Researchers convince microbes to work together to make biofuel from corn stalks
University of Michigan researchers’ new method of producing isobutanol from inedible plant material could provide an alternative to ethanol, which drives up food costs.
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University of Michigan researchers’ new method of producing isobutanol from inedible plant material could provide an alternative to ethanol, which drives up food costs.
The long-promised but perpetually fledging biofuel industry still remains a big focus of government support. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Thursday that it has made a conditional commitment for a $232.5 million loan guarantee to biofuel maker ZeaChem.
Asia, with its rapidly growing number of car owners and large pollution problems, could very well be the biggest market for biofuels and green chemicals one day. LanzaTech, which announced Monday it has raised $55.8 million, is certainly finding more willing customers and partners Asia.
Poet’s so-called “Project Liberty” biofuel plant, which will use corn waste instead of edible corn, is getting some support from the U.S. government. On Thursday, the Department of Energy announced it will offer Poet a $105 million loan guarantee to build out Project Liberty in Iowa.
Recently-public biofuel and chemical maker Gevo is holding the official ground breaking ceremony for its first commercial-scale project, a retrofit of an old ethanol plant in Luverne, Minn. on Tuesday.
Is the greentech industry headed for a breakout year, or is it retrenching for hard times to come? The first three months of 2011 provided evidence that could support both assertions. The erratic nature of the first quarter’s data is reflected in a big rise in venture capital investment — and a big drop-off in global energy financing.
We already know of companies that want to turn garbage into transportation fuels. Now comes Genomatica, which announced Wednesday a technology development agreement with Waste Management to turn trash into chemical additives for markets beyond fuel.
Biofuel production nationwide has been woefully behind schedule as would-be producers struggle to just get their first commercial plants rolling. The U.S. government wants to help and on Thursday announced loan guarantee commitments totaling $571 million for Coskata, Enerkem, and a JV from Valero.
It’s a good place for the banned caffeinated malt liquor to die. 4Loko is being recycled into ethanol by recycling company MXI Environmental Services and others. While the next-generation of biofuels won’t come from 4Loko, they will partly come from waste.
Seaweed: great for sushi, skin care and … powering cars? Bio Architecture Lab (BAL) thinks so, and it announced Wednesday that it has lined up a Norwegian oil heavy weight, Statoil, to help it bring its technology to market.
Propel Fuels, a startup trying to create a brand around alternative fuels, held a grand opening at a biofuel station in Oakland, Calif. on Tuesday and announced a plan to add 75 new stations in California by the end of 2011.
Dutch oil giant Shell and Brazilian ethanol giant Cosan sealed the deal Wednesday on a $12 billion joint venture to turn sugarcane into pump-ready fuel. How will the massive partnership affect Codexis, Shell’s biocatalyst partner and recent entrant to the public markets?
The well-funded Range Fuels said it has begun producing cellulosic methanol from its first commercial factory and plans to begin making cellulosic ethanol sometime this quarter.
Opera Software has released a beta of Opera 10.6, which offers improved support for HTML5 (including offline apps and geolocation) and royalty-free WebM video. It also promises to be even faster, with some fine-tuning of the impressively quick JavaScript engine that was introduced in 10.5.
MIPS is one of more than a dozen hardware companies that was mentioned during Google’s announcement of its open source WebM video project. MIPS Director of Strategic Marketing Kevin Kitagawa told us why his company is supporting WebM and its open source video codec VP8.
Should greenhouse gas emissions resulting from changes in land use related to biofuels production — directly or indirectly — factor into official measurements…
An alliance of 14 industry groups representing mostly oil, gas and car companies says in a new letter to the feds that…
Constant Feedback for Better Driving: If you had a gadget in your car that was monitoring your behavior, would it change the…
This morning’s Video Rights Roundtable was, as we hoped, a rare opportunity for online video industry players to talk about their conflicts…
Like a ninja assassin, Apple (s AAPL) sneakily killed off the 40 GB model of its Apple TV set-top box and shaved…
I think I may have achieved a grasp of Gameloft’s concept design strategy for their iPhone (s aapl) catalog. It seems to…
Quest for Corn-Free Gas: Some SUV and boat owners in Florida are more than willing to drive out of their way to…
Call it ethanol-on-the-cob. Corn ethanol giant Poet announced plans today to power its cellulosic ethanol plant in Emmetsburg, Iowa, with methane derived…
Debates over two looming shifts for the role of agriculture in fighting climate change reached a fever pitch this week. The hot…
Footing the Climate Bill: How much will an average household’s electricity bills go up if the government enacts the proposed climate and…
It takes an optimist to see bright spots in today’s biofuels industry. As Lux Research puts it bluntly in a new report…
Lost Remote, the prolific future-of-television group blog which originated the space that NewTeeVee lives in, has effectively shut down, with founder Cory…
A draft rule that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency unveiled Tuesday about how emissions should be measured has the corn ethanol industry…
Tesla Model S Test Drive: The first person outside of the company to drive Tesla’s Model S concept car says the vehicle…
The California Air Resources Board, that thorn in the sides of automakers and the Bush-era EPA, has just approved the country’s first…
The corn ethanol industry may be struggling, but there’s still some money going into the biofuels biz. Glycos Biotechnologies said today that…
For anyone who’s ever designed a web site on a Mac, you’ll know that one of the biggest headaches is testing your…
If you live in Mississippi, your garbage could soon be turned into ethanol. Montreal-based Enerkem said today that it’s heading south for…
While we wait for cellulosic ethanol to ramp up to commercial-scale, the corn-based ethanol industry continues to hang on with a little…
A dig through biofuel maker Changing World Technologies’ SEC filings earlier this week (prompted by a report from southwest Missouri’s Carthage Press)…
Our ethanol deathwatch map is getting pretty crowded. Sacramento, Calif.’s Pacific Ethanol (s PEIX) said today it has temporarily suspended operations at…
Montreal-based Enerkem, which just last week announced it would soon start up its first commercial scale cellulosic ethanol factory, is looking to…
Any downed poles in your neighborhood in the last winter storm? Montreal’s Enerkem may be interested. The biofuel startup, which plans to…
Why Little Guys Threaten the Big Three: Technology levels the playing field for a latecomer to the auto industry, China’s BYD, to…
Throughout 2009 we’ll continue to update our ethanol deathwatch map. After all, let’s face it, this year in terms of capital drying…
Today, Creative announced yet another addition to their venerable Sound Blaster line of products. The device had its debut not at Macworld,…
Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs today issued a letter that outlines why he is skipping the Macworld: He has a hormonal…
Ethanol will have at least one friend in the next administration. President-elect Barack Obama announced his pick for Secretary of Agriculture this…
Gas on the Cheap: Retailers in Missouri have slashed fuel prices by selling gas without ethanol, the grain-based alcohol that many states…
Road warriors are always on the lookout for those easy to use things that will make an already hectic work life a…
Here’s a pop quiz: Biofuels were A) largely responsible for the jump in food prices earlier this year, B) had very little…
Ethanol producer Aventine is putting one of its planned ethanol plants on hold and extending the timeline of the construction of another. It’s the latest sign that the financial crisis is battering the already troubled ethanol industry.
Growth Energy, a new trade organization for corn ethanol companies, is lashing out against critics of corn ethanol by buying ad space in the New York Times and issuing “policy briefs” (bulky pdf files peppered with Excel graphs).
Cleantech types are optimistic that an Obama presidency will usher in a new era of hopeful politics and greener energy policies, but…
This year has brought more than its share of surprises to the energy industry, but the bankruptcy of ethanol giant VeraSun Energy…
Cellulosic ethanol startup Mascoma announced today that it has raised $49.5 million to build its first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
We worried last week that the credit crunch would hurt cleantech, and especially ethanol. Now this week there are two more additions…
The financial crisis will likely hurt the cleantech sector in more ways than one — access to capital, more risk-averse investors, the…
The good news for VeraSun (s VSE) on Thursday was that, early in the morning, its stock was up 42 percent from…
While most of our bovine-related energy coverage tends toward the scatological, the world of cow power is not limited to manure. Food…
Corn ethanol producer Poet is at an important juncture in its two decade history. The company is embracing the changing landscape of…
Hard times for the U.S. corn ethanol industry doesn’t always mean plants officially get the boot — sometimes it’s a more subtle…
Last night Google said it would cut the amount of time it saves its search engine inquiries from 18 months to nine months.
The EPA has denied a request by Texas Governor Rick Perry to cut the federal Renewable Fuel Standard in half. The RFS…
The dream of taking the contents of our trash cans and putting them into our fuel tanks has moved one step closer…
I was having a lot of trouble getting my iPhone applications to sync with iTunes. I tried doing backups and full syncs…
Here’s another reason Obama should keep the corn ethanol industry at arm’s length — close to three quarters of U.S. ethanol plants,…
You know ethanol’s public image is poor when the media starts using it as a discovered skeleton in the closet. The New…
Tired of hearing bad news about the ethanol sector? For a change of pace, how about some really dismal news? Heavy rains…
If your idea of web working includes seeing the web your way (instead of the way that advertisers want you to see…
Darren Rowse over at Problogger has a good post up the gets at the heart of many productivity systems: “How Batch Processing…
The American ethanol industry, the world’s largest, is about to get a little sweeter. Louisiana Green Fuels (LGF), an international investment group,…
[qi:_earth2tech] Bill Gates has been slowly selling off his 20.6 percent stake in ethanol producer Pacific Ethanol. Gates’ private investment and holding…
Bill Gates is making good on his plans, announced last November, to sell off his 20.6 percent stake in Pacific Ethanol. Cascade…
I’ve been trying out TripTouch, the widget for frequent travelers, while I’m traveling for the next two weeks to see what it…
For a few days there, things were starting to look up for Pacific Ethanol (PEIX). Corn costs are surging. Demand is slack.…
We’re knee-deep in the summer movie season, but your blockbusters could cost you a bit more this year. Nikki Finke over at…
If you’re a Web developer, you likely already know about Firebug – the amazing web development add-in for Firefox. (It was one…
A few days ago, Cemaphore opened its new MailShadowG technology to several thousand beta testers, enabling users of Microsoft Exchange-based servers to…
The HP Mini product page indicates you can order your notebook with Microsoft Windows Vista and included geniune XP disk for a…
While U.S. ethanol producers are like teenagers in the global biofuels market, Brazil is like a mature adult, approaching middle age. The…
Record high oil prices aren’t enough to keep ethanol plants from getting the ax. POET Energy, an ethanol plant developer, has canceled…
Here’s a slick way to create documents on that iPod Touch, provided you have some WiFi connectivity: use Glide OS Mobile. Michael…
Surely you’ve seen the news by now: Microsoft has called off its attempt to buy Yahoo!. While there’s plenty of analysis flying…
The National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) is holding its big trade show in Vegas this week, and I’m not sure there’s enough…
The dedicated web worker can do pretty much anything within the confines of a web browser these days: send and receive email, create and share documents, chat via various messenger services, update task lists and calendars, even (thanks to sites like Heroku or Bungee Connect) create entire applications. We can also, thanks to laptops and mobile phones and EVDO and WiFi and a batch of other technologies, work just about anywhere. But for me at least there’s a disconnect between the growing use of online applications and the technology that I’m using to access them on the road.
One of the problems with the iPhone (or most other phones or pocket PCs with a screen, for that matter) is that…
Wall Street was expecting a net loss from VeraSun on Wednesday, but the ethanol company surprised with a profit of 4 cents.…
What bad luck for U.S. ethanol makers. The very day when oil hits a record high, even when adjusted for inflation, corn…
Samsung appears to be wasting no time in the heating up Solid State Disk market. The company indicates plans to double capacity…
The rumors and photo flying around of the rumored HP sub-notebook, the 2133 if they are to be believed, have captured the…
There must be some confusion (or contention) between Sprint and Verizon customers that own a Treo 755p. The Official Palm Blog posted…
I love my iPod Touch, I know I must be on record somewhere saying that I picked up an iPod Touch because…
Not from Microsoft, thankfully.
Seven in arow
New ones
MobileWhack caught wind of a Tablet PC refresh from HP; looks like the tx1400 will soon take the place or stand beside…
Here’s a nifty little backup solution for your mail and it’s free. MailStore is a Windows application that will backup all of…
Sales of Mobile Video Phones to Hit $125 Billion; new research from Infonetics says sales will double by 2010, driven by more…
Truveo Goes International; video search service launching portals in eight ex-U.S. markets, including India, Japan and the UK. (release) New York Video…
I learned that the background on the Dock in Leopard is a set of 4 PNG image files, and I got the…
[qi:_newteevee] While Apple (AAPL) makes competitors tremble in music, its video offerings and achievements get less imposing by the day. People want…
In advance of the Writers Guild of America strike authorization vote that passed Friday, I dropped by the office of WGA member…
Citizen journalism and social news are hard — I doubt I’d offend too many people by saying nobody is doing them really…
First it was a grainy video capture of the game’s final cut scene. Now it’s the whole game. A week away from…
Things have not been going well for TiVo (TIVO) lately. The company released its latest quarterly results at the end of August,…
A new entrant to the Mac rumors scene, 9to5mac.com, claims to have received insider tips on the next generation of iPod Nano…
I am sad to report that Sally and I are no longer an item. As happens in many relationships, Sally has recently…
If you made it to Pixelodeon a couple of weeks back, you might have seen Rob Parrish’s Tapes of My Father. Composed…
Now this is thought-provoking. Google’s Marissa Mayer said explicitly Wednesday at the Searchnomics conference that Google’s voice-activated mobile search tool, 1-800-GOOG-411, is…
Regular reader/commenter/fellow Quicksilver guru Jono emailed this great tip for Quicksilver. If you’re a regular user of Quicksilver – especially with the…
Lala, an enabler of CD swapping and provider of Internet radio, is announcing tonight it will soon be offering a large catalog…
In order to prove the superior durability of its new TruePower 65-Watt AC adapter, FastMac ran over it with a truck. And…
While the iPhone will undoubtedly change my life in untold ways (note sarcasm), I already have a smart phone and the NEED…
We’ve already got a few notebooks with integrated wireless broadband (Dell and Lenovo come to mind), but this appears to be the…
PodShow, buys Podcast Alley. SiliconBeat has the details. Minus One, Plus One, Equals Nada.
You can get as much information about the Chinese telecom boom as you want, but world’s second hottest market is going unnoticed…
The Sharp SL-C3000 is hard to define. It runs Linux, has an internal 4 GB hard drive and keyboard so you could…
Dana Edwards of Pocket PC Tools has written a very thorough review of the OnCourse Navigator 4 GPS package. OnCourse Navigator is…
Paul Otellini is going to replace Craig Barrett as Intel’s CEO and Barrett in turn would replace Andy Grove as the chairman…
Nick Denton is aspiring a few others. This trend is called fast-following! Anyway I think Azeem is off to a good start…
Adam Smith would be proud. The latest edition of CoC is up, and they have included my “New Road to Riches” in…
Last issue of Business 2.0 had a nice long story on the IPod economy. Now BusinessWeek, which is a different magazine has…
Deloitte has conducted a survey of 131 businesses from the Global 2000 companies and got their views on VoIP. The key findings…
Crain’s New York Business is reporting that EarthLink will soon start selling its service over Con Ed’s power lines in Manhattan in…
There has been a lot of reaction to my “telephone as the platform” panel, both good and bad. I have taken an…
MercuryNews.com has a longish piece on Infinera, an optical chip start-up that has developed a break through product that will lower the…
Its not quite often that I get moved by a post. However, this one very succinctly captures the slow but confident pace…
First is said no way, today it says maybe. Sprint is going to test and experiment with Flarion’s 4g wireless technology, according…
Linksys, now a division of Cisco has recently been touting its deal with Comcast as a big win. Well, looks like there…