Air New Zealand expects to use at least one million barrels of environmentally sustainable fuel annually by 2013, according to a statement released by the airline yesterday (5th June). The company explained that it was confident that commercial quantities of environmentally sustainable fuels that meet all its stringent criteria will become available over the next few years.

Abandoning biofuels will not reduce food prices according to the National Farmers' Union, the body representing British farmers. The Lack of investment in agriculture and the cheap food era - not biofuels - are the reason for rising food prices and global food shortages said the NFU, speaking at the EU's Green Week conference this week.

New Generation Biofuels Holdings has signed its first biofuels sales contract with a subsidiary of Dynegy Inc it was announced this week (4th June). The contract, says the company, calls for New Generation Biofuels to supply up to 1.7 million gallons per year of biofuel for use at Dynegy's power plant in Oakland, California.

Folowing many fractious hours of debate, and some doubt as to wether an agreement could be reached at all, finally a declaration was issued today (5th June) at the High Level Conference on Food Security in Rome. The issue fo biofuels had caused much rancour at the meeting, but the resulting text on biofuels was welcomed by the biofuels market as a whole, although it left some claiming it was a fudge.

Leaders of the biofuels industries in the United States, Canada and Europe today (2nd June) sent a letter to UN Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Dr. Jacques Diouf, ahead of this week's meeting in Rome, urging the delegates not to single out biofuels as the cause for the current food price spike. (read the full letter here)

In their letter to Dr. Diouf, Gordon Quaiattini (Canadian Renewable Fuels Association), Rob Vierhout (European Bioethanol Fuel Association), and Bob Dinneen (Renewable Fuels Association) wrote that "there are multiple causes for the rapid rise in world food prices. These include weather events such as droughts and destructive storms, changing dietary habits, skyrocketing oil and fuel prices, commodity speculators, the declining value of the US dollar, and failed international agricultural policies."

A patent application which covers the “Method and Fluid Process Flow System for the Cultivation of Algae, Integrated within a Transportable Modular Photo Bioreactor,” has been filed by Californian company Origin Oil, it was announced today (2nd June).  This is the third patent application filed by the company in this area.

A $1 million grant to build San Franciso's first pilot grease to biodiesel plant, was announced last week (29th May) by the city's mayor, Gavin Newsom. The grant was made by the californian Energy Commission and was made to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), the body that will build the plant.

Sapphire Energy announced last week that it has produced renewable 91 octane gasoline that conforms to ASTM certification, made from a breakthrough process that produces crude oil directly from sunlight, CO2 and photosynthetic microorganisms, beginning with algae.

"It's hard not to get excited about algae's potential," said Paul Dickerson, chief operating officer of the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy "Its basic requirements are few: CO2, sun, and water. Algae can flourish in non-arable land or in dirty water, and when it does flourish, its potential oil yield per acre is unmatched by any other terrestrial feedstock."