In Washington, new study released Wednesday finds that the expanded Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS2) has been a tremendous success in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with nearly 600 million metric tons of GHG reduction since 2007. Actual GHG reductions under the RFS2 have far surpassed the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) original expectations of 422 million […]
In Brazil, SciDev reports that researchers have determined that coproduction of sugarcane and beef cattle on the same land can allow expansion of ethanol production without the risk of deforestation. Byproducts from the ethanol production such as molasses, yeast and bagasse could be converted into animal feed, reducing the need for pasture for some of […]
In California, in efforts to curb our use of greenhouse gas-generating fossil fuels, plant-based biofuels are among the top contenders as alternative liquid energy sources for transportation. However, strategies to produce high yields of biomass for fuels are not a one-size-fits-all proposition, according to a study led by UC Santa Barbara professor of ecology David […]
In Sweden, researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences and several German-based universities have been working together on a study that aims to evaluate agricultural market impacts with biomass demand for food, feed, and PBC in four bioeconomy scenarios (‘Business as usual’, ‘Improved relevance of bioeconomy’, ‘Extensive transformation to a bioeconomy’, ‘Extensive transformation to […]
In Illinois, for farmers, Miscanthus represents a big up-front investment. The large perennial grass must be established from vegetative pieces at great cost to farmers, but it promises a decade or more of massive biomass yields, starting in year two or three. If a cold winter happens to strike in the first year, however, all […]
In Mexico, students from the National Autonomous University of Mexico have developed a method to produce a gluten-free, high fiber flour from agave waste pulp. The tequila and mezcal industries produce about 2 million metric tons of the waste per year and is considered a pollutant, but the students have developed a way to make […]
In Minnesota, in an ongoing effort to discover the ideal conditions to grow alternative biofuels that offer more environmental benefits, University of Minnesota scientists applied their research on native prairies in the Upper Midwest to understand marginal lands—particularly abandoned and degraded agricultural fields. In the 10-year study published in Nature Sustainability, researchers utilized 36 plots […]
In Illinois, since 2007 corn ethanol production has doubled and there was also a sharp upturn in corn prices between 2008 and 2012. However, a newly released article in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics finds no evidence to support earlier concerns about large indirect land use change effect of corn ethanol causing expansion in […]
In Germany, researchers from Ulm University engineered Pseudomonas putida KT2440 as microbial biocatalyst for the utilization of xylose and arabinose in addition to glucose as sole carbon sources. What they found was surprising in that both recombinant strains were able to grow on xylose as well as arabinose with high cell densities and growth rates […]
In Canada, a University of Saskatchewan (USask) research team’s quest to extract protein from more than a billion liters of annually produced wastewater (called thin stillage) at Saskatchewan’s ethanol plants has yielded something far more valuable—a compound used in many countries to slow cognition loss in Alzheimer’s patients. That compound is glyceryl phosphoryl choline (GPC) […]
