Biopetrol Industries AG - surely not the best choice of name for a biodiesel company - has just tripled fourth-quarter profit to more than 3 million euros as it finished building a new plant in Rostock, Germany.

The company now has a capacity of 350,000 tonnes of biodiesel production a year. Said Biopetrol Industries' Supervisory Board Chairman, Werner Klink;

"Biodiesel is now the leading sustainable alternative fuel. As long as the sun goes on shining, there will be plants. Biodiesel made from vegetable oil helps to protect the environment, safeguards jobs and opens up attractive long-term investment options."

And according to this great wiki, biodiesel can also point to a higher energy density of 42.2 MJ per kg compared to just 30 for ethanol. That means that for the same weight of fuel, biodiesel can take you much further.

A great piece here in Forbes magazine which sizes up the state of the biofuels industry over the last couple of years.

I was particularly interested to learn that 50% of this year's US corn crop will go to making ethanol. Government mandated targets for the rising participation of ethanol and biodiesel is clearly driving a demand for biofuel feedstocks not seen before. And this article says one way to play that demand is to buy into a fertilizer company called Mosaic and SunOpta, who hopes to be a player in the emerging cellulosic biofuel industry.

The first idea is definitely original - a bit like selling shovels to gold prospecters in 19th Century America. But I'm not aware - other than in Brazil - of how much virgin land is being used for biofuel crops or whether it is merely replacing existing food crops. So I wonder how much more fertilizer really will be used?

Meanwhile if SunOpta really does produce cellulosic biofuel in scale, then this will presumably reduce demand for fertilizer. So in a sense, these two stocks could hedge each other. Mosaic for the short-term and SunOpta for the long-term?

There was just one major story yesterday in the alternative energy stock world - Biofuels Corporation announcing that the year's results were going to be worse than the market expected and that they would need up to £25 million in investment to keep going.

Biofuels Corp has been in and out of trouble for some time - as I blogged about here back in 2005. Volatility appears to be a hallmark of this stock - right now (11.20 am London time) it is up 18%, having almost halved in value yesterday.

You'd be forgiven for thinking that biofuels were a straightforward good bet with governments around the world pledging to increase their mandated share of transport fuel in the years to come. And yet, the unforseen consequence of this action was to unleash higher raw material costs in the scramble for the limited supply of feedstock crops - this has clearly hurt Biofuels Corp. Something similar happened with solar power and silicon prices. And with windpower, that industry has run up against a world shortage of steel.

My prejudice is that alternative energy vehicles that run on hybrid electric technology have much more potential than biofuels. Although, we may see a new run-up in the price of lithium (for the batteries) to meet demand.