News

SGB, an agricultural biotechnology and seed company, has successfully created a hybrid jatropha which has both high yield and rapid time to maturity. In conjunction with these results, the company has closed an $11 million (€8.5 million) Series C financing to drive commercial rollout. With its latest generation of jatropha hybrids, SGB has reduced the time to maturity from five years to one…
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Ontario Power Generation's (OPG) Atikokan Generating Station (GS) in Canada is now operating on biomass, making it the largest power plant in North America fuelled by 100% biomass. OPG's president and CEO, Tom Mitchell, comments: 'Close to 100% of the electricity OPG producers is from sources that are virtually free of emissions that cause smog or contribute to climate change. Atikokan GS is a…
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Vega Biofuels' joint venture partner, Agri-Tech Producers (ATP) , has developed a new, patent-pending process that reduces the cost of some of the biomass feedstock for the company's pilot torrefaction plant in South Carolina, US. Vega recently entered into the joint venture to build and operate a pilot manufacturing plant in Allendale for the production of biocoal, among other torrefied…
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Global wood pellet demand could more than double in the next 10 years, growing from around 23 million tonnes in 2014 to 50 million tonnes in 2024. This is according to a new study carried out by RISI, an information provider for the global forest products industry. 'It's a really exciting time to be looking at the wood pellet market. We're seeing strong demand in the European heating sector as…
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Fulcrum Sierra Biofuels, a sustainable fuels company, will receive a loan from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) for the construction of waste-to-jet fuel facility. The USDA is to award a $105 million (€81.5 million) Biorefinery Assistance Program loan guarantee to Fulcrum, which the company will use to build a biorefinery in Nevada, US. The new facility, which will require a total…
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Finnish pulp and paper manufacturer Stora Enso is investing €32 million in a new demonstration plant, to be built in Louisiana, US, following its recent acquisition of biotechnology association Virdia. The plant will be used to validate, on an industrial scale, Virdia's technology. This newly acquired extraction and separation process enables cellulosic biomass, such as wood and rural waste,…
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UK supermarket Marks & Spencer (M&S) has purchased the majority of Biomethane Certificates (BMCs) from the green gas being produced at Future Biogas's £8 million (€10 million) biomethane plant in Doncaster. The BMCs, registered with Green Gas Trading (GGT) in the name of Future Biogas, represent the green (bio) element of the biomethane produced at the plant, rather than the…
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Construction work on ReFood's new £20 million (€25 million) anaerobic digestion (AD) plant in Widnes, UK has been completed by building and civil engineering contractor Britcon. The project has now been officially handed over. The plant is the largest gas-to-grid AD facility in the UK and the second plant for the ReFood brand in the UK. It will recycle some 90,000 tonnes of commercial…
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Project Liberty, the US's first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant, located in Emmetsburg, Iowa, has been officially opened. A joint venture of DSM and Poet, Project Liberty will convert 285,000 tonnes a year of biomass sourced from within a 45-mile radius of the plant into renewable fuel. Feedstocks will include baled corn cobs, leaves, husk and stalk. The plant has now officially…
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RusForest AB, a Swedish forestry company with operations in Russia, has released its second quarter 2014 report. Within this report the company revealed that, during the three months ended 30 June, it produced 12,830 tonnes of wood pellets at its production plant in Arkhangelsk. Additionally, revenue from continuing operations during this period reached $17.8 million (€13.5 million),…
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MT-Energie UK, a provider of anaerobic digestion plants in the UK, will build and integrate additional digesters for two existing AD operations in the UK: on the Apsley Estate in Hampshire, and at Clayton Hall Farm, West Yorkshire. In both cases MT-Energie has been chosen to assess and carry out all works relating to the plant expansion, in some cases replacing components supplied by the previous…
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Eco Sustainable Solutions, the owner of a food waste AD plant in Dorset, UK, is expanding the facility with the addition of a further 1.1MW of food waste processing capacity. The expansion contract has been awarded to Weltec Biopower UK, which built the original Eco-Dorset AD plant and commissioned it in 2012. The extension will be completed by the end of this year. The plant is fed by local…
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It has been reported that GDF Suez's Belgian subsidiary, Electrabel, has resumed operations at its Max Green Rodenhuize biomass-fired power plant in Ghent. According to Platts, operations restarted on 28 August after an agreement was reached with authorities and stakeholders over the renewal of green certificates. The Ghent plant is able to handle up to 850,000 tonnes a year of wood pellets for…
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Technology start-up company Algae Systems, along with Japan's IHI Corp, has completed the demonstration of a new biofuel production approach. Algae Systems is a group company of IHI Corp based on a joint venture partnership with Algae Systems' founders The process involved converting algae and wastewater into both energy and clean water. The demo plant, located in Daphne, Alabama in the US,…
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