Biofuel Blog War

This week we start off with a United Nations report that urges caution on biofuels. Green Inc, a New York Times blog writes,

“The study concluded that whether a biofuel is climate-friendly or not depends largely on whether it is based on crops or production residues. Biofuels of the latter category were generally considered beneficial [...]

The American Coalition for Ethanol (ACE) is calling claims made by an advertising campaign against ethanol by a coalition food and oil company groups “half-baked.”
“If the products sold to consumers by Big Food are as half-baked as their ethanol claims, we have a life-threatening food safety crisis in America,” stated Brian Jennings, Executive Vice President [...]

The Wall Street Journal’s Scott Kilman reported earlier this week on a letter sent by General Mills, the Grocery Manufacturers Association and Kraft Foods to Ag. Sec. Tom Vilsack, asking for reduction of trade tariffs on sugar. From Kilman’s article and the letter, it’s clear that grocery manufacturers are once again trying to distract public [...]

This morning, the USDA released their August crop report and it is the latest data that completely contradicts the theory of indirect land use change.

The Environmental Working Group, Friends of the Earth, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the National Marine Manufacturers Association, the National Petrochemical & Refiners Association, and the Natural Resources Defense Council have cosigned a series of letters to Senate leaders opposing additional study of the theory of indirect land use change. These groups would like to lock [...]

Professor Lee Lynd of Dartmouth, who is also the CSO of Mascoma, addressed a plenary session the 2009 BIO World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology. He gave additional insight on the article he coauthored with David Tilman et al in a recent issue of Science and discussed the initiative that led to the article.
According to Lynd, [...]

A group of researchers, many from Princeton University, say that biofuels can solve many of the problems related to non-renewable fossil fuels… without creating more problems of their own.

This article from Princeton says the key is making the green fuels from sustainable sources:
“The world needs to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, but recent research [...]

University of Minnesota Professor David Tilman, Princeton University Visiting Scholar Tim Searchinger, Dartmouth Professor Lee Lynd and others involved in the debate over the environmental and social impacts of biofuels have published in Science magazine what amounts to a new manifesto on how biofuels can be done right.
The authors list five biofuel feedstocks that are [...]

After becoming one of the top three wheat exporters in 2008, Russia is now determined to play a pivotal role in the flow of worldwide agriculture markets. Russian Federation’s President Dmitry Medvedev has proposed closer coordination between global grain exporters and said, “excessive protectionism had encouraged speculation in global grain markets,” during the World Grain [...]

The EPA today held a public hearing on the RFS2 Rule and will be holding a Workshop on Lifecycle Greenhouse Gas Analysis for the Proposed Revisions to the National Renewable Fuels Standard Program tomorrow. These fora are intended to solicit feedback from stakeholders in the rulemaking and provide information on how the EPA developed its [...]