The Big Biofuels Blog

Over on the Doom Index there are more calculations about the US ability to grow enough crops to replace all the oil it imports. (Hint: They still can't).

Another integrated dairy ranch and biofuel facilty is being built in Arizona, according to Biodiesel and Ethanol Investing.

Germany's millers met at the week end to discuss the effects that the demand for corn as fuel compared to food is having now in rising bread prices.

They want a scienific evaluation of the amount of land that will be given to fuel use and the amount that will be used for food. They are worried that there is only 80 days of grain stored in the world and that pressure on grain will increase because of rising populations.

Thanks to Bablefish.

If you're interetsted in Jatropha as a biofuel, there is a conference in Mombassa later this month.

US Chemicals giant Huntsman thinks it has found another use for glycerine, making propylene glycol which is used to de-ice aircraft and make other chemicals.

LanzaTech claims to have a technology to convert carbon monoxide in industrial waste gases to ethanol. Looks promising, if the concentration of carbon monoxide is high enough. The trouble is carbon monoxide is pretty toxic so flue gas concentrations will tend to be pretty low...

WHEB Biofuels plans to build a £50m/70.2m euro biodiesel plant in the Port of Rotterdam. The plant will be a multi-feedstock plant with the capacity of 400,000 tonnes/year biodiesel production. This will be supplid on long term contracts to major oil companies.

Plant construction is subject to environmental permitting, should start later this year and full scale commercial operations scheduled for 2009.

Over on Ubergizmo, they're disucssing a product that could be going well in as the northern summer begins early. Ethanol powered, air-con-in-a-can.

Yes the product is based around the idea that you spray flammable ethanol onto your clothes.... suitable only for non-smoking office workers who aren't wearing synthetic fabrics, but there might be a niche for 'organic' versions of this if it can be flame retarded.

Orange juice prices are set to soar as Brazilian orange growers plunge further into sugar cane, which is used in bioethanol, according to a summary of a report in the Youmiuri Shimbum.

According to the Japan Fruit Juice Association, switching from orange to sugarcane cultivation has been promoted in Brazil, which accounts for about 60 percent of global orange juice output, leading to a worldwide decline in orange production.

I bet grapefruit juice follows (more's the pity).

You might find these useful: Del.icio.us links to

bioethanol

ethanol

biodisel

Milk prices are set to rise because of corn being diverted into ethanol, according to CNN. Yesterday I wrote about impending price rises for orange juice. Breakfast is going to get more expensive.

Over at The Energy blog they report that:

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on May 1 announced that it will provide up to $200 million, over five years (FY'07-'11) to support the development of small-scale cellulosic biorefineries. This funding  announcement seeks projects to develop biorefineries at ten percent of commercial scale that produce liquid transportation fuels such as ethanol, as well as bio-based chemicals and bioproducts used in industrial applications

I've just come across the American coalition for ethanol. They're not likely to be unbiased, but there could be useful information buried on the site.

Texas A&M researchers have developed a kind of genetically engineered crop  sorghum which they say could be more efficient to plant in dry states for ethanol than comparatively thirsty corn.

Cargill and Ashland will announce later today at the Bio conference in Boston that they plan to form a 50:50 joint venture to produce chemicals from biofuels waste. In a joint press statement (which is not yet on either firm's website) they say:

The venture's first product will be propylene glycol (PG). Using both licensed and proprietary technology, the joint venture will produce high-grade propylene glycol from glycerin, an abundant co-product of biodiesel production. The joint venture expects to provide global manufacturing and marketing of bio-based PG, starting with a 65,000 metric ton-per-year plant at a yet-to-be-finalized location in Europe.

The venture anticipates a combined initial capital investment in the range of $80 million to $100 million. Details on the name, leadership and development plans are expected to be announced later in 2007.

Why now?  one answer would be that there's going to be a lot of glycerin about in a couple of years, there's about 1.4m tonnes of the stuff being produced at the moment and the market is growing at between 3% to 7%/year.  If biodiesel really takes off, and it would be a pity to miss the boat... or as they put it.

"We believe the chemical market has reached a tipping point where bio-based and petroleum-based options are both desired by the market and practical to produce. To be in a position where Ashland can offer bio-based specialty chemical products in the future, we need to help foster the creation of bio-based basic chemicals now," said Walter Solomon, vice president and chief growth officer, Ashland Inc. "We are creating our future and we've found a terrific partner in Cargill to do so."

And we're seeing some integration along the chain, which I think could help them in the future:

"Cargill's expertise in converting vegetable-based oils is world-class, its global reach is unmatched and its glycerin supply chain expertise will promote a quick market rollout. All this will provide a competitive advantage over other manufacturers attempting to produce any product derived from vegetable oils," said Dave Jones, director of bio-products, Ashland Inc.

The economics of biofuels and more is going to be covered in a nascent blog from Gerry McKiernan Science and Technology Librarian at Iowa State University Library, Ames. Called The Bioeconomy Blog, I'll watch it with interest.

A bumper palm oil crop looks set to be harvested in Indonesia this year, according to Bloomberg. Hattip to plam news

The Philippines government has enacted a law covering biofuel composition of gasoline/diesel, according to info.davaoexchange.com.

The 2006 Biofuel Act, which calls for a mandatory mixing of a 1% biodiesel in petrodiesel and 5% bioethanol in gasoline, has been implemented last Sunday, May 6 2007.

The EU is to restructure its sugar regime, cutting production at the same time as it is promoting biofuels. Does the left hand talk to the right hand? I don't think so.

There's no joined up thinking on biofuels at the UN, according to Global Dashboard reporting on the Guardian Newspaper this morning. This needs more work than I can give it at the moment, and I'm not sure why the UN should be blamed, or what it could do... But if we're going to cut down good forest to plant oil palms or farmers start using more marginal land to grow crops then we'll be in trouble.

Check out The Frontal Cortex's report on a speech Barak Obama made in Detroit, the US car capital. It ranged over fuel, farmers and the future of Detroit. 

Jonah Lehrer says

I'd feel better about Obama's plans if he wasn't a leading supporter of the tariff on Brazilian ethanol derived from sugar. (There is a tariff of fifty-four cents per gallon on sugar-based ethanol from foreign sources.) Instead, Obama supports nurturing a "home grown ethanol industry," which means massive subsidies for corn farmers. While that sounds nice in the abstract, it's up against the brute facts of botany: ethanol distilled from sugarcane is much cheaper to produce and generates far more energy per unit of input--about eight times more, according to most estimates--than corn. And because we also impose tariffs on imported sugar - the sugar lobby is almost as powerful as the corn lobby - it's not economical to develop a domestic ethanol industry based on sugar cane. It's as if Congress has decided that supporting the corn farmers with massive agricultural subsidies is more important than 1) developing alternative fuels that are better for the environment and help prevent global warming 2) wean us off our dependence on foreign oil and 3) help support development in poor countries that grow sugar.

Way to go Jonah. And with a dose of cold reason, Johnah continues:

But he won't talk too tough to the farming companies that will be bankrolling at least part of his assault on the Whitehouse.

I can see that the farming lobby probably pays a considerable amount of money to politicians' campaign funds and, that as you need a lot of money to become president, its very welcome. But you also need a lot of votes in the right states.
There are many more drivers in the US than there are farmers, right, and they all have votes, so why not have a policy for them that would allow them to decide which fuel ethanol to buy expensive locally produced stuff or cheaper stuff from overseas.
And while we're at it, give tax breaks to people who either don't own cars or drive very few miles/year...

In a breakthrough that could make the production of cellulosic ethanol less expensive, Cornell researchers have discovered a class of plant enzymes that potentially could allow plant materials used to make ethanol to be broken down more efficiently than is possible using current technologies, according to a report on the University of Illinois Center for  Advanced BioEnergy Research blog.  

According to Biofuel Review

"The bottleneck for conversion of lignocellulose into ethanol is efficient cellulose degradation," said Jocelyn Rose, Cornell assistant professor of plant biology. "The discovery of these enzymes suggests there might be sets of new plant enzymes to improve the efficiency of cellulose degradation."

The paper appears in the April 20 issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Breeanna Urbanowicz, a graduate student in Rose's laboratory, was the paper's lead author.

Is your firm working on inserting this gene into corn, or something more exotic, like Eucalyptus?

Ethanol Fuel Markets are studied in a new report from researchandmarkets based in Dublin, Ireland. It can be yours for Euro 2831 as a PDF.

Dynamotive and the Argentine province of Corrientes have an agreement in principle to build up to half  a dozen biofuels plants.

According to Dynamotive 

Dynamotive Energy Systems Corporation (OTCBB: DYMTF), a leader in biomass-to-biofuel technology, and its subsidiary Dynamotive Latinoamericana S.A., have signed an agreement with the Provincial Government of Corrientes in Argentina, and the engineering firm TECNA to develop up to six biofuel plants

The US Energy Department may bail out failed biofuel investments under proposed regulations that were announced yesterday. There could be up to $4bn in this financial year and $9bn next year, according to Planet Ark.

They're being optimistic. So taxpayers will be subsidising corn that will be sold to financially unsound projects (which will receive tax breaks) and the creditors to these projects will be funded by the taxpayer if these projects, fail.

Sorry to be so negative, but why not just import cheaper biofuels and put the tax dollars to some better use... like a National Health Service? What do you think?

Argentina's biofuel bandwagon gets going, according to a report on AP and over the other biofuel blogs like a rash this morning.

AP Says

many Argentines are worried that diverting farmland for biofuels - made from corn, sugarcane, palm oil and other agricultural products - will drive up food prices even higher.

"This idea of using grains to make energy instead of using them for food, now that's a problem," resident Pedro Marcote said. "Food prices keep going up and up."

People in relatively poorer countries will feel the effect of diverting food crops into fuel crops faster than relatively wealthy consumers in North America. Are you seeing your food bills rising?

Over on Biodiesel BioDieselSpain.com, they have stumbled upon an excellent source of cheap biodiesl that Brazil has in abundance: Bovine tallow, could that be Brazil's secret biodiesel weapon? It looks cheap enough.

The post is in Spanish, thanks to Babelfish

The Wall St Journal's Grace Fan has rounded up a bunch of global biofuels cat fights and suggests that Biofuels will be the next WTO spat.

That's a bit tentative, and I'd agree with that position in terms of being the next spat (it could easily be over corsets, fire engines, or marmalade)  but, because Biofuels are just one facet of the battle between the world's uninduistrialised countries and industrialised nations that stalled the Doha round of WTO negotiations they'll play and they'll play big.

According to Australia's National news Nine's website Transport Minister Mark Vaile has urged Australia's petrol retailers to increase the availability of cheaper ethanol-blended fuel, as motorists face a fresh spike in petrol prices.

Vaile said the government would meet with oil companies in the coming weeks to push for the further rollout of ethanol-blended fuel.

What is the price of addiction? There's an interesting counter over on allegrobiodiesel's site which claims to show how much the US is spending on imported fossil fuel. It's rather jolly to watch the numbers zoom past, but when did they start the clock. I think we should be told.

It never occurred to me, until I was scratching about after a lead, that there's an entire group of people who don't want to worry about ethanol. They just burn the corn for heating. Not the straw, but the corn. I just burn corn, there's even a blog.

Although somehow that feels viscerally wrong to burn food like that it is going to extract the energy in the corn more efficiently than the whole rigmarole of fermentation distillation and transportation. Its certainly an honest use of the grain.

Sake, the national drink of Japan, could potentially be used as fuel in vehicles in the near future if a pilot project takes off. At this moment, the town of Shinanomachi has produced a cheap ethanol brew from rice that could see cars in Japan run on biofuels in the not-so-distant future, according to Ubergizmo.

If you're making the sake anyway then there's probably little harm in this. Of course, you have to think about the effect of diverting rice into this area if the idea takes off. You can read more about biofuels at the big biofuels blog.

One local council's use of biodiesel in recycling collections

If you're dabbling or playing seriously in the Chicago Board of Trade Mini corn and wheat futures, you can see what the market's doing at no charge and live.

UK Politicians love biofuels, that is the message from a couple of posts on Green Media. Kicking off with David Milliband (not a candidate for the Labour leadership) and linking through to Mark Lancaster, who is a Conservative.

The US Farm Bill 2007 will underpin quite a lot of US agriculture through subsidies and price supports --  which make it hard for non US farmers to compete in that market. It must be one of the largest pieces of social engineering in the world. So it is interesting to see Senator Tom Harkin, quoted as saying by Bill Thompson in the Wall St Journal online .

"When I talk about energy and I talk about cellulose, you know, switchgrass can be a commodity... It may not be a commodity now, but in the next five to 10 years it could be a very big commodity ... Why are commodities just limited to what we've done in the last ... 50 years? Maybe there are new commodities out there we should be investing in."

Harkin, separately spoke about the Farm-to-Fuel Investment Act, in a press statement. He said:

The Farm-to-Fuel Investment Act, would provide transition assistance for farmers to grow dedicated energy crops (crops like switchgrass grown solely for the purpose of producing energy).

"When we draw our energy from farm fields and other renewable sources here in the U.S., and reduce our dependence on the oil fields of the Middle East, that is a win, win, win for America. This bill charts a course for initiating the extensive production of biomass feedstocks while continuing to protect wildlife and promote sound soil and water conservation practices. I commend Senator Klobuchar for her work to push additional biofuels production from biomass and the contribution she is making to the debate on the new farm bill."

Is the Senator right? I'd love to hear your views on the Farm Bill and on the Farm to Fuel Act.

Hattip and deep bow to Farmpolicy.com, which will be added to my reading list.

Just how politically sustainable is using food for fuel in the US. There's an interesting post over on dtn Ag Policy Blog (limited trial, and limited access, I had to pretend to be Canadian) about the sustainability of the US' Biofuel policy.

The key lines for me are

USDA Chief Economist says that the rising prices of US agricultural commodities like corn and soya "will not boost food prices enough to harm consumers."

Their Washington insider says:

[Collins']  conclusions depend on a good harvest both this coming fall, and 2008. USDA believes that the additional acres and yield growth will provide for the growth in demand, and could even rebuild stocks a little.

The dtn Washington Insider pointed me towards Berkshire Hathaway. The investment firm recently held an annual meeting. Someone there could be the small boy in the Kings's New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen, its either the person who asked about ethanol or Warren Buffet's deputy, Charlie Munger, who said, according to the Minneapolis StarTribune.com

"Running cars on corn is about the stupidest thing I ever heard of... Our government is under tremendous political pressure even though it makes no sense."

So we have a political decision to turn food into fuel, that is uneconomic and could put one of the world's largest countries at risk of rising food prices or worse if the weather is bad. Am I missing something, and is Charlie right? Let me know.

Production of cereals and demand for them is going to be tight in 2007, according to a report from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, in a statement released yesterday.

The FAO Says

World cereal production in 2007 is on track to reach a record level of 2 095 million tonnes, a rise of 4.8 percent over 2006 levels, FAO said in a tentative forecast issued today. But with stocks at their lowest level in over two decades, total supplies would still be barely adequate to meet increased demand, boosted by the fast-growing biofuels industry.

You can read all the numbers in the organisation's Crop Forecast and Food Situation report.

Hattip to GreenVeg which says soon we may have a choice, eat food or drive.

Mainichi Weekly Online has a story about ethanol-containing gasoline going on sale in Tokyo on April 27. It also contains a list of useful translations of biofuel terms in to Japanese.

US Grocers want an end to US corn subsidies and tariffs. In a recent statement their trade body said:

America's biofuels policy must be pursued thoughtfully and deliberately, taking into full account the possible unintended consequences of a sharp increase in the use of corn for fuel.

A 35 billion gallon ethanol mandate will require a substantial increase in the use of fossil fuels for corn and ethanol processing and transportation, as well as an additional fifteen million acres devoted to corn crops, which will encroach on agriculturally-marginal and environmentally- sensitive land.

"An aggressive ethanol mandate will also require the U.S. to significantly reduce its corn exports to ensure an adequate supply of corn for food and fuel.

"Such a reduction will result in a decrease in the amount of food available overseas, which in turn will have a negative affect on world hunger.

Are they just being depressing nay sayers?  Let me know

Its cold in Chile, so they're exempting biofuels from tax in a bid to help the country's poor make ends meet, according to Ecoperiodico, quoted on Biopact.

I saw this essay on one of the Biofuels news groups and thought it looked interesting, Tim Joslin has given me permission to reproduce it so here it is. If you want to use it or extracts you should ask Tim. He holds the copyright.

The first part is an interesting argument about the effects of supply demand and price... as we add more biofuels to the transportation fuel pool the price of that fuel will fall (it assumes that there is no underlying increase in the capacity to use fuel).

I also like the second part, which examines some of the sloppy thinking that can be involved in ideas like Carbon offsetting.

Here it is: The Displacement fallacy.

Promoters of biofuels and of carbon offset schemes both rely on the same flawed premise. They
assume that supplying an alternative to a source of greenhouse gases (GHGs) will somehow prevent
the activity causing the GHG emissions. The UK's Department for Transport (DfT), for example,
claims that compelling the country's motorists to burn (approximately) one million tonnes per annum
of carbon in the form of biofuel1 under its Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), will result in
one million tonnes less carbon reaching the atmosphere each year.2 This is not the case.
The problem is that, whilst the RTFO may ensure that motorists burn one million tonnes of biofuel
carbon a year, at great cost to the environment and to food supplies, it will not ensure that motorists
burn one million tonnes less carbon in petrol or diesel. There is no reason to suppose the biofuel will
"displace" oil-based fuels and every reason to suppose that it won't.
The price of oil is determined by supply and demand in a global market-place. The greater the supply,
the lower the price. The lower the price, the more people will buy. Conversely, the greater the
demand for fuel - that is, the more people want to buy - the higher the price. A balance is reached.
The price at any given time is that at which the amount people will buy matches the supply.
If we add one million tonnes of biofuel to the fuel supply each year we will free up one million tonnes
of the current supply of oil-based fuels. This will cause the price to fall. More people will want to buy
petrol or diesel at this lower price, so demand will rise to compensate for the increased supply.
In practice the effect is global. The price of oil and oil-based fuels around the world will adjust
continuously as biofuel is added to the fuel supply. Consumers in the UK and in other countries
around the world will buy more petrol and diesel. People will simply drive more.
A similar argument applies to schemes to "offset" carbon emissions. I read recently about one such
scheme, to subsidise a wind-farm in China under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto
Protocol.3 Now, paying for a wind-farm in China is not a bad thing in itself, but it is impossible to
claim that doing so "offsets" a specific amount of carbon emissions elsewhere in the world. It may be
that China is unable to build coal-fired power stations fast enough to meet the demand for electricity.
The wind-farm may therefore simply be generating electricity that would not have been produced
otherwise, and is not "offsetting" carbon emissions at all.
Depending on market conditions, adding one million tonnes of biofuel carbon to the UK road fuel
supply will not "deliver carbon savings of approximately one million tonnes per annum"4. The saving
will be somewhere between zero and one million tonnes. In general, a fair assumption might be to
halve the expected carbon saving. But, at present the world is developing rapidly and there are fuel
shortages in many countries. The main limitation on oil consumption is how quickly we can get it out
of the ground - there is very little surplus production capacity. Under present conditions it is
reasonable to assume that the UK's RTFO will "displace" only a small proportion of the one million
tonnes of carbon claimed by the DfT.

1 After allowing for the fossil fuel inputs required to produce the biofuels, and for the differing energy contents of biofuels and petrol/diesel. The "Consultation on the Draft Renewable Transport Fuel Obligations Order 2007", Dept. for Transport, February 2007 (the "RTFO Consultation document"), assumes that "on average, biofuels offer a 60% carbon saving compared to their fossil fuel equivalents" (paragraph 74, p.18). This equates to "2.5 billion litres of biofuel a year" (RTFOConsultation document, paragraph 5, p.1). This note refers to "one million tonnes of carbon in the form of biofuel" and "one million tonnes of biofuel" for simplicity.
2 RTFO Consultation document, e.g. paragraph 1, p.4.
3 "Clean Power That Reaps a Whirlwind", The New York Times, 9th May 2007, accessed online on 15/5/07.
4 RTFO Consultation document, paragraph 1, p.4.
16/05/2007, 3:14 PM 1/1 ©Tim Joslin

I saw this essay on one of the Biofuels news groups and thought it looked interesting, Tim Joslin has given me permission to reproduce it so here it is. If you want to use it or extracts you should ask Tim. He holds the copyright.

Now that's what I call advertising, from Piedmont Biofuels, and its on YouTube, where I've added it to my (pretty partial) collection of biofuel videos...

Lets talk trees for a bit. There is a growing realisation that diverting corn or other food sources into fuel is likely to have severe impacts on the world's ability to feed itself, or at least that the price of food is likely to rise dramatically. 

What does that leave, as renewable alternatives? Wood, grass, biomass and other forms of decomposing or waste vegetation.

I have decided that I need some structure to my general rambling over the web and I guess we're all going to get pretty bored as the mainstream decides vocally in the coming weeks and months, that Corn is only any good for the short term or smaller volumes of biofuels in the future.

I'm going to try explore some of these other biofuels areas in the coming weeks. So I'm going to start with trees, I like trees, they're big, easy to spot and some of the faster growing ones like willow have been use for as renewable energy for many years.

I recently wrote about Brazil has OK-ing the use of GM Eucalyptus trees on its territory (what happens if they out into the forests and run wild, like Rhododendrons in Snowdonia) and this lead to a response on the Australian Biofuels forum from Troy H, with a PDF of a submission to the Australian Government about oil supply from 2006 numbers about the volume of wood that Eucalypts and other fast growing antipodean trees can produce. The report says:

Wood such as E. globulus and P .radiata grown in plantations in high rainfall (>700mm) steep country currently only useful for grazing, can easily produce in the order of 15 - 30 tonnes of biomass per hectare per year from which 5,000- 10,000 litres per ha per year of alcohol should be extractable on a sustainable basis. Species such as oil mallee Eucalyptus, Casuarina and Grevillea sp have been shown by Dept CALM in WA to have sustainable wood production potential (albeit in the range 1-5 tonnes per ha per year) in the 300 - 500 mm rainfall wheat belt areas. (See press release, Appendix). Such wood production from local species has the added benefit of being sustainable in terms of reducing soil loss, being 'drought proof, lowering saline water tables and providing 'greenhouse sinks'.

 Two caveats, The Lorax (which I've referred to in the past) and letting the land recover or farming trees sustainably.

"Adopt a fuel policy that works" was the message California Governor. Arnold Schwarzenegger gave Congress in  a recent symposium on low carbon fuels at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Berkeley California.

He added that the US 45 cent/gallon import duty on ethanol

"makes absolutely no sense. It's crazy, and it's definitely not in the best interest of the customers," according to Planet Ark.

According to Fordaq news researchers at the University of Georgia have found a way to pyrolise wood to give them biofuels. The work was quoted in the on-line edition of Energy and Fuels from the American Chemistry Society (ACS).

I'm not sure how this differs from other approaches using pyrolysis, but the ACS, is pretty hot on new chemistry...

Biofulers are going fishing, but they are missing a trick. According to the Des Moines Register, quoted in Ethanol Business.com, Renew Energy, based in Wisconsin plans to use waste heat from its ethanol process to warm water and to grow tilapia fish for the table. 

If they were to grow Catfish, like they do in Vietnam, they could squeeze the oil out and then sell the rest as processed food... Will we see a tilapia glut?

I've come across some economics about using wood biomas as energy on a US forest products document. The document by the USDA's Forest Products Laboratories pretty pro wood, but that said, the economics of using wood to generate energy seem to show that the cost of producing 1m British Thermal Units (BTU) of heat was about $2.50 in Wisconsin in 2003 compared with $24.90 for electricity.

Brazil launched a futures contract for anhydrous ethanol on its Mercantile and Futures Exchange. The announcement was made on 24 April and the aim is to give producers and investors a chance of some certainty in the market in the future.

According to my friend, William Lemos, writing for ICIS news in Houston, Texas :

The new anhydrous contract is quoted in US dollars, and it debuted on Friday on Brazil's futures exchange (BM&F) at $396/cubic metre (cbm). The contract ended on Tuesday 5.3% lower at $375/cbm.

(Disclosure: I work for ICIS: About ICIS)

Now its Big Biofuels fault that gas prices are so high and fuel efficiency of cars running ethanol blends in the states is so poor. Well that's the conclusion of Rob in North Dakota.

I think he's wide of the mark blaming Big Biofuel, for a couple of reasons, firstly compared to big oil, big biofuel is like a flea on the back of a rhino and secondly biofuel companies are usually squeezed between the consumer, and the farm companies that dominate the US corn market.

If I was going to blame anyone, and I'm not into the blame game as a rule, I'd blame the shareholders/owners of firms like ADM and Cargill first before the biofuel people.

Fundamentally, if you're only getting 19 mpg from your motor on gasoline, maybe you should buy Japanese or something. Unless you have to haul building materials/farm animals around.

Otherwise taking the tariff off imported biofuels (you're right Bob, that should happen) will only fuel the US' addiction to unnecessarily large and unnecessarily uneconomic cars.

This may seem a long post about a chap called Rob in North Dakota. And it is.

Who is he? How influential is he?

I don't know but he is representative of a group of people in the US that the biofuel industry needs to persuade that there is a point to swapping to ethanol blends, because otherwise, when the chickens come home to roost about the unstainability of corn ethanol it will have a difficult time persuading people that cellulosic ethanol, is different and better for the environment.

Now uncertainty over ethanol is keeping US gas prices up according to the NW Republican blog quoting a report by Jad Mouawad in the New York Times.

Gas prices are spiking again -- to an average of $3.22 a gallon, and close to $4 a gallon in many areas. And some oil executives are now warning that the current shortages of fuel could become a long-term problem, leading to stubbornly higher prices at the pump. They point to a surprising culprit: uncertainty created by the government's push to increase the supply of biofuels like ethanol in coming years...

What is surprising about that is that the person who said it originally did so with a straight face. I doubt that Borat would fall for that line. Am I right or am I overreacting. Let me know

JST tells us there is a Bloomberg report saying that ethanol will be bigger than biodiesel in Europe by 2020. Good news for the English then, as the cheap stuff which we are sold by the French as table wine will be used properly... as the basis of biofuels. I suppose its too early for a glass?

Dear All,
I've spent the last couple of days busy on other projects for my employers and now I'm going on holiday until 4 July. If I can get the internet connection back up at home (tea and computers: a dangerous combination) I'll maybe blog from there if I get a moment. See you soon