AGNARAFALY and MENABE, Madagascar — For Soja and his family, who escaped starvation bred by drought, the December rain hammering their corrugated metal roof should be welcome. But rains are…
This story is the second article of a three-part Mongabay mini-series exploring the link between Cambodia's garment factories and illegal logging. Read Part One and Part Three. KAMPONG SPEU, Cambodia…
ANTANANARIVO, Madagascar — Ankarafantsika, a primary forest in Madagascar’s northwest Boeny region, is the site of a vicious cycle where declining livelihoods and its environmental impact aggravate one another. Rice paddies,…
Sustainable liquid biofuels are needed to reduce the carbon footprint of fossil fuel-powered planes, ships, trucks and cars. Grass feedstock has shown promise in biofuel labs, but commercial scaling up may be an insurmountable hurdle.
With 2023 expected to see record amounts of brown macroalgae washing up on Caribbean beaches, green entrepreneurs in Mexico are turning waste into biogas, biofertilizer and even faux leather; all despite big bureaucratic hurdles.
Indonesia’s biofuel program was supposed to be a boon for small farmers. But although the country’s biodiesel production has skyrocketed, many farmers complain that the program hasn’t benefited them. Farmers…
Last year, a car fueled by human waste toured the European countryside, covering more than 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles). It was the culmination of To-Syn-Fuel, a pathfinding project using technology…
Algae biofuels were initially hailed as a holy grail to sustainably power the transportation sector. Now after more than a decade of boom and bust, the industry says it’s on the verge of globally scalable, climate-friendly jet, ship and truck fuels.
At the start of the 2000s, the search for a “miracle” biofuel led to a stubby Latin American tree. But jatropha’s boom went bust when high yields and big eco benefits failed to materialize. Now some say it’s set for a return.
Biofuels have long been held up as a viable high-tech climate solution, but in practice they’ve often not lived up to their promise, causing environmental harm and in some cases being more carbon-intensive than fossil fuels.
JAKARTA — Indonesia must develop a new feedstock alternative to palm oil as the government intensifies an ambitious biofuel program meant to move away from diesel, observers say. From February…
MINAWAO, Cameroon — On market day in the Minawao refugee camp, every necessity is spread out beneath the mid-morning sun: vegetables, dried fish, soap, new and used clothes, farm implements.…
JAKARTA — Prosecutors in Indonesia have arrested a prominent economist in an ongoing investigation into why the world’s top producer of palm oil is suffering a domestic shortage of cooking…
JAKARTA — Cartel practices have been blamed for a scarcity of cooking oil in the world’s top producer of palm oil — but government policies seen as coddling the industry…
YOGYAKARTA, Indonesia — Even as a boy, Budi Leksono knew the tamanu tree had many uses. The small, hard fruit of the tree, about the size of a pingpong ball,…
Since it launched in December 2019, the RenovaBio program from Brazil’s energy ministry has been betting on increased use of biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to establishing…
KISUMU, Kenya — First light finds Edikite Ochieng' Otieno waist-deep in weeds on the banks of Lake Victoria in western Kenya. A nearly unbroken mat of water hyacinth covers the…
The waters of Lake Victoria — the world’s largest freshwater tropical lake — are clogged by water hyacinth that harm the fishery, economy and health. Locals are combatting the invader by turning it into biofuel.
JAKARTA — The rapid development of electric vehicles looks set to overtake the biofuel infrastructure that Indonesia is investing heavily in, and could render the country’s alternative-fuel model redundant, new…
Though Shell, Chevron and others have abandoned the quest for the Holy Grail — a revolutionary algae biofuel that could be scaled up to replace oil — ExxonMobil continues the search; but is it all just greenwash?
Combining to hamstring Mexico’s climate-friendly biodiesel industry: a lack of regulatory support, a president favoring fossil fuels, competition from other industries for used cooking oil, and a crime network.
Biogas may play a key role in the global renewable energy transition, helping communities and nations meet multiple U.N. Sustainable Development Goals and their pledged Paris Agreement emissions cuts.
Cambodians have long used charcoal to cook their food, with its use ingrained in the culture. Innovative entrepreneurs, using education and briquettes made from coconut shell and woody waste, are changing norms.
The push to halt climate change too often neglects the interconnected issue of biodiversity loss, according to a recent report from a panel of scientists with the United Nations. “What…
JAKARTA — A new report has added to growing concerns that Indonesia’s ambitious program to increase its use of palm oil-based biodiesel will drive greater deforestation across the country. The…
JAKARTA — Experts have criticized Indonesian President Joko Widodo for not announcing a more ambitious climate target at last month’s leaders’ summit called by U.S. President Joe Biden. During the…
JAKARTA — Indonesia could lose an area of tropical rainforest bigger than Belgium to oil palm plantations over the next three years without existing measures to slow this loss, activists…
Belgium will ban biofuels made from soy and palm oil from 2022 onward as part of its effort to combat deforestation, said the European nation's Federal Minister of Environment and…
In Indonesia, the year 2020 has been marked by a number of events and decisions with significant, and likely long-lasting, environmental impacts. Here, we review five of the key stories…
As global demand for edible oil keeps growing, palm oil has enjoyed unprecedented growth both in consumption and production. Used in everything from chocolate to ice-cream, lipstick to shampoo, palm oil…
