In California, farmers from the Midwest are in California’s Central Valley touring the first-of-its-kind Zero Net Energy Farm, or “ZNEF,” to learn how to generate all electrical and heating power needs from on-site renewable resources, including solar, wind and biomass. Renewable energy company Biodico Inc. directs the ZNEF project, which is funded, in part, by […]
In Puerto Rico, a new study published last week in the journal Environmental Research Letters by researchers at the University of Puerto Rico offers the first regional look at lands being converted to palm oil plantations in Latin America. Palm oil is a primary ingredient in processed foods, soaps, cosmetics, and biofuel. Growth of the […]
In Minnesota, a team of researchers led by the University of Minnesota has invented a new technology to produce automobile tires from trees and grasses in a process that could shift the tire production industry toward using renewable resources found right in our backyards. The car tires produced from biomass that includes trees and grasses […]
In Massachusetts, MIT engineers have genetically reprogrammed a strain of yeast so that it converts sugars to fats much more efficiently, an advance that could make possible the renewable production of high-energy fuels such as diesel. The researchers modified the metabolic pathways of yeast that naturally produce large quantities of lipids, to make them about […]
In Illinois, researchers at Western Illinois University are using gene editing on pennycress in an attempt to reduce seed shattering, among other traits, that will make the winter annual more viable for biodiesel feedstock, allowing soy farmers to grow an extra crop. Changing the color of flowers to yellow is also high on the gene […]
In Washington, the US Energy Information Agency released its February Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), and reported that implied global petroleum and liquid fuels inventories are estimated to have increased by 0.8 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2016. EIA expects the oil market to be relatively balanced in 2017 and 2018, with inventory draws averaging […]
In Canada, Ecostrat has released a white paper explaining the relevance of the latest developments in biomass supply chain research and analytics to industry developers and lenders. It serves as an introduction to important feedstock supply chain de-risking concepts: from risk analysis methods to actual procurement strategies. Biomass supply risk is one of the reasons […]
In North Dakota, distillers grains could be a source of fertilizer for some crops, according to research at North Dakota State University’s Carrington Research Extension Center. Wet distillers grains and condensed distillers solubles (sometimes referred to as “syrup”) are organic byproducts of ethanol production from corn. Scientists at the Carrington center have been testing whether […]
In California, the discovery of a specialized enzyme that is highly effective at breaking down rigid plant cell wall components could be harnessed to solve this major challenge. A multi-institutional team of researchers led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) combined comparative proteomics with biochemical measurements. They then […]
In Tennessee, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have released the largest-ever single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) dataset of genetic variations in poplar trees, information useful to plant scientists as well as researchers in the fields of biofuels, materials science, and secondary plant metabolism. For nearly 10 years, researchers with DOE’s […]
