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EPA finalizes biofuel rules, says corn ethanol beats gasoline in GHG emissions

Yesterday, the Obama Administration announced new biofuel rules for a Renewable Fuels Standard (aka RFS2) and there's a lot for ethanol producers to love in there. One of the important items in the rules is how the EPA will calculate greenhouse gas emissions from biofuels. Here are the numbers from the EPA model (all numbers are as compared to standard gasoline): Corn-based ethanol with international indirect land use included: 21 percent reduction. Corn-based ethanol without that land use included: 52 percent. Cellulosic ethanol: ... Read more →

White House, EPA move forward on biofuel promotion and rules Sebastian Blanco

The U.S. biofuel industry gets a potential boost and some new rules from the federal government this week. First, the White House – which sort of passed over biofuels with nothing more than a ...

5 mpg = green in NASCAR Sebastian Blanco

NASCAR has already gone solar and wants to help you (not themselves) use less fuel, but the cold hard reality is that those ovals are being made in cars that get around five miles per gallon. Not ...

Lists? Yeah, electric vehicles get on lists. Hopeful, hopeful lists Sebastian Blanco

Here are five technologies that "could change everything": Advanced car batteries Carbon capture and storage Space-based solar power Utility storage Next-generation biofuels This ...

Green gasoline: Coming soon to a pump near you? Jeremy Korzeniewski

It may sound a bit like something from a Dr. Seuss book, but it seems "green gasoline" is indeed on its way to a pump near you. Terrabon, a Texas-based company specializing in biofuels, reports its ...

A truly renewable vehicle comes to the Philippines: coconut oil-fueled bamboo taxi 7 months ago on Autoblog Green

Making powertrains more efficient is only one part of reducing the environmental impact of vehicles. The energy required to mine and process raw materials into the components that comprise a vehicle and then transport it to the end customer can often amount to a significant fraction of the ...

Virent Energy Systems wins Presidential Green Chemistry award for efficient biofuel process 7 months ago on Autoblog Green

Virent Energy Systems, a biofuel company based in Madison, Wisconsin, has received a Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge award for its low-energy water-based process for producing fuels. Using its proprietary BioForming process that uses nearly zero outside energy other than what's generated by ...

Biodiesel's water footprint? 14,000 liters per liter of biofuel 8 months ago on Autoblog Green

We recently heard that, according to one group of researchers at Environmental Science & Technology magazine, corn ethanol has a water cost of 50 gallons per mile. Now, a team working from the University of Twente in the Netherlands has calculated the water cost of ethanol and other biofuels ...

Obama responds to governors' biofuels concerns 8 months ago on Autoblog Green

Presidents and biofuels. Seems to be a theme today. Back in February, the Governors' Biofuels Coalition sent a letter to President Obama asking for a stronger ethanol position, specifically asking that the national blend be increased to E13 and that the government consider promoting the ...

Study: better to burn biomass to power electric cars than to make ethanol 9 months ago on Autoblog Green

Corn ethanol promoters, get out your keyboards. You've got another dragon to slay. A new study has found that it is more efficient to straight-up burn plant material to generate electricity and then charge up electric vehicles than to make ethanol for those vehicles. Professor Elliot Campbell at ...

GM makes the case for testing E15 ethanol blend 9 months ago on Autoblog Green

GM has long been a proponent of using high-level ethanol blend, E85, in motor vehicles. But, with all of the talk of putting E15 or E20 (gasoline with 15 or 20 percent ethanol blended in) into the national supply - see these earlier posts about the EPA, the Minnesota Ag Department, the Secretary of ...

Saudi oil minister: you be careful with those dangerous alternative fuels, OK? 10 months ago on Autoblog Green

Saudi Arabia's oil minister, Ali Al-Naimi, is nervous. Speaking earlier this month, he said that alternative fuels should be called "supplemental" and that "These sources cannot contribute meaningfully to the world's energy mix until they have attained levels of affordability, accessibility, ...

Using biofuels might be a sin, says Muslim cleric 11 months ago on Autoblog Green

I had no idea what would pop up when I typed in "ethanol sin" into the search box over at Flickr. Turns out, you get the image above, which was created for the Pope's visit to the U.S. back in early 2008. It's a good reminder that the debate over biofuels has donned religious clothing before. ...

Let controversy reign: study says biofuels will speed up global warming 11 months ago on Autoblog Green

While the general consensus is clear that corn ethanol isn't as great as once proclaimed, biodiesel has somewhat escaped the criticism swarm (palm plantation biodiesel being the big exception). That may change now that a new study from the Woods Institute for the Environment has found that ...

Geneva Preview: Bentley to reveal biofuel supercar 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

When the curtain rises on the 2009 Geneva Motor Show, Bentley will take a large share of the spotlight with the vehicle you see above. It has no name yet, and no technical specifics have been released, but what Bentley has revealed is that this will be the marque's fastest, most powerful ...

Australian biofuel imports hurting SE Asian rainforests 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

As anyone who has seen episode 2F13 of The Simpsons (aka Bart vs. Australia) knows, introducing foreign species into an environment can have dangerous effects. A real-world situation - not really all that similar, but I like to reference the Simpsons whenever possible - in Australia shows the ...

Montana gives grant to make great green goo from CO2 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

What's green and blue, eats CO2, and could wind up in your gas tank? If you answered heat-loving green blue algae (or thermophilic cyanobacteria, if you want to sound all smart and stuff), then ding! ding! ding!, you are correct! A pilot algae bioreactor project was just awarded a $375,000 grant by ...

The Queen's Bentleys go biodiesel 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

The Queen is going green. Not surprisingly, the head of the Royal Family doesn't drive herself, relying instead on Bentley to provide a couple of £10 million limos complete with drivers. Must be nice, huh? The two luxury machines maintained for the Queen will be converted to run on biofuels, ...

First commercial biofuel jet test successfully completed yesterday 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Airlines all over the world are finding themselves under increased pressure to lower their carbon footprints, and saving a buck or two (million) in the process certainly wouldn't hurt anything. To that end, Air New Zealand has successfully conducted the world's first commercial test flight with a ...

Biofuel station goes electric with ZENN dealership 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Biodiesel, meet electricity. That's the message being sent by the reopening of the Green Station. It used to be just a biodiesel refueling stop; not it's a biofuel pump station and a ZENN dealership. According to SantaCruz.com, station co-owner Bill LeBon now thinks that NEVs like the ZENN can be ...

Beverly Hills, an SUV, and biodiesel made from human fat 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

This story has it all: Beverly Hills types getting their body fat liposuctioned out, the doctor then saving that fat to make biodiesel for his SUV, and an investigation by the California public health department. Under investigation is Craig Alan Bittner, who recently left the US to go to South ...

Insert corny title here: U.S. may not meet 2022 biofuels mandate 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Baring a major breakthrough in cellulosic ethanol technology, the US Energy Information Administration doesn't think there's any way that the United States will meet its self-imposed Renewable Fuels Standard. The mandate in its current form would require that 36 billion gallons of ethanol be ...

EPA ups America's Renewable Fuel Standard to 10.21 percent for 2009 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

In 2009, the U.S. will use at least 11.1 billion gallons of renewable fuel. This was the pronouncement of the EPA today regarding an increase in the Renewable Fuel Standard Increased from 7.76 percent (the 2008 number) to 10.21 percent, an increase of 2.45 percentage points or about 2 billion ...

General Motors holds sustainable biofuels workshop in Beijing 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

China is already the third largest producer of ethanol in the world behind Brazil and the US. However, General Motors wants to make the industry sustainable just as it is trying to do here in the U.S. with its investments in Coskata and Mascoma. To that end, the company held a workshop on ...

Austin Alt Car: face-to-face with a biofuel Hummer 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

digg_url = 'http://digg.com/autos/Face_to_face_with_the_SBA_s_biofuel_Hummer'; The H1 in the center of the Austin Alt Car expo show floor was decked out in a Health Yes! paint job but it was the handmade sign that caught the eye. "Powered by Vegetable Oil and Biodiesel," it read and was yet ...

Spain implements first mandatory biofuel quota 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

As you might remember, the EU wants all state members to use 10 percent of biofuels by 2020 at pumps. The way this policy gets implemented is left up to the will of each country, either by mandatory blends or sales quotas. Such is the case of Spain, which has just started to make biofuel ...

Welcome to the Platts Cellulosic Ethanol and Biofuels conference, here's your Escalade 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

When Toyota invited reporters to Portland last month for the Sustainable Mobility Seminar, we were greeted at the baggage claim with tickets for the Portland public rail system. Here in Chicago for GM's biofuels conference, we were met at the airport by a driver in an Escalade (and not the hybrid ...

Accenture: Biofuels to be 10 to 15 percent of our fuel supply by 2020 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

The multinational consulting company Accenture has launched a new report on the future of biofuels. This time, it has a more optimistic tone than last time we heard from them. According to their conclusions, 10 to 15 percent of our fuel needs from 2020 to 2030 will be satisfied with biofuels. ...

Solazyme succeeds at creating jet fuel from algae 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Bio-powered flight is not the exclusive dream of San Francisco startup Solazyme. There have bee recent bio-flight advancements from Virgin Airlines, which flew from London to Amsterdam using biofuel in February, and the BioJet I. But Solazyme announced it has reached a small milestone that could ...

Two Million Mile Haul testing fuel efficiency of biodiesel vs. diesel 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Photo by C.P.Storm. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0. Let's see, two million minus 400,000 is ... carry the two ... 1.6 million. Alternately, eighty percent of the total. That's what we're dealing with with the current status of the Two Million Mile Haul being undertaken by groups like ...

Allied Minds and UW partner up in algae biofuel company AXI 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a "novel technology" that uses "commercially advantageous" strains of algae to make biofuels. While work on algae and biofuels is taking place around the world, UW might be on to something here, at least if we trust the investment firm ...

There's more than algae for non-food biofuels 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

As our readers know, the biofuels field of investigation is huge and there are quite a number of upcoming technologies that can make the renewable fuel without competing with feedstocks. The most notable of these technologies use waste streams and often also require less water to make biofuel. ...

Obama: 1 million plug-in hybrid vehicles by 2015 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has proposed a new ten-year $150 billion energy plan today in Michigan. A large part of the plan centers around transportation -- both the use of petroleum and the types of cars we are to drive in the future. For automakers, $4 billion in loans and loan ...

AFVI 2008: A few final thoughts on green moves in Sin City, with Wendell Berry 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

I covered the AFVI Expo last week and that trip was my first visit to Las Vegas. I've heard the stories, the advertising campaign that tries to sell Sin City as, well, Sin City that takes your credit card. What interested me the most, though, was how my environmentalist mind would react to being in ...

Biofuel-friendly Farm Bill gets veto override from Congress 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Photo by Yandle. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0. As expected, Congress made sure the Farm Bill (actually called the Food, Conservation and Energy Act of 2008) became law yesterday despite some sort of clerical error that resulted in a number of pages being dropped from the final ...

USDA says biofuels are not to blame for high food prices 1 year ago on Autoblog Green

Certainly not an unbiased observer, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) has issued an economic analysis that reveals that crops grown for biofuels (in the U.S., that means mostly soybeans for biodiesel and corn for ethanol) are not responsible for the recent increase in food prices. ...

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