Allegations of an unrestricted and exploitative land grab in Papua to develop a biofuels industry have been made by the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) in a report, 'Up for Grabs: Deforestation and Exploitation in Papua's Plantations Boom ' published yesterday (10th October).  The, self styled, Agency alleges that there are moves by large companies to target five million hectares of land in the region, most of which they say is forested, to develop a biofuels industry and that it is is provoking conflicts with local communities.

A project by Ceres to increase biomass yields of several energy grasses has attracted a $5 million advanced research grant form the US Department of Energy. Commenting at the announcement of the award yesterday (10th November) Ceres chief scientific officer Richard Flavell said; “Low-input traits developed through modern genetics can provide wide-reaching benefits to the energy and agricultural sectors as well as the environment — just the type of transformational impact energy officials are looking for.”

The Dutch airline KLM will operate a demonstration flight on bio-kerosene using Boeing 747 equipment on 23rd November it was announced last week. According to the airline, during the test flight, one of the aircraft engines will be running on a fuel mixture made up of 50% sustainable bio-fuel and 50% traditional kerosene.

A memorandum of understanding covering collaboration on a range of biofuels technologies and projects in China has been signed by the China National Petroleum Corp. and  UOP LLC, it was announced today (4th November). Under the terms of the agreement, announced at the 20th meeting of the China-U.S. Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade (JCCT), the companies will collaborate to demonstrate existing biofuels technology to produce green transportation fuels using feedstocks available within China. CNPC will also evaluate the installation of a demonstration-scale UOP/Eni Ecofining™ process unit for the production of green diesel fuel, as well as a larger-scale unit at an existing or new CNPC refinery site.

An order which includes equipment and engineering solutions for an ethanol production plant in northern Vietnam has been placed by the PetroVietnam Group with Alfa Laval it was announnced last week (29th October). The order, worth in the region of SEK 100 million ($14.2m), will see Alfa Laval's heat exchangers used in a starch-based fermentation, distillation and dehydration process at the ethanol plant.  Delivery is scheduled for 2010.

A second NGO has now called into question the veracity of the palm oil campaigns set up by some green campaigners. In a straight talking statement released yesterday (1st November), Tim Wilson, Director of the Intellectual Property and Free Trade Unit at the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne, Australia said; "Misguided campaigns by the Melbourne Zoo, celebrities and activists lack understanding of why forest and orang-utans are being lost. It isn't palm oil it's poverty".

Aston University’s Bioenergy Research Group (BERG) has secured €736,000 (£670,000) towards its role in DIBANET (Development of Integrated Biomass Approaches Network), which aims to produce a sustainable diesel miscible biofuel (DMB) for use in Europe and Latin America. The 42 month, € 3.73m (£3.4 million) research project, coordinated by the University of Limerick in Ireland, includes partners from Europe (Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Ireland and UK) and South America (Brazil, Argentina and Chile).

The Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture has confimed that the use of protein from PetroAlgae's proprietary micro-crop production technology can be used as a raw material in animal feed. The protein has also been cleared for importation as a raw material to be used as an ingredient for animal feed.  According to a statement released by PetroAlgae yesterday (27th October) licensees of the PetroAlgae production system will be expected to follow the Guidance and Procedures for the Registration of Animal Feed in Indonesia.