A passenger jet powered in part by vegetable oil successfully completed a two-hour flight Tuesday to test a biofuel that could lower aircraft emissions and cut costs, Air New Zealand said.

Tata Chemicals, leading manufacturer of caustic soda and fertilisers in the country, said today that it had bought a 35 per cent stake in JOil Pte, a Singapore-based jatropha seedling company. The stake buy will help the firm gain exclusive marketing rights for technology to develop the best seed varieties of the plant, which yields biodiesel.

Biomass is of recent origin and ranges from algae, shrubs to trees. Dedicated biomass crops are fast growing trees/shrubs and grown in degraded land with lowered inputs.

It is not often that an issue approved by the Cabinet, after having been vetted by a group of ministers (GoM), is sent back to the GoM for review. But such has been the fate, for understandable reasons, of the national policy on bio-fuels which was formally okayed by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs in September.

A reddish microbes found in the rainforests of Patagonia could unlock the biofuel of the future, say scientists. Its potential Is so starting that the discoverers have coined the term

By Clifford Krauss

For all the support that the presidential candidates are expressing for renewable energy, alternative energies like wind and solar are facing big new challenges because of the credit freeze and the plunge in oil and natural gas prices.

Heliostats redirect sunrays to a tower in Seville, Spain. Energy created at the plant provides electricity to thousands of homes.

The Third Power and Alternative Energy Asia 2009 International Exhibition and Conference will be held here in March next. This was announced by the Ecommerce Gateway Pakistan in a statement here on Monday. It pointed out that the Embassy of Pakistan, Athens, has extended its support to Ecommerce Gateway Pakistan to promote this conference and exhibition.

In a unique effort to recycle wasted energy, 8 teams of British eco-enthusiasts participated in a car rally from London to Athens in vehicles fueled by waste vegetable oil.

Experts on Friday urged the government to immediately initiate the wind energy projects to avoid irresolvable energy crisis in the country and warned that window of opportunity is gradually closing with each passing day.

Addressing a two-day workshop on "Carbon Credit Potential in Wind Power Sector in Pakistan," being organised at a local hotel, speakers said that despite Pakistan is far behind in the acquisition of energy through windfalls than developed world, still it has an opportunity to avoid energy crisis.