Biofuels

Solazyme raised $227 million in its public stock offering today, netting more than anticipated from the biofuels and renewable chemicals company's public launch.

Trading of the San Francisco-based company's stock (SZYM) started today on the NASDAQ higher than the planned $18 opening price and closed the day at over $20, or 15 percent higher, to bring in $227 million.

The IPO is a bright spot for the biofuel and renewable chemical area, where many companies have been founded over the past 10 years but only a handful have successfully gone public.

Solazyme uses algae to make liquid fuels, … Read more

The U.S.-India Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center is ready to offer $100 million in public and private-sector funding for green-tech research, the organization announced last week.

Specifically, the center's intent is to fund joint projects between U.S. and Indian research groups involving biofuels, solar energy, or building efficiency.

India and the U.S. are together contributing $50 million to the center, with the other $50 million expected to be privately matched.

The center was launched during President Obama's November 2010 trip to India and is a joint venture signed by both the president … Read more

At a Paris event on Wednesday, GE announced a new gas-fuelled power plant it says offers more flexibility and efficiency than many other options currently available.

The FlexEfficiency 50 Combined Cycle Power Plant is rated at 510 megawatts, has a base-load efficiency of more than 60 percent, and, when fully operational, can provide enough energy to power more than 600,000 European homes, according to GE. The plant is built to incorporate fluctuating power sources like wind and solar, as well as a main source of natural gas, the company said.

"The FlexEfficiency 50 plant is engineered for flexible operation by integrating a next-generation 9FB gas turbine that operates at 50Hz, which is the power frequency that is most used in countries around the world; a 109D-14 steam turbine, which runs on the waste heat produced by the gas turbine; GE's advanced W28 generator; a Mark VIe integrated control system that links all of the technologies; and a heat recovery steam generator," GE said in a statement.

GE says the plant also conforms to the EU's strict plant emissions standards for NOx and CO2.

The plant represents $500 million in research and development and came out of GE's Ecomagination program to develop clean-energy projects. GE announced in June 2010 that it planned to invest $10 billion over five years in green-focused research and development.… Read more

Consumers should have an easier time comparing the fuel economy of cars and light trucks once new consumer labels unveiled today go into effect.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson unveiled the new set of labels this morning at a live press conference hosted on the Web.

Prior to this, car labels hadn't been updated for 30 years.

Each new label differs slightly depending on the car's drive train or fuel source. (Click for a PDF of all labels.) Labels in the set include those for gas, flex-fuel gas-ethanol blends, … Read more

Australia-based MBD Energy is installing an algae system from OriginOil at its coal power station in Tarong, Australia, both companies announced today.

The system will capture flue-gas emitted from the coal-fired power station using a bio-based carbon capture storage device containing micro-algae. The micro-algae uses the captured CO2 to reproduce more algae biomass, which can then be used for fuel or plastics.

The Tarong power station in Queensland will be able to process up to 300 gallons of algae culture per minute, but is only a one-hectare site. The small station will serve as the test site for a larger … Read more

MEDFORD, Mass.--In this densely populated city outside Boston without a farm in sight, agriculture researchers are engineering corn and other crops to become better biofuels.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack last week visited Agrivida, a small company working on a method it hopes will help deliver on the biofuels industry's promise of economically making fuel and chemicals from non-food crops. Vilsack toured the lab of Agrivida to draw attention to federal investments in renewable energy research and development.

Cheaper biofuels will help lower fuel costs and provide economic development in rural areas of the U.S., … Read more

A few students in Atlanta Public Schools will soon be driven to school in a the nation's first hydraulic hybrid conversion of a traditional school bus.

Financed by a $50,000 grant from The Ford Motor Company Fund and converted by students at Georgia Institute of Technology, the bus will run on recycled biofuel.

There are more than 480,000 iconic yellow school buses in the United States, but this 16-passenger school bus is being painted green by students at Mary Lin Elementary School in Atlanta, Ga.

The students at Mary Lin have also organized a drive for used … Read more

Biomass used to make biofuels must be carefully sourced, or the biofuels they produce may be no greener than conventional jet fuel.

That's according to a study that was published this week in the online version of Environmental Science and Technology and was conducted by a group of scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

For the nearly four-year study, researchers conducted a life cycle analysis on 14 diesel and jet fuel sources made from feedstocks, and identified the key factors that make a difference in whether a biofuel is truly an environmental improvement over conventional jet fuel.

The … Read more

There's no whining about these dandelions; they may some day be used as a substitute for synthetic rubber in interior car products such as cupholders, floor mats, and interior trim.

Researchers at Ford and Ohio State University are growing a certain species of dandelion at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center (OARDC) to test it out as a source of sustainable material.

"We're always looking for new sustainable materials to use in our vehicles that have a smaller carbon footprint to produce and can be grown locally," said Angela Harris, Ford research engineer. "Synthetic … Read more