On Dec. 18, President Obama signed a $1.1 trillion spending bill and accompanying legislative package of tax extenders into law. The legislation includes two-year extensions of several tax credits that benefit the bioenergy sector.
As 2015 comes to a close, the Biomass Magazine staff has already been working on 2016 issues for a couple of months. Today, I'm going to share with you my personal favorites from each section.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory published an article in Scientific Reports on its new method to directly convert biomass-derived ethanol to a hydrocarbon blendstock and is continuing work with Vertimass LLC to commercialize it.
St. Landry Parish has officially opened its expanded BioCNG Vehicle Fuel Facility at its sanitary landfill,which is now fueling Progressive Waste Solutions Ltd. refuse vehicles collecting residential trash in St. Landry Parish.
Members of Congress have passed a $1.1 trillion spending bill and accompanying legislative package of tax extenders that includes two-year extensions of tax credits that benefit biofuels and bioenergy. President Obama is expected to sign the bill.
Washington State University researchers have developed a catalyst that easily converts biobased ethanol to a widely used industrial chemical, paving the way for more environmentally friendly, biobased plastics and products.
Gevo Inc. announced an update on the certification process for to its alcohol-to-jet product. A meeting of the ASTM D02.J6 subcommittee was held on Dec. 9 to discuss the revision of ASTM D7566 to include alcohol-to-jet synthetic paraffinic kerosene.
Pacific Ethanol Inc. announced it is now producing cellulosic ethanol at its Stockton, California, facility using Edeniq Inc.'s pathway technology, which converts corn kernel fiber to fermentable sugars.
The Port of Seattle, Alaska Airlines and Boeing are partnering to move toward a significant environmental goal: powering all flights by all airlines at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport with sustainable aviation biofuel.
Joule and HeidelbergCement have announced a partnership to explore application of Joule's technology to mitigate carbon emissions in cement manufacturing. The partnership could result colocation of Joule's technology at HeidelbergCement sites.
Chempolis Ltd. has entered into partnership with Avantha Group's research wing Avantha Centre for Industrial Research & Development to offer technology to India to extract ethanol from various agricultural residues.
Federal lawmakers have released the text of a $1.1 trillion spending bill that will fund the U.S. government through October 2016. An accompanying legislative package of tax extenders aims to extend certain bioenergy tax incentives for two years.
Scientists have discovered that a metabolic pathway previously only suggested to be functional in photosynthetic organisms is actually a major pathway and can enable efficient conversion of carbon dioxide to organic compounds.
The University of Illinois has been awarded a 3-year, $5 million grant from the DOE Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy as part of its OPEN 2015 funding initiative. The research team intends to increase the water use efficiency of sorghum.
DuPont and The Dow Chemical Co. have announced plans to combine in an all-stock merger of equals into DowDuPont. The parties intend to subsequently pursue a separation of DowDuPont into three independent, publicly traded companies.
In January Biomass Magazine story “The Untold Upside of Low Oil Prices,� Senior Editor Ron Kotrba speaks to executives managing different renewable fuel facilities, and finds that it's not all doom-and-gloom when the cost of crude nosedives
University of Massachusetts Amherst computational chemist Scott Auerbach has been awarded a three-year, $330,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to improve basic understanding and optimize the process of producing drop-in biofuels.
The USDA has announced a conditional commitment for a $70 million loan guarantee to help build a 20 MMgy cellulosic biorefinery under development by an affiliate of Ensyn Corp. in Georgia. The facility will produce a renewable fuel oil product.
Russ Jessup, an AgriLife Research perennial grass breeder in College Station, said he is introducing a new biofuel-biomass feedstock that is a hybrid "similar to seedless watermelons, seedless grapes and other sterile triploid crops."
The makers of beer, wine, biofuels and other products that depend on yeasts may soon have many more strains of the microorganism to work with, thanks to a new method for making interspecies yeast hybrids in the lab.
Volvo Trucks North America, after concluding truck and engine lab testing, recently approved the use of renewable diesel fuel for all of its proprietary Volvo engines, offering environmental and cost-savings benefits to customers.
Researchers at Washington State University Tri-Cities have figured out a way to successfully convert a common wood byproduct into hydrocarbon molecules that could be used as jet fuel.
On Dec. 7, the European Commission announced it is opening a formal antitrust investigation to determine whether or not three ethanol producers have manipulated ethanol benchmarks published by a price reporting agency.
Boeing, the University of British Columbia and SkyNRG, with support from Canada's aviation industry and other stakeholders, are collaborating to turn leftover branches, sawdust and other forest-industry waste into sustainable aviation biofuel.
It has been quite the week for the biofuel industry. On Monday, the U.S. EPA released the highly anticipated renewable fuel standard (RFS) renewable volume obligation numbers for 2015, 2016 and 2017.
The U.S. Department of Energy has announced it will hold a live webinar titled "Integrating Bioenergy into the 9th-12th Grade Classroom," on Dec. 10. According to the DOE, the webinar is part of the BioenergizeME Office Hours webinar series.
Abengoa has reportedly laid off staff at its Hugoton, Kansas, cellulosic ethanol plant and other facilities and offices worldwide. A former Abengoa employee said that the company cited financial difficulties as the reason for its actions.
The European Commission has announced the adoption of a new Circular Economy Package that aims to stimulate Europe's transition towards a circular economy. The effort has been criticized for its lack of mandatory food collection.
Argonne National Laboratory recently released a new version of the Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation (GREET) model, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy's Bioenergy Technologies Office.
Abengoa recently announced that it is filing for preliminary creditor protection. The company, however, said it "currently intends to continue to operate its ethanol plants in a normal course of business," including the cellulosic plant in Kansas.
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