for soybean research
and lead to the increase of the use of soybean oil for biodiesel production. While biodiesel from soybean oil represents a cleaner
renewable alternative to fossil fuels with desirable properties as a liquid transportation fuel, there simply is not enough oil produced by the plant to be a competitive gasoline on a gallons-of-fuel yield per acre.
And, while some of the corn used to produce these biofuels will be returned to the food supply (as animal feed and corn oil),
smaller yields and crops diverted to biofuels. Volatile weather patterns often attributed to climate change are wreaking havoc with some harvests.
And still others make biofuel, a renewable energy source usually made from corn.##oeyou can now build a cell the same way you might build an app for your iphone,
Much of the early hype surrounding this technology was about biofuels#the dream of engineering colonies of yeast that could produce enough fuel to power whole cities.
and so far the biofuels have been used only in smaller projects, such as local buses and Amyris s experiment with GOL s planes.
#Sahara Forest Project multi-technology synergy to grow food in the desert Revegetation and creation of green jobs through profitable production of food, freshwater, biofuels and electricity.
It s also used to grow algae to produce biofuel, with the leftovers from that process going to make animal feed.
there s no guarantee of success. India s Emami Biotech had grand plans to open a US $80 million biofuel plantation in Ethiopia,
and primitive algae has resulted in drug and biofuel companies such as Amyris and LS9. But figuring out how to make changes in the genomes of more complicated organisms has been tough.
It converts its restaurants'fryer fat into biodiesel fuel for the mall's security vehicles according to the site's MOABLOG.
Genetic research on plants has produced also a variety of switchgrass (an important source of biofuels) that grows faster
By switching off a gene called UPBEAT1 the switchgrass never receives a signal to stop growing leading scientists to believe they can use the modified plant to create a higher-yielding biofuel crop.
which are used for biofuels livestock feed and the basic ingredients in processed food. At the same time farm policies offer few incentives for farmers to grow fruits
and to make biofuels like biodiesel a fuel with growing demand as a source of cleaner energy.
and biofuels) and prices experts say. Humans also have to pay close attention to their use of the Earth's resources
But some biofuel crops have bad environmental effects: they use too much water displace people and create more emissions than they save.
Biogas production from hemp could compete with production from maize especially in cold climate regions such as Northern europe and Canada.
and biodiesel can be produced from the oil pressed from hemp seeds. Biodiesel production from hemp seed oil has been shown to overall have a much lower environmental impact than fossil diesel.
Indeed the environmental benefits of hemp have been praised highly since hemp cultivation requires very limited amounts of pesticide.
Recycling plant nutrients to the field such as in biogas residue can contribute to lower greenhouse gas emissions from crop production.
Field studies have shown that the methane-consuming cultures grow just as well on waste biogas which includes contaminants such as sulfides as on pure methane.
and a reduced biofuel yield of as much as 20 percent per pound of input material potentially shutting production.
The use of modern DNA technologies and classification tools may allow development of bioactive compounds for medicine enhanced agricultural productivity environmental damage repair industrial applications such as biofuels
As president of the American Soybean Association he also tries to keep up with everything from biotechnology advances to biodiesel policy changes.
but if a French research project pans out passenger jets could soon fuel up with biofuels derived from this agricultural byproduct.
The effort aims to use straw to create a biofuel that can be mixed with kerosene in a 50/50 blend.
Biofuels are a type of combustible matter holding potential energy in the form of carbon that was bonded chemically in the recent past (when considered on a geologic time scale.
The new fuel would put agricultural waste to work instead of diverting food crops to make biofuels.
Biofuels have developed in response to the high costs of oil production and to the problem of pollution created during petroleum extraction and refining processes.
But critics have said biofuel production causes food shortages by replacing edible crops with plants intended for use in fuels.
Meanwhile spikes in food prices over the past few years have tampered government enthusiasm for biofuels that divert food crops even as the European union intends to reach an annual output of 2 million tons of aviation biofuels by 2020.
The process of creating these new fuels wouldn't be very different from that used for typical biofuels.
No extra crops would need to be grown to make the biofuel and the dependability of the fuel source could insulate airlines from spikes in fuel prices c
and lumber and is being investigated as a potential biofuel the scientists say. The loblolly pine joins other recently sequenced conifers including the Norway spruce (Picea abies)
and palm trees for biofuels many worry that appropriate regulation and controls may come too late.
codifying evidence that biofuels are significantly dirtier than they were thought once to be. The California Air Resources Board approved its'low-carbon fuel standard'on 23 april,
Despite intense opposition from the US corn (maize) ethanol industry, the rule takes into account agricultural expansion abroad caused by rising grain prices as food crops are diverted for biofuels.
The US Environmental protection agency is reviewing its own ruling that will establish greenhouse-gas criteria under the national biofuels mandate.
still performs better than any other biofuel. The California regulation does not yet include specific numbers for biodiesel,
although the indirect impact could be even higher because of massive emissions from expanding palm-oil plantations, particularly in Indonesia.
Bioelectricity better than biofuels for transport: Nature Newsvehicles propelled by biomass-fired electricity would travel farther on a given crop
comparing cumulative greenhouse-gas emissions for both biofuels and bioelectricity. They found that the bioelectric route came out ahead of both corn ethanol
and emissions per hectare that allows for a direct comparison between bioelectricity and liquid biofuels.
By contrast, US fuel policy is focused on biofuels. The federal mandate ramps up from 9 billion gallons of biofuels in 2008 (compared with almost 138 billion gallons of gasoline) to 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022.
On 5 may, the US Environmental protection agency proposed greenhouse-gas standards for various biofuels, but made no provision for electric transport.
However, there are proposals to deploy something like California's low carbon fuel standard at the national level.
what kind of role advanced biofuels might have in the future. He says the key is to have a flexible policy that sets a goal
and habitat impacts of various energy mixes from nuclear power to biofuels resulting from an array of policy options.
despite the fact that biofuels are expected to comprise less than 5%of the country's total energy budget. The US Energy Information Administration predicts that ethanol derived from corn alone might reach annual production levels of 39 billion litres by 2030.
For instance, a farmer who grows one type of crop on his land might simply switch to growing corn for biofuels.
Groom is optimistic that policies can be shaped to promote options that have the least impact on land use and habitat change, such as algae for biofuels,
Nature News<newline>The business of biofuels</newline>This year was supposed to be a big year for Bluefire Ethanol.
California, had planned to start operating its first commercial cellulosic biofuel plant by the end of the year,
The refinery, located near Lancaster, California, would chew up everything from cardboard to hedge clippings and produce more than 11 million litres of biofuel a year.
Cellulosic ethanol a biofuel that can be produced from agricultural residue, grasses and municipal waste was touted as superior to maize (corn) ethanol
And later that year, Congress issued a federal mandate to produce 61 billion litres of cellulosic biofuels annually for transportation by 2022.
and it will almost certainly fail to meet the US Environmental protection agency's (EPA) projection of 381 million litres of cellulosic biofuels in 2010.
says Sean O'Hanlon, executive director of the American Biofuels Council in Miami, Florida. Part of the trouble began when last year's high maize prices and falling ethanol prices led to several bankruptcies in the industry.
whether the EPA will put annual targets for cellulosic-biofuel production into effect on 1 january 2010 as originally proposed.
Attention has begun already to turn from ethanol to other cellulosic biofuels. A Perspective published in Science in August noted that biomass-derived hydrocarbon fuels,
including climate change, biofuels, nutrition, and food safety and security. Yet Beachy's arrival also underscores the often-close ties between US agribusiness and federal research.
Nature News The business of biofuels The promise of green gold is fading from Jatropha curcas,
And of 140 investments made in biofuels so far this year, says analyst Harry Boyle of London-based New Energy Finance,
Another company concentrating on basic science is based SG Biofuels in Encinitas, California. It has collected samples from jatropha plants growing wild in different environments
Biodiesel from his institute's jatropha project (see Nature 449,652-655; 2007) has been used in test cars belonging to the project
and is about to embark on a life-cycle analysis of how much biodiesel jatropha can generate from a 50-hectare plot.
which in August announced a memorandum of understanding with the European biofuel producer PT Waterland.
And China, one of the world's leading biofuel manufacturers, is also taking an interest in jatropha,
transforming vast quantities of desert land into biofuel-producing moneymakers, it is likely to find its niche as a local alternative in certain developing countries.
Altered microbe makes biofuel: Nature Newsin a bid to overcome the drawbacks of existing biofuels,
researchers have engineered a bacterium that can convert a form of raw plant biomass directly into clean, road-ready diesel.
So far, biofuels have largely been limited to ethanol, which is harder to transport than petrol
a modified Escherichia coli bacterium that can make biodiesel directly from sugars or hemicellulose, a component of plant fibre (see page 559).
It's a nice milestone in the field of biofuels, and it has a lot of promise for actually being commercialized,
show that the biodiesel that it is preparing to market reduces greenhouse-gas emissions by 85%compared with standard diesel.
Business watch New biofuel standards have cleared the way for a continued expansion of maize (corn) ethanol production in the United states. The US Environmental protection agency (EPA) ruled on 3 february that ethanol made from maize decreases
%formally qualifying it as a'renewable fuel'for a federal mandate that requires the use of 136 billion litres of biofuels in 2022.
Cellulosic ethanol and'advanced biofuels'(which reduce emissions by more than 50%%and include ethanol made from sugarcane) must cover the remainder.
But the EPA has scaled also back the 2010 requirement for cellulosic biofuels, citing slow progress in the field.
but it is often more difficult to characterize the function of genes in biofuel crops.
Amyris biotechnologies, one of the leading start-up firms deploying the tools of synthetic biology in the biofuels field,
The mandated levels of biofuel production in the United states will increase to 53 billion litres in 2011 about 8%of the country's total fuel consumption
Around 90%of the biofuel will come from conventional corn ethanol next year, with the remainder coming from biodiesel and other advanced biofuels.
however, the US Environmental protection agency pulled back the 2011 requirement for cellulosic biofuels from 946 million to 25 million litres,
and a lack of financing to scale up basic research and development (see'Biofuel blues',left). The US Department of energy has supported biofuels through research grants,
including $30 million for research into next generation biofuels announced last week, but has yet to finalize any loan guarantees for companies wanting to build pilot plants.
Although industry officials say that the programme's requirements for granting loans are too burdensome,
The report leaves out details on issues such as land use, biofuel and climate change, as these will be addressed in future studies by the agencies'joint interdisciplinary Agrimonde platform,
Business Biofuel offering Gevo, a company that genetically modifies microbes to produce chemicals from plant sugars,
and biofuels threatens the rights and livelihoods of millions of people who live in tropical forests, according to a report launched in London on 8 february.
The clearances, a response to rising demand for food and biofuel, released as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the entire UK transport sector does in a year.
But the decision suggests that lawmakers are prepared to ditch support for biofuels to help close the budget deficit.
Nature Newsthe perennial grass Miscanthus giganteus has all the makings of a biofuel superstar. It grows rapidly,
a company in Hayward, California, that is developing the grass as a biofuel crop. But from a research perspective it is underdeveloped so painfully.
by encouraging researchers to tackle the genomic wilderness of emerging biofuel crops in a more systematic way.
Biofuel from beneath the wavesbioengineers have devised a way to produce ethanol from seaweed, laying the groundwork for a biofuel that doesn't sacrifice food crops.
Yasuo Yoshikuni and his colleagues at the Bio Architecture Lab in Berkeley, California, engineered the bacterium Escherichia coli
However, producing biofuels from sugar cane or maize not only detracts from food supplies, but also takes up huge areas of arable land.
But producing biofuels from seaweed has so far proved difficult for bioengineers. Seaweed produces four kinds of sugars laminarin, mannitol, alginate and cellulose.
who also studies biofuel production from seaweed. Jin works with red seaweed, which is less abundant in the world s oceans than brown seaweed,
The main challenge in biofuels is not the ability to degrade complex carbohydrates and turn them into simple sugars,
Biofuel production would require billions of tonnes.""We still face a huge technical gap for large-scale cultivation,
Oil companies say that biofuels are the best way to meet the 6%emission-reduction goal.
The application of such factors would sound a death knell for the European biodiesel industry. According to most scientific studies including one by the International Food Policy Research Institute in WASHINGTON DC used by the European commission to prepare an impact assessment and legislation biodiesel from palm oil,
soya bean and rapeseed causes a similar level of pollution to oil obtained from oil sands
The biodiesel industry contests the"maturity of the science and says that the comparison is absurd A proposal from the European commission is unlikely in the near future.
In a sign of how politically charged the biofuels issue has become, all 27 European commissioners will reportedly be meeting to discuss it,
The oil sands debate has no legal implications on the biofuel issue, and a decision on one has no direct bearing on the other.
and biofuel firm Cosan in S £o Paulo, Brazil, with whom it has signed joint ventures. ESA, CNES, ARIANESPACE, OPTIQUE VIDEO DU CSG, L. MIRARESEARCH Vega launches Europe's Vega rocket, a low-cost launcher intended to get small scientific satellites into low-Earth orbit,
Biofuels are made from crops that are planted often on former forest or marsh land, and carbon-offset projects can result in the eviction of inhabitants of wooded areas that are bought up in exchange for carbon credits.
Canadian biofuel plans deraileda leading biofuels company whose products have powered Formula 1 racing cars has hit a major bump in the road.
and companies to invest in biofuel production. Most fuel ethanol is made by fermenting the sugars in grains or sugar cane,
It is seen as a more sustainable biofuel because it does not divert food from dinner tables to biorefineries.
but it has no targets for cellulosic biofuels. By contrast, the US Renewable Fuel Standard, part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, mandates the United states to produce increasing volumes of cellulosic biofuels each year, until it reaches a target of 60.5
billion litres in 2022.""But nobody is producing it, really, says Jamie Stephen, who studies cellulosic biofuels at the University of British columbia, Vancouver.
US output was supposed to reach around 2 billion litres this year, but the Environmental protection agency projects that companies will collectively achieve only 2%of that goal.
and Zeachem in Lakewood, Colorado are expected to produce around 40 million litres of cellulosic biofuel in 2012.
Hard selldespite favourable government policies, loans and grants, companies continue to strain to bring cellulosic biofuel to market."
For cellulosic biofuels to be competitive with fossil fuels, the price of oil must surpass US$120 per barrel,
Tyner says that current projections for a boom in cellulosic biofuels are unrealistic.""But I m not saying it s not going to happen by 2050
a biofuel that could help to cut greenhouse-gas emissions and a route out of poverty for small-scale farmers.
and that the oil s use as a biofuel offers only marginal benefits for mitigating climate change.
But the emerging biodiesel market is also thirsty for the oil. In principle, biodiesel made from palm oil could be environmentally friendly,
because the carbon dioxide released when it is burned is roughly the same as that absorbed as the plant grows.
The EU has a binding target to raise the share of biofuels used in road transport to 10%by 2020
and most of that is expected to be met by blending biofuels such as palm oil with conventional fuels.
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