In Brazil, the government is set to approve an increase to the ethanol blend during the first week of February above the current 27.5%. The exact level of the blend hasn’t been announced yet because tests on compatibility with the national fleet are still ongoing.
In Thailand, the government is slashing the B7 mandate to just 3.5% in order to reserve palm oil supplies. With stocks down to just 100,000 metric tons, the importation of 50,000 tons has been approved to ensure enough supplies for cooking oil. The smaller stocks is a result of the annual dry season period when […]
In Brazil, the government has announced it will raise one tax on gasoline and diesel on Feb. 1 and another tax 90 days later, a move which is expected to make both fuels more expensive at the pump and as a result drive demand for ethanol. The hope is that the move will encourage mills […]
In New York state, New York City Council is looking at legislation that would require city-owned vessels including Staten Island Ferry to use B5 and later work up to higher biodiesel blends, but the Department of Transportation and Department of Environmental Protection are pushing back saying blending with biodiesel would cause a host of operational […]
In Washington, Senators Toomey, Feinstein, and Flake introduced the Corn Ethanol Mandate Elimination Act of 2015, which Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis claims is recycled legislation that is “extremely shortsighted.” He said it seeks to appease the wishes of Big Oil and Big Food, is based on false information, and is ignorant of the environmental […]
In Washington, to aid U.S. policymakers and other stakeholders who make decisions about the nation’s food system, a new report from the Institute of Medicine and National Research Council offers a framework for assessing the health, environmental, social, and economic effects of proposed changes to the system. The report also offers six examples to illustrate […]
In China, the year-long trial of 104 buses running on a biodiesel blend in Shanghai has been deemed a success and will be rolled out further to 1,000 buses this year. The 104 buses ran a total of 2.3 million kilometers. Using biodiesel in buses provides an alternative market for used cooking oil rather than […]
In France, FuelsEurope and the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association expect logistics and supply costs to increase due to the country’s boosting of blending biodiesel to 8%, above the 7% approved for the remaining EU member states. The groups also warn that some vehicles may be outside of their warranty with biodiesel blends of higher than […]
In Malawi, the Energy Department has called for more investment in ethanol production so that the country can boost supply of domestically produced fuel to 49 million liters annually from the current 18 million liters. The national policy is E20 but the government wants to boost E100 supplies for flex-fuel vehicles. It will also look […]
In Iowa, 2014 biodiesel production went down from 2013 numbers, coming in at 227 million gallons, 3 million gallons down from the 2013 record of 230 million gallons. The Iowa Renewable Fuels Association attributed the drop to policy instability as Congress allowed the federal biodiesel blenders tax credit to expire, renewing it only in mid-December, […]
