New biodiesel startup wins top prize at PSVC event, Biodiesel finds home in back yards, fueling stations alike, Biofuels have risks if not managed rig

New biodiesel startup wins top prize at PSVC event
Seattle Post Intelligencer - USA
He also tells me that a new Seattle biodiesel startup by the name of Planetary Fuels beat out three presenting companies to win the top prize at the well ...

New biodiesel startup wins top prize at PSVC event
Tim Reha at Venture All Stars was nice enough to pass on some photos from the Puget Sound Venture Club's 20th anniversary celebration at The Museum of Flight last night. Looked like a fun time.

He also tells me that a new Seattle biodiesel startup by the name of Planetary Fuels beat out three presenting companies to win the top prize at the well attended event.

I just got off the phone with Planetary Fuels Founder Ophir Ronen, who interestingly co-founded Internap Network Services with Tony Naughtin and others back in 1996. That seems like ancient history now.

Ronen started Planetary Fuels five months ago and while he doesn't have a production facility in operation yet, he says one should be up and running later this year. The idea behind the company, which employs six, is to build small scale production plants (two million to eight million gallons per year) that rely on crops from local farmers.

That's a slightly different approach from Imperium Renewables -- the Paul Allen-backed company formerly known as Seattle Biodiesel. Last month, it announced a new biodiesel facility in Grays Harbor County capable of producing 100 million gallons per year.

Still, Ronen said there is so much demand in the industry that "there is enough room for everybody."

"It is really exciting to see a groundswell of support for biodiesel," he said.

There sure is a lot of interest in the investment community right now about alternative energy -- something Ronen said he has seen firsthand in his recent pitches to investors. He's talking to angel investors and venture capitalists and hopes to close a round later this month. "It is moving pretty fast," he said.

Biodiesel finds home in back yards, fueling stations alike
News-Reporter - Washington,GA,USA
The Biodiesel topic is hitting the lips of those working in places ranging from labs to government regulations offices. As fuel ...

The Biodiesel topic is hitting the lips of those working in places ranging from labs to government regulations offices. As fuel prices continue to mount, many Americans have started hunting ways to make transportation more economical.

And that includes the production of Biodiesel.

"Biodiesel has true scale-ability," said Rob Del Bueno of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. "It can be made in a multi-million gallon tank or in a two-liter bottle in a kitchen if done carefully."
Del Bueno knows this firsthand. After college, he promoted a band that played gigs wherever they could get them. To save money, they converted the tour van to run on vegetable oil taken straight from the fryers at the bars where they played.

Del Bueno was hooked, not on the band, but on the fuel they used. He started tearing apart engines, making his own Biodiesel and running his car on it. He then started making it for his friends. After an article in a local newspaper, the Environmental Projection Agency and the Internal Revenue Service also got interested, and he was audited and slammed with fees.

From the curious to the Georgia legislature, interest in Biodiesel is picking up steam.

According to Ryan Adolphson, director of the University of Georgia's Biomass Processing Pilot Plant Facilities, from 1995 to 2005, four Georgia bills on biomass were introduced. In 2006 alone, at least eight bills came before the state legislature pertaining to biomass energy in general with six bills directly targeting Biodiesel.

In fact, Georgia Senate Bill 636 that passed in 2006 makes it illegal for someone to produce Biodiesel for resale if that Biodiesel does not meet standard specifications. And testing for those specifications is expensive.

A license for a small Biodiesel producer, who is someone who produces less than 250,000 gallons a year, costs $2,500 per year. That doesn't include the costs for extensive tests to make sure the product is engine and road-ready.

"It's really easy to make Biodiesel. To make it right is really hard," said Dan Gellar, who is on the UGA engineering department faculty and has been researching Biodiesel for the past 10 years.
According to Dan Walsh of National Tribology Services Inc., those hoping to produce Biodiesel for resale should expect to ask for a loan between $1 million and $2.5 million just to cover startup costs, and then expect to pay between $800 and $1,300 for each complete test a lab runs on each sample from each batch they produce.

IS ETHANOL THAT EFFICIENT TO MAKE?
Free Market News Network - Pompano Beach,FL,USA
Fire up the fryer, it’s Biodiesel Day. But will biodiesel and other “green” energies really help us come down from our fossil fuel trip? ...
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Biofuels have risks if not managed right - report
NDTV.com - New Delhi,India
... The market for biofuels, which include ethanol and biodiesel, is small but growing rapidly. Between 2000 and 2005, ethanol production doubled. ...
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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Biofuels have the potential to replace growing amounts of oil, but can cause agricultural and ecological damage if not not developed carefully, a report released on Wednesday said.

The market for biofuels, which include ethanol and biodiesel, is small but growing rapidly. Between 2000 and 2005, ethanol production doubled. In the same period, biodiesel output quadrupled, though it started from a smaller production base.

Still, in 2005 the global ethanol supply fueled a little less than 1 percent of the distance traveled by the world's transport vehicles.

Soon biofuels could replace more oil, new supplies of which are becoming harder to find and produce. Biofuels could provide 37 percent of U.S. transport fuel within the next 25 years, according to the report, Biofuels for Transportation.

In the European Union, biofuels could replace 20 to 30 percent of oil-based fuel during the same time frame, said the report, published by the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington-based advocacy group, and commissioned by a German agricultural agency.

Biofuels could mitigate some of the environmental risks of the drilling and burning of oil, but can spur ecological risks of their own, if not managed well, the report said.

In Brazil and Asia, fields of soybeans and palm, whose oils have the potential to become significant sources of biodiesel, are encroaching on tropical forests, which hold great wealths of biodiversity, the report said.

"The most problematic and serious risk (of biofuels) is of spreading into wild areas and impacting biodiversity," Christopher Flavin, president of Worldwatch, said in a telephone interview. "That is going to require more stringent laws than currently exist in most countries," he added.

In addition, growth of biofuels could drive up food prices by diverting crop yields to produce fuel, which could make it more difficult to feed urban poor, according to the report.

Traditional ethanol crops, such as corn in the United States and sugar in Brazil, could also increase erosion and deplete aquifers.

And, if biofuels are produced from crops that take high inputs of products derived from fossil fuel, such as fertilizer, the process of growing, making and burning the fuel could create more greenhouse gas emissions than oil does, the report said.

Stricter land-use laws, particularly in countries with tropical forests, are needed to mitigate potential damage and reap the benefits from biofuels, it said.

In addition, no-till crop techniques and the use of advanced biofuels, such as cellulosic ethanol, can cut carbon dioxide emissions below those from fossil fuels.

Cellulosic ethanol uses microbes to break down the woody bits of plants. The advanced biofuel can be made from low-imput perennial crops, such as switchgrass, that grow on marginal lands.

The cellulosic ethanol industry is in its infancy, however. Currently there is only one such plant in North America, run by private Canadian company Iogen, with investments from Royal Dutch Shell and Goldman Sachs & Co.

Biofuels are also a source of jobs. The ethanol industry provides 200,000 jobs in the United States and 500,000 jobs in Brazil, which produces slightly more ethanol than the United States, the report said.