British race team ECO Racing has announced their intention to compete in three of this years remaining American Le Mans Series races with a car running on biodiesel. ECO racing is taking up the ALMS's Green Racing challenge with a Radical LMP1 chassis powered by a production based V10 diesel. The team had originally planned to compete at the Sebring 12 Hour race earlier this year but regulatory issues kept them off the track. They are now back and ready to compete at Road America, Road Atlanta and Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. ECO racing first ran a biodiesel fueled car at Le Mans in 2004 two years before the debut of the Audi R10 TDI. The team runs a jatropha based fuel supplied by D1 Oils. The Petit Le Mans race at Road Atlanta will also be the debut of the ALMS Green Challenge where teams will earn points based on the total carbon footprint of there cars. A team like ECO Racing should have a good chance for that trophy since they run an efficient diesel engine fueled by an oil from an inedible tree.

[Source: American Le Mans Series]

U.K. biodiesel producer D1 Oils is gearing up to supply local oil companies with the biodiesel they will need to meet mandatory a B5 biodiesel blend target coming into effect next year. D1 has pursued a strategy of using jatropha curcas oil as their primary feedstock by establishing large jatropha plantations in a variety of countries including India, Zambia, Swaziland, Indonesia and China. While waiting for adequate jatropha feedstock supplies to come online, D1 are using soy bean oil in their ramp-up of biodiesel production to a planned 320,000 tonnes in 2008.

D1 has a contract in place to supply petroleum distributor Petroplus with biodiesel for blending purposes which will become mandatory under the U.K.'s Renewable Fuel Transport Obligation (RTFO) that goes live in in April 2008. D1's jatropha plantations are to be doubled in size from 145,000 hectares to nearly 300,000 hectares over the next year to meet the demand.

Analysis: I visited D1's facility in Teesside, northern England last year to learn about their operation and plans to expand their jatropha oil production. Jatropha is a smart play by D1 although they are currently hurting through the early years while the first plants grow sufficiently to harvest. If they manage their plantations well they should have a steady supply of a high quality and very cheap biodiesel feedstock.

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[Source: icNewcastle.co.uk]

While rapeseed/canola continues to be the main biodiesel feedstock in Europe, and soy dominates U.S. biodiesel production, a host of other plants are moving biodiesel forward in other parts of the world. In the Philippines, the Biofuel Act is about to pass into law mandating the immediate use of one percent biodiesel, increasing to two percent after two years. The numbers seem small but it has prompted a massive in-surge of investment in biodiesel production capacity with Chemrez Technologies planning to start construction of their third biodiesel processing plant shortly. The third plant, which cost more than P2 billion (US$40 million) and can produce 240,000 tons of biodiesel annually, is designed to meet the surge in demand once the second phase of the Biofuel Act comes into effect.

The Philippines are heavily promoting the Jatropha Curcas plant as their preferred biodiesel feedstock. Jatropha is also gaining popularity in Indonesia with a Dutch expert claiming that Indonesia may be the first country in the world to commercially use biodiesel produced from jatropha. Professor H.J. Heeres, of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands says that more then 25 million hectares (62 million acres) of land could be suitable for jatropha in Indonesia. Officials in charge of biofuel development in Indonesia have said that the government plans to produce just over 15,000 tonnes of biofuels from jatropha by the end of 2007.

Jatropha, which is being planted in India and western China as well, is seen as more environmentally friendly and sustainable than palm oil, but at least for the time being, the bulk of Indonesia's biodiesel production will come from palm oil. Biodiesel produced from palm oil is already being exported overseas from Malaysia and biodiesel export dollars are expected to have a big impact on the Malaysian economy. The Malaysian government has already granted around 75 licenses to produce the biodiesel and five production plants are already in operation or in the process of getting off the ground. The Malaysian Palm Oil Board, the governing body for the palm oil industry, itself is building three biodiesel plants. Biodiesel is exported from Malaysia to Germany, the U.S. and other European countries.

Related:

• Indonesia looks to biodiesel made from jatropha seeds
• Biodiesel row in Kenya

[Source: ABS-CBN]