Alliance BioEnergy Plus, Inc. (OTCQB:ALLM) (the "Company") announced today that through its subsidiary AMG Energy Group, LLC it has signed its first licensing agreement for the territory of South Africa with Naldogen (Pty) Ltd for an upfront fee of Twenty Five Million Dollars ($25,000,000) plus royalties. In addition the Company negotiated a Twenty Four and One Half Percent (24.5%) ownership in Naldogen in exchange for a Twenty Four and One Half Percent (24.5%) ownership for Naldogen in a to be determined Company owned CTS plant in the United States.

Naldogen PTY LTD plans to change its name to Carbolosic Energy SA in order to better represent its new direction and is majority owned by Tes Projects (Pty) Ltd and its principal Sonono Khoza, traditional wife of South African President Jacob Zuma and daughter of legendary South African businessman, owner of the Orlando, Pirates soccer team and organizer of the World Cup, Irvin Khoza. Naldogen is also owned in part by the South African company Spearhead Capital which was instrumental in bringing the CTS technology to South Africa. Naldogen intends to build CTS plants in several providences around South Africa in an effort to create thousands of jobs, reduce energy costs and create a "green" economy in a country in much needs of economic stimulus. 

The Agreement was signed last Wednesday in the Johannesburg offices of Spearhead Capital by Sonono Khoza and Alliance BioEnery Plus CEO, Daniel de Liege. "This is a major step in the commercialization of the CTS technology and only the first of many licenses we will see around the world," said Company CEO Daniel de Liege. 

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A land claim brought against South Africa’s largest sugar farmer threatens to stop a 1.1 billion rand ($90 million) renewable-energy project that will produce electricity by burning leftover cane leaves and tops.

Charl Senekal Suiker Trust, which has 5,000 hectares (12,355 acres) of irrigated cane land and is a grower for Tongaat Hulett Ltd., is part of a group that plans to build a 16.5 megawatt biomass facility in KwaZulu-Natal, according to a presentation on the National Energy Regulator of South Africa’s website. Talks to settle claims by four communities bordering part of his farm will take place on Friday, Charl Senekal, the white owner, said by phone on Wednesday.

The government of Africa’s most industrialized economy is promoting agriculture and providing access to land as part of redistribution policies to compensate black South Africans for the seizure of property under white-minority rule that ended in 1994. At the same time, the country is turning to renewable energy as it struggles to meet power demand after failing to invest in generation even as the government expanded supply to millions of households.

“The whole project can collapse if they don’t accept our offer,” Senekal said, declining to give details because they are private. “We’ve made a very reasonable proposal to the government and we hope that this will be successful. I am sure it will be accepted. It’s a great project.”

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Work on the plant in Mkuze is scheduled to start in August if all the communities agree to the offer, with the first electricity to be produced 22 months later, Senekal said. It may create about 400 jobs, and the project will be able to repay its debt in eight years, he said. All four of the community groups need to support the plan for it to go ahead, he said. South Africa has a 24.3 percent unemployment rate.

The development must continue regardless of the outcome of the claim, Dumisani Myeni, chairman of Silwane Trust, established to handle the claims, said by phone from Mkuze. Community groups will be open to leasing the land should the claim succeed. The groups include the Myeni, Ngwenya and Zulu tribes.

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Farmers and landowners want to lower fuel and feed costs, explore feed and fertilizer co-products, be more self-sufficient, and rely less of fossil fuels. Biomass grass crops can be established on marginal lands and processed as a fuel replacement for heating oil or propane, or as an addition to wood chips or pellets.There are four main models for implementing grass energy on a farm. The models differ from each other in where the grass is grown and processed. Two are closed-loop models, in which the grass is grown and processed on-site, and the others are variations of processing the grass in a central facility and distributing production of the feedstock among regional farms.

Grass fuel can occur as bales that get chopped just prior to combustion or densified fuels like pellets, cubes, or briquettes. The densified fuels are made using machinery that applies high temperature and pressure to the chopped feedstock, pressing it into the desired shape. A series of dies and knives are responsible for cutting the fuel into its desired shape. Each of the four grass energy models, described below, produce one or two of these types of fuel.

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VIASPACE Inc. (OTCQB: VSPC) today announced that VIASPACE partner Selectra CC and the Harmony Gold Mining Company Limited of South Africa made a formal announcement of Harmony's implementation of the first bioenergy project on mining property in South Africa. The goal of the project is to grow energy crops---sugar beets and Giant King Grass--on contaminated mine affected lands in order to restore and rehabilitate the land. Gold-mining is a very large industry in South Africa and there are thousands of acres of mine tailings and mine affected land that need to be restored. The announcement was made by Mr. Leonard Rootman of Harmony Gold Mining Company Limited and Mr. Dwight Rosslee of Selectra at the Renewables and Mining Summit held in Johannesburg, South Africa.

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