Biofuel

Continental Airlines flight 1403 made history when it landed at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago on Monday, becoming the first revenue passenger trip in the U.S. powered by biofuel. The Boeing 737-800 burned a "green jet fuel" derived partially from genetically modified algae that feed on plant waste and produce oil. In completing the flight from Houston, parent company United Continental Holdings Inc. won by two days the competition to launch the first biofuel-powered air service in the U.S. On Wednesday, Alaska Airlines started 75 passenger flights along with its sister airline, Horizon Air, that will take place over the next few weeks using a biofuel blend made from recycled cooking oil. The 20% biofuel blend the planes will use will reduce carbon dioxide emissions 10%, Alaska Airlines officials said.

Renewable energy seed maker Ceres Inc. is planning to go public. The privately held Thousand Oaks company wants to raise more than $100 million to expand its production of genetically modified seeds for crops used for biofuels, according to a filing this week with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ceres plans to sell 5 million shares at $21 to $23 each, according to the filing, and has applied to list its shares on NASDAQ under the ticker symbol CERE. Biofuels have gotten something of a bad rap in the U.S. thanks to corn-based ethanol, which critics have dissed as an inefficient fuel that has driven up food prices while doing little to curb greenhouse gases.

Jatropha? Camelina? Animal fats? That's what Germany's Lufthansa Airlines is using to help power four daily flights between Hamburg and Frankfurt that began Friday. Although other carriers, such as Virgin Atlantic and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, have used biofuel on demonstration flights , Lufthansa claims it's the first passenger airline to use biofuel for scheduled daily flight operations. KLM last month said it plans to start using biofuel on more than 200 flights between Amsterdam and Paris in September.

A federal judge on Thursday temporarily halted California's ability to enforce rules to reduce the carbon footprint of transportation fuels, effectively taking the regulatory teeth out of the state's year-old program. U.S. District Judge Lawrence O'Neill issued a preliminary injunction that ruled the California Air Resources Board's low-carbon fuel regulations violated the U.S. Constitution's commerce clause by discriminating against crude oil and biofuels producers located outside California.

The Obama administration gave a boost to the corn and coal industries Wednesday, announcing a series of moves to accelerate biofuel use and deploy so-called clean-coal technology on power plants. Unveiling the actions in a meeting with energy-state governors at the White House, President Obama said the steps would create jobs in rural areas, reduce foreign energy dependence and curb the emissions that scientists blame for global warming. "It's important for us to understand that in order for us to move forward with a robust energy policy," Obama said, "we've got to have not an either/or philosophy but a both/and philosophy -- a philosophy that says traditional sources of energy are going to continue to be important for a while, so we've got to just use technologies to make them cleaner and more efficient."

The Obama administration today will unveil a revamped strategy to ramp up the nation's use of biofuel in hopes of fixing a government effort that officials admit has fallen short in its attempts to wean cars and trucks away from fossil fuels and move toward ethanol, biodiesel and other crop-based fuels. The new strategy, which the president will outline in an afternoon meeting with Cabinet secretaries and his top energy advisor, seeks to put the United States on track to produce 36 billion gallons of biofuels by 2022 -- the amount mandated by Congress in the 2007 energy bill.

In a two-day swing through Illinois, Missouri and Iowa that begins Tuesday, President Obama will visit communities hit hard by the recession and tour two biofuel plants as he rolls out a special version of his election-year pitch aimed at rural America. In tow will be Cabinet members and advisors from the Midwest, all armed with a new White House report that touts success in many of the president's initiatives to help the rural economy and that points to the potential effect of proposals still in the works.

To many, algae is little more than pond scum, a nuisance to swimmers and a frustration to boaters. But to a growing community of scientists and investors in Southern California, there is oil locked in all that slimy stuff, and several dozen companies are racing to try to figure how best to unleash it and produce an affordable biofuel. The companies and several research labs have set up shop in the San Diego area, many of them in an area nicknamed Biotech Beach. There, around 200 biotech companies of all kinds are clustered near La Jolla on the mesa above Torrey Pines State Beach.

A federal judge is blocking construction of new boating facilities on Lake Tahoe while he resolves an environmental lawsuit. The lawsuit, filed by the League to Save Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Club, challenges new regulations that would allow more than 100 new private piers, 10 new public piers, new boat ramps, mooring buoys and hundreds of slips. The regulations were adopted last year by the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency after years of controversy. Environmentalists argue that new piers and ramps would increase motorized boating and the pollution that goes with it. In a recent ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Lawrence K. Karlton issued a preliminary injunction.

Regarding the story "A new bid to loosen energy laws," Dec. 8): As Yogi Berra was quoted as saying, "It's deja vu all over again." Weren't we here before and didn't some company from Texas, I think the name was Enron, get involved with fixing energy prices? Didn't we argue about generation and delivery? I now live in Oregon, where we know what we will pay for our energy, which is hydroelectric and, in the case of Tillamook, some biofuel. Dick Diamond Bay City, Ore. -- I was disturbed to read the piece on the Public Utilities Commission's plan to revive energy deregulation in California.

Continental Airlines flight 1403 made history when it landed at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago on Monday, becoming the first revenue passenger trip in the U.S. powered by biofuel. The Boeing 737-800 burned a "green jet fuel" derived partially from genetically modified algae that feed on plant waste and produce oil. In completing the flight from Houston, parent company United Continental Holdings Inc. won by two days the competition to launch the first biofuel-powered air service in the U.S. On Wednesday, Alaska Airlines started 75 passenger flights along with its sister airline, Horizon Air, that will take place over the next few weeks using a biofuel blend made from recycled cooking oil. The 20% biofuel blend the planes will use will reduce carbon dioxide emissions 10%, Alaska Airlines officials said.

Jatropha? Camelina? Animal fats? That's what Germany's Lufthansa Airlines is using to help power four daily flights between Hamburg and Frankfurt that began Friday. Although other carriers, such as Virgin Atlantic and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, have used biofuel on demonstration flights , Lufthansa claims it's the first passenger airline to use biofuel for scheduled daily flight operations. KLM last month said it plans to start using biofuel on more than 200 flights between Amsterdam and Paris in September.

President Obama on Wednesday outlined a plan to reduce oil imports to the United States by a third over the next 10 years, calling for further oil and gas drilling at home, development of biofuels and greater fuel efficiency in new cars and trucks. With gas prices climbing largely because of unrest in the Middle East, the White House appeared eager to defuse Republican criticism about the pain that high fuel prices have inflicted on ordinary Americans and alleged inaction on the issue by the administration.

The latest surge in oil prices may help the renewable energy industry reach a turning point after years of boom-and-bust cycles long dictated by the rise and fall in gas prices. Solar, wind and biofuel investors and analysts said the latest run-up in prices caused by unrest in Libya and other oil-producing nations could lead to lasting interest in alternate sources of energy. They point to several factors converging at the same time that give the industry such hope. Public awareness and worries about climate change, pollution and dwindling resources are at an all-time high.

Ever wonder what microorganisms do on a Saturday night? In professor Derek Lovley's lab at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, doctoral candidate Zarath Summers and her colleagues made a point to find out. In the process, Summers discovered a new cooperative behavior in bacteria. "Interspecies electron transfer" entails one microorganism forming a direct electrical connection to another. Scientists have known since the 1960s that microorganisms can indirectly exchange electrons through a process called hydrogen transfer, in which one microbe produces hydrogen and then another microbe consumes it. But this discovery takes hydrogen transfer and goes a step further.

There weren't many clean-tech companies landing investments in the U.S. but the ones that did — especially electric car manufacturers and support companies — just had a gangbusters quarter. With several electric vehicle models poised to hit the market this year and next, companies that set up the charging network to serve them were strong performers in the second quarter, Ernst & Young said Tuesday. Palo Alto-based Better Place was the big winner, securing $350 million in funding.

A few years ago, drums of used French fry grease were only of interest to a small network of underground biofuel brewers, who would use the slimy oil to power their souped-up antique Mercedes. Now, restaurants from Berkeley to Sedgwick, Kan., are reporting thefts of old cooking oil worth thousands of dollars by rustlers who are refining it into barrels of biofuel in backyard stills. "It's like a war zone going on right now over grease," said David Levenson, who owns a grease hauling business in San Francisco's Mission District.

The rush to grow biofuel crops -- widely embraced as part of the solution to global warming -- is actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions rather than reducing them, according to two studies published Thursday in the journal Science. One analysis found that clearing forests and grasslands to grow the crops releases vast amounts of carbon into the air -- far more than the carbon spared from the atmosphere by burning biofuels instead of gasoline.

OK WEB/ NO WIRES A rolling "dead zone" off the Gulf of Mexico is killing sea life and destroying livelihoods. Recent estimates put the blob at nearly the size of New Jersey. Alas, I'm not talking about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. As terrible as that catastrophe is, such accidents have occurred in U.S. waters only about once every 40 years (and globally about once every 20 years). I'm talking about the dead zone largely caused by fertilizer runoff from American farms along the Mississippi and Atchafalaya river basins.

In a two-day swing through Illinois, Missouri and Iowa that begins Tuesday, President Obama will visit communities hit hard by the recession and tour two biofuel plants as he rolls out a special version of his election-year pitch aimed at rural America. In tow will be Cabinet members and advisors from the Midwest, all armed with a new White House report that touts success in many of the president's initiatives to help the rural economy and that points to the potential effect of proposals still in the works.