Ethanol & Biofuels International News

2/8/2012 - Brazil’s São Paulo state has moved up the reinstatement of its tariff on interstate anhydrous ethanol imports to March 1, according to a January 26 Platts report citing the state’s treasury secretary.

2/8/2012 - The government of Québec announced February 6 its plan to inject Cdn$27 million (US$27.1 million) in Québec’s first, full-scale commercial cellulosic ethanol plant through the Ministry of Natural Resources and Wildlife and Investissement Québec.

2/8/2012 - Finland-based pulp/paper producer UPM announced February 1 that it will build a 100,000 tonne-per-year renewable diesel plant at Lappeenranta, Finland, employing hydrotreating technology to convert tall oil (pine tree byproduct) to all-hydrocarbon diesel fuel.

2/8/2012 - An analysis from Czarnikow dated February 2 indicates that 2012 could be a good year for consumers as the easing of commodity balance sheets leads to falling food price inflation.

2/8/2012 - Hart Energy Global Biofuels Center (GBC) analysts have issued a special report on the impact of fatty acid methyl ester (FAME) quality issues and indirect land use change (ILUC) on the trade flow of biodiesel.

2/8/2012 - Indonesia is preparing to file objections to a United States’ plan to issue a regulation on biodiesel standards, which would disqualify biodiesel made from palm oil as a renewable fuel, according to Eco-Business.com, citing statements made by trade minister Gita Wiyawan.

2/8/2012 - Growing Power Hairy Hill LP (GPHH), an Alberta, Canada-owned, private limited partnership that converts both human and agricultural waste into sustainable energy, is now constructing the final module of its integrated biorefinery.

2/8/2012 - Philippines-based Eastern Petroleum Corp. doesn’t plan to move forward with an ethanol-production facility using cassava as feedstock in lieu of a sugar cane-based plant, according to the a January 31 report from The Manila Times.

2/8/2012 - Brazilian builder Odebrecht plans to produce sugar in Cuba, the company said on January, as looser restrictions on foreign investment in the communist island raise hopes of a recovery inthe once-booming sector after decades of decline.

2/8/2012 - Responding to a new report from the George Morris Centre, the Grain Farmers of Ontario (GFO) said the study falsely accuses the ethanol industry of causing harm to livestock farmers. (See related story in this issue).

2/8/2012 - Roger Stroud, executive chairman of Australia-based Algae.Tec Ltd., has been appointed to the advisory board of the Fuels and Energy Technology Institute (FETI) at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, according to a February 6 Algae.Tec announcement.

2/8/2012 - Germany recently passed the 20% mark for renewable energy in the electricity mix. Now, the government-owned federal KfW bank group has introduced a plan to further accelerate this shift to renewables by making more multi-million-euro business loans available.

2/8/2012 - The Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA) announced February 1 that mills in the south-central region of Brazil processed 492.70 million tons of sugar cane between the beginning of the 2011-2012 harvest in April of 2011 and January 16, 2012.

2/1/2012 - Celtic Renewables Ltd., a spin-out from Edinburgh Napier University’s Biofuel Research Centre, was launched last week to commercialize a process for producing biofuel from whisky byproducts

2/1/2012 - A Malaysian subsidiary of Japan’s Toyo Engineering Corp., Toyo Engineering & Construction Sdn. Bhd. (Toyo-Malaysia), has been awarded a contract to build an ethanol production facility in Johor Bahru, Malaysia.

2/1/2012 - Novozymes has entered into an exploratory research agreement with India-based Sea6 Energy to jointly develop a process for the production of biofuels from seaweed.

2/1/2012 - The European Parliament on January 31 adopted a report on a European Union (EU) climate-change policy to 2050, based on the European Commission’s previously-unveiled Low-Carbon Roadmap.

2/1/2012 - Canada-based Clean Power Concepts, Inc. (OTC: CPOW) and Integrated Biodiesel Industries, Ltd. (IBI) of Sao Paulo, Brazil have agreed to merge, pending approval of IBI shareholders and completion of due diligence.

1/25/2012 - Green Biologics Ltd. (GBL), a U.K.-based industrial biotechnology company, on January 20 announced its merger with butylfuel, Inc., a U.S.-based renewable chemicals and biofuels firm.