Following the successful launch of our first industrial scale production facility and the positive results of the fleet testing in Brazil, we are thrilled to be a commercial supplier of renewable fuel for buses in Brazil’s largest city. Over the next year, as we expand our fuel supply agreements with bus fleets in São Paulo, we expect to achieve $10-12 million in annual diesel sales. Brazil’s growing demand for low-sulfur diesel creates a significant opportunity to highlight the superior performance and benefits of our renewable diesel while allowing the country to reduce diesel fuel imports, which comprised nearly 20 percent of Brazil’s diesel needs in 2010.

—John Melo, CEO of Amyris

The city of São Paulo has more than 15,000 buses consuming about 450 million liters of diesel per year. Amyris’s sugarcane-based diesel will help meet the city’s target of reducing fossil fuel use in the public transit system. Under city law, São Paulo is working to reduce fossil diesel use by 10% every year through 2018.

Testing last year in conjunction with Amyris partners SPTrans, Mercedes-Benz, Petrobrás Distribuidora and Viação Santa Brígida showed that a 10% blend of Amyris diesel in Petrobrás’s already low-sulfur diesel (B5 S50) can lower opacity (smoke) up to 40%, said Paulo Diniz, president of Amyris Brasil S.A.

Amyris technology produces renewable farnesene (Biofene). Farnesene is an isoprenoid molecule that forms the basis for a wide range of products varying from specialty chemical applications to transportation fuels such as diesel. When used as a fuel precursor, farnesene can be hydrogenated to farnesane, which has a high cetane number (58). Amyris modifies farnesene to become Amyris renewable diesel. Amyris’s renewable diesel shows superior cold weather performance, high cetane and comparable energy density to petroleum diesel.

In 2009, the US EPA raised the registered blend level of Amyris’s renewable diesel with ultra low sulfur diesel from 20% to 35%. (Earlier post.)