The Australian market for alternative fuel has a new player. Orbital Corporation Limited has announced the acquisition of Boral Alternative Fuel Systems, entering what it believes to be Australia and New Zealand’s rapidly growing alternative fuel system markets.

International clean energy technology group Orbital Corporation Limited, is pleased to announce the addition to its existing portfolio the Australian LPG fuel systems supplier, Boral Alternative Fuel Systems (”BAFS”).

Under the terms of the acquisition agreement, Orbital will make an investment of approximately $1.6 million to assume BAFS’s working capital (excluding debtors and creditors) including a small component of goodwill. Subject to satisfaction of all conditions precedent transfer of the business is expected to occur prior to June 30th, 2008.

BAFS is based in Sydney and currently generates approximately $6 million in revenue each year.

Algae is becoming a growing source for biofuel development in Israel. Inventure Chemical is the latest company to invest in algae biofuel technology.

Inventure Chemical has announced that it has entered into a joint venture with Seambiotic Ltd. (based in Tel Aviv, Israel) to construct a pilot commercial biofuel plant in Israel, using algae created from CO2 emissions as feedstock. The plant will utilize high-yield oil-rich algae strains that Seambiotic has developed and grown in its open pond system coupled with Inventure’s patent-pending conversion processes to produce ethanol, biodiesel and other value-added chemicals.

“Our joint venture with Inventure will illustrate not only the technological capabilities of our combined processes, but also the validity of the CO2 to algae to biofuel model as a means for coal-fired power generators to meet CO2 reduction mandates,” said Amnon Bechar, Seambiotic’s chief executive officer. “The biofuel that’s created from algae can be used in the power generator’s operations, or sold on the open market to create a new revenue stream. Either way, this model can pay for the infrastructure necessary to put in place.”

Seambiotic grows and processes marine microalgae for biofuel and Omega 3 oil production.

Inventure Chemical dvelops and commercializes feedstock conversion technologies for biofuel producers.

Gasoline is now the “alternative fuel” in Brazil.

“In the beginning of February of this year, ethanol consumption surpassed that of gasoline,” Joel Velasco of the Brazilian Sugar Cane Industry Association said during an update on Brazil’s ethanol industry at the 2008 Fuel Ethanol Workshop in Nashville Tuesday. “My friends, that is a big victory. The oil company now is in a corner.”

Velasco says they have achieved that milestone by consumer choice. “Ninety percent of all the new vehicles today are flex fuel in Brazil, in fact, we are now up to 25 percent of our fleet is flex fuel.”

Because the price of ethanol is substantially lower than gasoline, Velasco says Brazilian consumers are choosing to put 100 percent ethanol in their tanks and “saying forget about gasoline.”

Listen to Velasco’s address to the 2008 FEW here:

2008 Fuel Ethanol Workshop Photo Album

With a ribbon cutting by ethanol industry representatives from the United States and Russia, the 2008 International Fuel Ethanol Workshop officially opened Monday evening in Nashville.

Mike Bryan, CEO of BBI International, kicked off the event by introducing Ron Fagen of Fagen, Inc. and Alexander Machikhin of JSC Tambovskiy Plant in Russia. Machikhin, who is also president of the Russian Biofuels Association, invited participants to visit the International Networking Pavilion at the trade show, which features 32 different countries with an interest in biofuels. “Next year for your 25th anniversary, hopefully you will all be here, and probably another couple thousand people will come,” Machikhin said.

Fagen delivered a very brief message to the crowd waiting to enter the huge trade show featuring more than 600 exhibitors, “All I can say gang is, hang in there, we will survive,” Fagen said, alluding to the storm of negative media reports the industry has been facing this year.

Despite that, there are thousands of people at the conference from all over the world and they remain optimistic about the future of the biofuels industry, both domestically and globally.

Watch the opening ceremony here:

2008 Fuel Ethanol Workshop Photo Album

The fight between American and European biodiesel makers is heating up. European biodiesel producers are urging the European Union to hit U.S. biodiesel with punitive fines as the EU is set to open anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations into imports of the green fuel from the United States.

This story from AFP says this comes after the European Commission started looking into complaints that the US was hurting Europe’s biodiesel industry:

The European Biodiesel Board called for the investigation in April, complaining that the European market was being flooded with US exports of a 99-percent biodiesel blend, which can receive a subsidy of 300 dollars (192 euros) per tonne.

The lobby said the subsidies were squeezing European producers’ profit margins, putting most of them out of business and leaving capacity idle.

But American biodiesel producers aren’t taking this lying down. Manning Feraci, the National Biodiesel Board’s Vice President of Federal Affairs, has responded:

“The allegations of harm leveled by the European biodiesel industry in these trade complaints are baseless. It is disingenuous and hypocritical that several of the European biodiesel companies that joined in the complaints are the very entities actively involved in the trade of U.S. biodiesel.

“The European biodiesel industry is not being harmed by U.S. competition. High feedstock costs, changes to EU member policies – and in some cases - poor business practices are the true issues facing European biodiesel producers. It is unfortunate that the European Biodiesel Board (EBB) has found it politically expedient to blame the U.S. biodiesel industry instead of focusing its efforts on the true challenges facing its membership.

Feraci goes on to characterize the European reaction as a “protectionist ploy.”

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization High Level Conference on Food Security focused on solutions to fight global hunger and increase agricultural development this week, rather than place restrictions on biofuels production.

The final declaration adopted by 180 countries calls for further study on the issue, an approach which world biofuels producers called “thoughtful.”

In a statement, leaders from the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association (CRFA), the European Bioethanol Fuel Association (eBio), and the Renewable Fuels Association said they the proposal to undertake further study of biofuels in agriculture. “We are confident it will underscore the valuable contribution biofuels can make to ease the energy and agriculture challenges confronting all nations,” they said.

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer also welcomed the declaration’s recognition of the important issues related to the challenges and opportunities of biofuels. “The United States is firmly committed to the sustainable production and use of biofuels, both domestically and globally,” he said in a statement.

During a press conference with reporters from Rome, Schafer said that during his time there, he has “become more confident that our ethanol policy of energy security, of better environmental factors, and a reduction in the cost of petroleum use in our country is the right policy direction. And I certainly am going to urge continuing along the way we’re going.”

The real focus of the summit was on getting countries to come up with more money to meet urgent humanitarian needs for food and to help countries achieve continuing food security through investment in agriculture and research. Schafer said the United States will continue to provide the majority of food aid globally, projecting to spend nearly $5 billion on programs to combat hunger over the next two years. By contrast, oil-rich countries like Venezuela and Kuwait have only pledged to spend $100 million a year.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer is defending the production of ethanol in Rome this week at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization High-Level Conference on World Food Security.

During a press conference with international media at the opening of the conference, Schafer answered a number of questions related to biofuels and stressed the minimal impact of production on food prices.

“We at the United States Department of Agriculture have plotted the long-term trends of price, yield, availability and consumption; and as we’ve looked at those long-term trends we are anticipating this year an over 40 percent increase in food price inflation globally, 43 percent approximately,” Schafer said. “Of that, we can identify 2 to 3 percent of that price increase that is driven by biofuels. The majority of course is energy, and the second largest piece, or about equal piece, is the increase in consumption around the world which is using up the production stocks.”

The secretary also pointed out that production of biofuels is helping to alleviate some of the pressure from higher energy costs. “By biofuels, we are reducing the use of the high cost of oil today. It’s been estimated that we have, through biofuel production, reduced a million barrels a day of oil and oil record high prices,” he said.

In his address to the conference, Schafer stressed the United States commitment to feeding the world, while at the same time working toward greater energy security through sustainable production of biofuels.

“The use of sustainable biofuels can increase energy security, foster economic development especially in rural areas, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions without weighing heavily on food prices,” Schafer said in his prepared remarks. “A recently passed law requires that we minimize possible food security and environmental concerns, in part through significant investment in next-generation biofuel technologies that do not rely on grains and oilseeds used for food or feed.”

Even the FAO admits that biofuels are only one factor in rising food costs. According to the FAO Biofuels Factsheet for the conference, “Demand from biofuel production is one cause of increasing food prices, but poor harvests in certain key exporting countries, low stock levels, high energy costs and increasing food demand due to rapid economic growth in some countries have also all contributed. It is the coincidence of all of these factors which has led to the dramatic increase in food prices, and which makes it difficult to estimate the precise impact of any single factor.“

As talks are beginning in Rome about the factors behind and solutions to world food price inflation, Renewable Fuels Association President Bob Dinneen called on world leaders attending the summit to consider the issue in its entirety.

“Addressing issues of food security is a matter of great importance that cannot be taken lightly. As world leaders meet in Rome this week to discuss the price and availability of food worldwide, it is critical they examine all factors impacting food equally and without prejudice,” Dinneen said in a statement. “They must agree on solutions that do not derail the one industry that has significantly reduced oil consumption, while having little overall impact on the price of food – biofuels.”

Dinneen says he believes representatives from the United States at the conference, including Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer, will do a good job in addressing the misinformation about biofuels that has been causing global concerns.

“Secretary Schafer and other USDA staff are going to be aggressively promoting the biofuels agenda and correcting a lot of the misinformation that is in the world press,” said Dinneen. “And we are confident that he will continue to point to the fact that it is other factors driving food price inflation, not biofuels.”

Dinneen says other world leaders will also stand by biofuels at the conference. “I am certain that Brazilian President Lula and other forward looking leaders of the world will see that this demonization of biofuels is misguided.”

The United Nations High-Level Conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy is being held in Rome June 3-5. Besides Schafer, other members of the US delegation include U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator and Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance Henrietta H. Fore and Agriculture Under Secretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services Dr. Mark E. Keenum.

Listen to the Ethanol Report with Dinneen’s comments here:

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Shafer is defending biofuels ahead of next week’s United Nations conference that will address the growing world food crisis.

This story in the New York Times says Shafer is taking a stand that biodiesel and ethanol are making a minimum contribution to any price hikes in food worldwide while making a major contribution to extending world energy resources:

Mr. Schafer took the offensive at a press conference on Thursday that discussed the food summit, planned for Rome. He said an analysis by the Agriculture Department had determined that biofuel production was responsible for only 2 to 3 percent of the increase in global food prices, while biofuels had reduced consumption of crude oil by a million barrels a day.

Mr. Schafer’s remarks came as ethanol and biofuels are coming under increasing criticism from foreign leaders and members of Congress, as grocery prices climb in the developed world and malnutrition and hunger threaten to spread in the poorest nations.

Even a report critical of biodiesel and ethanol… released just hours before Shafer offered his counterpoint… admits that drought has played a major factor in food price hikes, and prices are expected to go down as weather returns to normal.

Another 8.7 megawatts of solar energy is now available in Spain. SunPower Corp. has opened two new solar-electric power plants in Llerena and Lebrija.

The solar power plant constructed by SunPower in Llerena is 4.8 megawatts; the plant in Lebrija is 3.9 megawatts. In Spain, SunPower has completed or has signed contracts to deliver solar power plants totaling more than 100 megawatts.

“We utilized our industry-leading SunPower Tracker technology at both of the power plant sites, maximizing energy output, while optimizing land use and reducing related costs,” said Marco Antonio Northland, general manager of SunPower’s European operations.

SunPower says renewable energy has a great potential of thriving in these regions of Spain.