The Obama Administration has long been pushing the use of renewable fuels and in an effort to further discourage sole use of oil for transport, the DOE has been authorized to grant up to $36 million for companies which manufacture bio-based products. It will be funding six small-scale projects in California, Michigan, North Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin. “Projects such as these are helping us to…

Steven Chu of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has announced a development in biofuel production that could forever end America’s dependence on oil. Chu, along with his team of researchers at the DOE’s BioEnergy Science Center, have discovered a cheap and simple technique to convert woody plants into isobutanol, which can be used in any gas-powered automobile. For years now, researchers have been working…

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is urging the U.S. and Europe to back off the production of biofuels, as it could potentially cause roughly 200,000 deaths in underdeveloped nations. They claim that, since most biofuels are made using food crops, the increased demand would lead to higher food cost. Producing more corn to use in biofuel production, for instance, would cause the price of corn to skyrocket. To boot, it would also lead to more corn crops being planted which, in turn, would leave less space…

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has committed to develop environmentally sustainable solutions to the country’s most urgent aviation issues, NASA Administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. said Wednesday at the Green Aviation Summit. Bolden — a retired United States Marine Corps major general and former NASA astronaut — went on to say that air travel is one of the safest modes of transport and is crucial to the U.S. economy, however rising air traffic has become a burden upon the…

Through an arrangement with the Indian Parliament, the Punjab Energy Development Agency has invited bids for installing an 80 kW solar PV system. The solar array would provide battery backup for the Parliament building in the off-chance of a blackout, however over 50 percent of the generated power would be fed back into the grid. The project would help promote the use of solar PV systems which remain unpopular due to the high costs and lower efficiency when compared to other…