The Department of Energy announced $14 million in funding (DE-FOA-0002946) to support and to optimize the production of affordable biofuels and biochemicals while significantly reducing carbon emissions. The Topic Areas in the 2023 Conversion Research and Development (R&D) funding opportunity seek to address the following R&D needs: R&D on gasification... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) will award $590 million to renew its four existing Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs). This funding will help support the Department’s research into the next generation of sustainable, cost-effective bioproducts and bioenergy from domestic biomass resources. Each of the four centers, led by a National... Read more →

Strategic Biofuels has selected Johnson Matthey’s (JM’s) Fischer Tropsch (FT) CANS technology—co-developed with bp—for its Louisiana Green Fuels project (LGF) in Caldwell Parish, Louisiana. Located on a 327-acre site at the Port of Columbia, the LGF plant plans to convert 1 million tons of forestry waste feedstock into cleaner-burning renewable... Read more →

The US Department of Energy announced $25.5 million in funding to enable the sustainable use of domestic biomass and waste resources, such as agricultural residues and algae, to produce low-carbon biofuels and bioproducts. The “Reducing Agricultural Carbon Intensity and Protecting Algal Crops” funding opportunity (RACIPAC) (DE-FOA-0002910) will improve the production... Read more →

bp says that it will invest more in the energy transition and bp’s own transition, with up to $8 billion more slated for transition growth engines (TGEs) by 2030. These include higher-return bioenergy, and convenience & EV charging; and focusing hydrogen and renewables & power where bp can leverage integration.... Read more →

Solvay is investing at its Livorno, Italy site to launch the company’s first unit of circular highly dispersible silica (HDS) made with bio-based sodium silicate derived from rice husk ash (RHA). Rice husk is an abundantly available agricultural waste. Combustion of rice husk produces RHA, which consists mainly of silica... Read more →

Topsoe and Steeper Energy, a developer of biomass conversion technologies, signed a global licensing agreement for a complete waste-to-fuel solution. The agreement combines Topsoe’s technologies in renewable fuels and hydrogen production as well as decades of experience in engineering with Steeper’s proprietary Hydrofaction technology and industry know-how. With the agreement,... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) will award some $118 million in funding for 17 projects to accelerate the production of sustainable biofuels. Made from widely available domestic feedstocks and advanced refining technologies, energy-dense biofuels provide a pathway for low-carbon fuels that can lower greenhouse gas emissions throughout the transportation... Read more →

University of Queensland researchers, working in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich (TUM), have found a way to convert sugarcane into isobutanol— a building block of aviation fuel and other products—more efficiently. An open-access paper on the work is published in Chemistry - a European Journal. Enzymatic cascade to... Read more →

Raven SR signed memoranda of understanding (MOU) to supply sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) to All Nippon Airways (ANA) and to Japan Airlines (JAL) for major global routes. Each MOU provides for an initial 50,000 tons of SAF supply in the first year, 2025, with annual incremental increases to 200,000 tons... Read more →

Raven SR, a renewable fuels company; Chevron New Energies, a division of Chevron USA; and Hyzon Motors are collaborating to commercialize operations of a green waste-to-hydrogen production facility in Richmond intended to supply hydrogen fuel to transportation markets in Northern California. The facility will be owned by a newly formed... Read more →

Liquid intermediates from pyrolysis and hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) can be co-processed in an oil refinery along with conventional crude oil. In an open-access paper in the journal Energy & Fuels, a team from VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, with colleagues from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Ghent University,... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) announced its intent to issue two funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) in early 2023. These potential FOAs—“Reducing Agricultural Carbon Intensity and Protecting Algal Crops (RACIPAC)” and the “2023 Conversion R&D”—will enable the sustainable use of domestic biomass and waste resources to... Read more →

At its Dakar debut in January 2022, the Audi RS Q e-tron (earlier post) series hybrid set standards in efficiency and competitiveness of e-mobility in motorsport. In the next step, the three desert prototypes with electric drive and energy converter will run in the 2023 Dakar Rally with an innovative... Read more →

Rio Tinto has shown the effectiveness of a low-carbon iron-making process using ores from its mines in Australia in a small-scale pilot plant in Germany, and is now planning the development of a larger-scale pilot plant to further assess its potential to help decarbonize the steel value chain. The process,... Read more →

Neste, the world's leading producer of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel produced from waste and residue raw materials, will acquire the used cooking oil (UCO) collection and aggregation business and related assets in the United States from Crimson Renewable Energy Holdings, LLC. The transaction includes shares in SeQuential Environmental... Read more →

DG Fuels (DGF), a provider of cellulosic drop-in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), signed a multi-year SAF offtake agreement with Air France KLM for up to 60,408 metric tons (21 million gallons) per year from DGF’s initial plant to be located in Louisiana. The contract is expected to make Air France... Read more →

Rolls-Royce has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Alder Fuels, a process technology and project development company in the low-carbon transportation fuels industry (earlier post), to test Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) produced based on Alder Fuels’ proprietary greencrude technology (AGC). The testing, which will include flight tests on a... Read more →

Raven SR, a renewable fuels company, and Emerging Fuels Technology (EFT) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to integrate their respective technologies into an advanced system for producing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel. The resulting production platform will include Raven SR’s patented Steam/CO2 Reformer process (earlier post) and... Read more →

Researchers at the US Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Washington State University have developed a a process by which lignin can be selectively converted to jet-range aromatics at unprecedented carbon yields, providing a path toward a 100% drop-in sustainable aviation... Read more →

Neste Corporation and Marathon Petroleum Corporation (Marathon) announced an agreement to establish a 50/50 joint venture to produce renewable diesel following a conversion project of Marathon’s refinery in Martinez, California (the Martinez Renewable Fuels project). (Earlier post.) All required closing conditions have been met, including the receipt of the necessary... Read more →

Aemetis, Inc., a renewable fuels company focused on negative carbon intensity products, announced that $7 billion of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel (RD) supply agreements have been signed with 10 airlines for a total of 916 million gallons of blended SAF. Previously, Aemetis announced a contract with a... Read more →

Enviva, the leading producer of sustainably sourced woody biomass, and Alder Fuels, a clean tech developer and greencrude producer, signed a contract for the long-term, large-scale supply of woody biomass from Enviva, which sources low-value fiber, such as forest byproducts such as tree tops, limbs, and commercial thinnings, to commercialize... Read more →

NYK Line has invested in Japan-based Sustainable Energy Co. Ltd. which has developed its own integrated subcritical-water organic-waste power-generation system (ISOP) system, which decomposes organic substances using subcritical-water-treating technology and ultimately produces green energy products such as biofuels. By investing in Sustainable Energy, NYK will support the commercialization of this... Read more →

Blue Biofuels reports a significant milestone in the scaling of its proprietary Cellulose-to-Sugar (CTS) reactor system. Testing results on a custom modified reactor system demonstrate the ability to convert cellulosic material into sugars with high conversion at a throughput processing rate of 2.5 tons a day. This processing rate represents... Read more →

Researchers from Zhejiang University in China have developed a photo-chemo-enzymatic multi-step combination pathway for the highly efficient and environmentally friendly preparation of biogasoline from cheap and sustainable triolein using solar energy and atmospheric O2 under mild conditions. An open-access paper on the work is published in the RSC journal Green... Read more →

Stora Enso and Northvolt have entered into a Joint Development Agreement to create a sustainable battery featuring anode produced using lignin-based hard carbon produced from Nordic forest wood. The aim is to develop the world’s first industrialized battery featuring anode sourced entirely from European raw materials, lowering both the carbon... Read more →

Neste, the world’s leading producer of renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel produced from waste and residue raw materials, has agreed to acquire 100% of Walco Foods, an Irish trader of animal fats. The transaction is subject to the fulfillment of customary closing conditions and regulatory approval. This is another... Read more →

ENEOS Corporation, Suzuki Motor Corporation, Subaru Corporation, Daihatsu Motor Co. Ltd., Toyota Motor Corporation , and Toyota Tsusho Corporation established the Research Association of Biomass Innovation for Next Generation Automobile Fuels (Research Association) to study ways to optimize the process of producing fuel. It is crucial to provide diverse energy... Read more →

Honeywell announced that Turkish refiner Tüpraş will license Honeywell UOP Ecofining technology to produce biofuels from feedstocks such as used cooking oil and waste animal fat at their refinery in Izmir, Türkiye. The new Ecofining plant is being designed to convert approximately 8,300 barrels per day of waste feeds/feedstocks to... Read more →

DHL Global Forwarding, the air and ocean freight specialist of Deutsche Post DHL Group, has signed an agreement with Hapag-Lloyd, a leading worldwide liner shipping company, for the use of advanced biofuels. As an initial step, Hapag-Lloyd will ship 18,000 TEU of DHL’s volume using advanced biofuels—equivalent to a reduction... Read more →

DSM Engineering Materials has launched of a new, more sustainable version of its flagship product Stanyl: Stanyl B-MB (Bio-based Mass Balanced), with up to 100% bio-based content. Using the maximum possible levels of biomass-waste feedstock, it enables DSM Engineering Materials to halve the carbon footprint of this product line and,... Read more →

Neste Corporation has made the final investment decision to invest into new renewable products production capacity in Rotterdam. The decision is based on demand for renewable products growing substantially with customers’ higher climate ambitions. Rotterdam NExBTL plant Neste’s current 1.4 million ton capacity for renewable products in Rotterdam is the... Read more →

Finnish shipping company ESL Shipping will become the world’s first shipping company to start utilizing new low-emission Neste Marine 0.1 co-processed marine fuel (earlier post) in its vessels in Finland and Sweden. The ISCC PLUS certified marine fuel enables up to 80% reduced greenhouse gas emissions over the life cycle... Read more →

Avfuel Corporation is making a multimillion-dollar investment in Alder Fuels—a company that is developing technologies for producing sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at scale by converting abundant biomass into sustainable low-carbon, drop-in replacement crude oil that can be used in existing refineries to produce aviation fuel. In September 2021, United and... Read more →

Arbor Renewable Gas LLC, a Houston-based company formed in 2019 that produces renewable gasoline and green hydrogen from wood waste and forest residue (earlier post), is evaluating West Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana for a planned $800-million manufacturing and distribution facility employing carbon capture and sequestration emissions-reduction technology. Operating as Magnolia... Read more →

Chevron Corporation completed its previously announced acquisition of Renewable Energy Group (REG) following approval by REG stockholders. (Earlier post.) The new Chevron segment will be called Chevron Renewable Energy Group. We have brought together companies with complementary capabilities, assets, and customer relationships to make Chevron one of the leading renewable... Read more →

A team at Chalmers University in Sweden has analyzed the results of the integration of a chemical looping gasification (CLG) process with a Fischer-Tropsch synthesis (FTS) process and found that this biomass-to-liquids process can produce FT crude with net-negative CO2 emissions. An open-access paper on the study appears in the... Read more →

Researchers from Peking University and SINOPEC have developed a one-post method for the synthesis of C6+ branched compounds from isopropanol condenstation on Ni/MoC catalysts. The branched-chain selectivity in C6+ and nonnecessity of H2 give this route advantage in high-octane gasoline blendstock production. Isopropanol can be derived from lignocellulose, making it... Read more →

Gevo has entered into a partner agreement with Google Cloud to measure and verify the efficacy of next-generation biofuels across the supply chain via full lifecycle sustainability data tracking. Utilizing technology developed by Verity Tracking , a division of Gevo, the collaboration is expected to enable users to track and... Read more →

A team at the University of Madison-Wisconsin studied critical sooting equivalence ratios and subsequent particulate formation during spark-ignition combustion for blends of ethanol, isobutanol (2-methyl-1-propanol), and methylbutenol (2-methyl-3-buten-2-ol) with gasoline using premixed prevaporized (PMPV) fueling. Broadly, they found that increases in alcohol content consistently decreased the chemical sooting tendency and... Read more →

The US Department of Energy (DOE) announced $59 million to accelerate the production of biofuels and bioproducts to reduce emissions in hard-to-decarbonize sectors. (DE-FOA-0002638) Marine and aviation sectors require higher energy densities to avoid frequent stops to refuel for long flights, international shipping routes, and cross-country rail routes, making these... Read more →

Researchers from Washington State University (WSU) and the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have devised an artificial enzyme that digests lignin, which has stubbornly resisted previous attempts to develop it into an economically useful energy source. An open-access paper on their work is published in Nature Communications.... Read more →

Cresta Funds Management (Cresta) has chosen Topsoe’s HydroFlex solution for revamping the Braya Renewable Fuels refinery (Braya) in Newfoundland, Canada. The refinery will produce up to 18,000 barrels per day of Renewable Diesel and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) initially; the capacity will increase further in various stages of expansion. The... Read more →

Together with its partner Nordic Marine Oil, Neste is piloting a new Neste Marine 0.1 Co-processed marine fuel in Scandinavia, a solution helping the maritime sector to reduce the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The ISCC PLUS-certified marine fuel enables up to 80% GHG emission reduction over the lifecycle compared to... Read more →

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company announced a new formulation of its popular Endurance WHA waste haul tire made with a renewable soybean oil compound. The Endurance WHA is now made with soybean oil, which replaces a portion of the petroleum-based materials used in its production. The soybean oil in... Read more →

VERBIO recently officially launched the first cellulosic RNG plant in the US. The VERBIO Nevada (Iowa) Biorefinery began producing renewable natural gas (RNG) on an industrial scale in December 2021. The facility is on track to achieve full-scale production of 7 million ethanol gallons equivalent (EGE) of RNG annually by... Read more →

Asahi Kasei has developed a system to calculate the carbon footprint of products (CFP) for the synthetic rubber and elastomers products Asadene, Tufdene, Asaprene, Tufprene, Asaflex, Tuftec, and S.O.E. with CFP data provision to customers scheduled to begin in June 2022. CFP visualization is achieved utilizing the DEEP (Data Exploration... Read more →

Yokohama Tire Corporation (YTC), a subsidiary of Yokohama Rubber, will be supplying YOKOHAMA tires to about 18 cars competing in the 100th Pikes Peak International Hill Climb to be held on 26 June. The supplied tires will include the first provision of YOKOHAMA’s ADVAN A052 street sports tires made from... Read more →

The BMW Group is using innovative technologies in its efforts to improve sustainability and taking advantage of new options to conserve resources and reduce emissions from painting bodywork. The BMW Group is the first automotive manufacturer worldwide to use matt paints made from biomass instead of crude oil at its... Read more →