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[Updated 7:30 p.m., 5/13/09, with input from former GreenFuel interim CEO Bob Metcalfe, see below.] Cambridge, MA-based GreenFuel Technologies, which struggled for eight years to commercialize an industrial-scale process for growing algae that could be turned into biofuels or food, is closing down for lack of financing and selling off its technologies. Greentech Media broke the story earlier today. Duncan McIntyre, an associate at Waltham, MA-based Polaris Venture Partners, which participated in several venture rounds that raised more than $70 million for GreenFuel, told Greentech that the company could not raise the funds needed to build planned test facilities in...

Crops give more kilometres per hectare if used to power electric vehicles.Electric cars powered by biomass could be greener than cars that run on biofuel.Punchstock / Cultura Vehicles propelled by biomass-fired electricity would travel farther on a given crop and produce fewer greenhouse-gas emissions than vehicles powered by ethanol, researchers report today.Burning biomass to produce electricity is generally more efficient than converting it into ethanol. And electric vehicles — although often more expensive to make and maintain than many vehicles with internal combustion engines — are also more efficient at converting that energy into motion.In the current study, the researchers,...

LONDON – Scientists unveiled on Tuesday what they hope will be one of the world's fastest biofuel vehicles, powered by waste from chocolate factories and made partly from plant fibers. Its makers hope the racer will go 145 mph and give manufacturers ideas about how to build more ecologically friendly vehicles. The car runs on vegetable oils and chocolate waste that has been turned into biofuel. The steering wheel is made out of plant-based fibers derived from carrots and other root vegetables, and the seat is built of flax fibre and soybean oil foam. The body is also made of...

Biofuel imports - a costly trade in bunkum Carl Mortished: On the money Forget electric cars, you won't be driving one for decades, perhaps you never will. What matters is the liquid that fills the tank in the Mondeo and that liquid is becoming more peculiar every year. You may think that your car's diesel engine is burning brown sludge pumped out of a North Sea well and processed in a stinking jungle of pipes and pots on some blighted estuary in the North of England. That is only part of the story: what goes into your tank may be...

A pretty good strategy for winning the Afghan war would be to drop in some ,biodiesal refineries that can produce diesel for "$1.25 to $1.75 per gallon from a variety of feedstocks that ranges from restaurant and ethanol-plant waste oils to non-edible crops and plain old pond scum." Drop those in the poppy valleys, kill the poppy plants and offer to pay the farmers for their dead poppy plants to use as feedstock for the biodiesal refineries. That diesal could be used for ground based vehicles. Interestingly, if you read this article, you'll note that the airline industry is far...

Minnesota should get out of the business of subsidizing the state's ethanol industry, the Legislative Auditor's office said today. In a report on the sometimes-controversial program that pays producers of corn-based ethanol, the office found that the subsidy program fails to maximize the energy and environmental benefits of the fuel. The money, $93 million paid to producers over the past five years, could be better spent on other programs that do a better job of reaching those goals, it concluded. Plus, at a time of crushing state budget deficits, the $44 million expected to be spent on the program through...

It's corn planting time in the U.S. Plains, and that means Kansas corn farmer Merl "Buck" Rexford is worrying about the weather — and hoping there is enough water. Rexford plans to start seeding his 7,000 acres near Meade, Kansas, this week and he is relishing a recent heavy snow storm that dropped several inches of much-needed moisture. Like corn farmers throughout the United States, Rexford hopes to grow a healthy crop yielding more than 150 bushels an acre this year. Much of his crop will wind up at a nearby ethanol plant. And that puts the 65-year-old Rexford at...

One might imagine that the old adage about something too good to be true would have sunk in by now. But in the realm of biofuels, hope springs eternal. With more than $240 million in Department of Energy funding, six pilot projects using "cellulosic materials" to produce biofuels are under way. Despite the prospect of technical breakthroughs, none have produced biofuels on commercial terms. This is especially unsettling given the federal order to blend 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022, of which 21 billion are mandated to be cellulose-based. Advocates of making these fuels from anything and everything abound:...

LONDON (Reuters) - Oil Major Royal Dutch Shell Plc doesn't plan to make any more large investments in wind and solar energy in the future and does not expect hydrogen to play an important role in energy supply for some time. "We do not expect material amounts of investment in those areas going forward," Linda Cook, head of Shell's gas and power unit told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday. "They continue to struggle to compete with the other investment opportunities we have in our portfolio," Cook said of solar and wind. Shell's future involvement in renewables will be...

President Obama drew rave reviews for his unorthodox selection of Dr. Sanjay Gupta as the nation's surgeon general. Not only is Dr. Gupta an accomplished neurosurgeon, but as CNN's in-house doc he has also proven himself a bona fide celebrity. People magazine tagged him as one of 2003's "Sexiest Men Alive," and the swooning that met Obama's announcement suggests... --snip-- TAKING THE IDEA mainstream has brought its share of problems, though. The Los Angeles Times profiled a mechanic last year who has converted his fleet of vehicles to be fueled by fryer grease from a local chowder house. Then Sacramento...

California brewer Sierra Nevada has teamed up with microrefiner E-Fuel to turn wasted yeast into enough high-grade ethanol to power their delivery trucks and a few hundred other vehicles. As if there weren't enough excuses for drinking the craft brewer's Pale Ale and ESB, we can now add "saving American beer delivery trucks from dependence on foreign oil" to the list.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. -- The Bloomington School District is closing schools Friday, after extremely cold temperatures caused the biodiesel fuel in school buses to clog. The problem left dozens of students stranded Thursday -- some for up to 30 minutes in the dangerous cold. Superintendent Les Fujitake said the district could not ensure the buses would not encounter the same issues Friday mornning as temperatures remain below zero in the Twin Cities and therefore they decided to close schools in Bloomington. Elements in biodiesel fuel turn into a gel-like substance at temperatures below 10 degrees. District spokesman Rick Kaufman said some...

FORT DRUM — Energy independence is one step closer for the military, Fort Drum and, according to some, the north country.

A Continental Airlines Boeing 737-800 took off shortly after noon today from Bush Intercontinental Airport and made history as the first U.S. commercial jet to fly on a mix of conventional jet fuel and biofuel. After taking a wide swing over the Gulf of Mexico toward southwestern Louisiana, it touched back down at Intercontinental at 1:45 p.m. Officials said the plane burned 3,600 pounds of a 50-50 jet fuel-biofuel mix in one engine and 3,700 pounds of traditional fuel in the other, meaning the test batch was more efficient. "The airplane performed perfectly. There were no problems. It was textbook,"...

In pursuing cleaner energy there is such a thing as being too green. Unicellular microalgae, for instance, can be considered too green. In a paper in a special energy issue of Optics Express, the Optical Society's (OSA) open-access journal, scientists at the University of California, Berkeley describe a method for using microalgae for making biofuel. The researchers explain a way to genetically modify the tiny organisms, so as to minimize the number of chlorophyll molecules needed to harvest light without compromising the photosynthesis process in the cells. With this modification, instead of making more sugar molecules, the microalgae could be...

Several months ago when gas was over $4.00 a gallon and lines were long at gas stations across the country, biofuels were heralded as the next best thing to sliced bread. Now the price of gas has fallen below $2.00 a gallon in many places and is flowing freely again. What does this mean for the biofuels industry? The New York Times reported that major oil projects have been placed on hold because of the large drop in oil prices over the past several months. Oil exploration and new refineries have been postponed because these projects are no longer cost...

The rapid expansion of biofuels production in Brazil, the world's largest ethanol exporter, does not contribute to global food price inflation, the country's energy minister said Friday, rebutting a common critique of Brazil's ethanol and biodiesel programs. Minister Edison Lobao told the Biofuels 2008 conference Friday that Brazil has enough free arable land to remain the world's largest grain exporter even as it rapidly expands its output of sugarcane ethanol and biodiesel, some of which is made from soybeans. "We cannot accept the accusation that somehow Brazil's biofuels are contributing to food price inflation," Lobao told energy and environmental officials...

Biofuels are under siege from critics who say they crowd out food production. Now these fuels made from grass and grain, long touted as green, are being criticized as bad for the planet. At issue is whether oil alternatives -- such as ethanol distilled from corn and fuels made from inedible stuff like switch grass -- actually make global warming worse through their indirect impact on land use around the world. For example, if farmers in Brazil burn and clear more rainforest to grow food because farmers in the U.S. are using their land to grow grain for fuel, that...

With a slight reeling in his gait, Ashenafi Chote ventures into his small plot of land and shakes his head, his eyes full of regret: "I made a mistake". For the last 10 years, his plot in southern Ethiopia had kept his family of four alive by supplying enough food to eat and even surplus to sell, in a region often ravaged by drought and food shortages. But since swapping from a subsistence to a biofuel crop several months ago, his once treasured source of income has dried up and, worse still, he and his family are now dependent on...

A tree-living fungus that manufactures diesel fuel has been discovered in South America. Experts believe the organism, Gliocladium roseum, could potentially be a completely new source of green energy. The fungus, which lives inside the Ulmo tree in the Patagonian rainforest, naturally produces hydrocarbon fuel similar to the diesel used in cars and trucks. Scientists were amazed to find that it was able to convert plant cellulose directly into the biofuel, dubbed "myco-diesel". Crops normally have to converted to sugar and fermented before they can be turned into useful fuel...."