ABLC Next 2025 is here: The Morning After Groundhog Day

If you work in the advanced bioeconomy, you know the feeling: the alarm clock rings, Sonny and Cher start singing “I Got You Babe,” there seem to be “a thousand people freezing their butts off to worship a rat,” and there we are again — scarce feedstocks, expensive capital, Trump-policy angst, scale-up blues. It’s Groundhog Day all over again.

Bill Murray as Phil Connors once summed it up perfectly: “It’s the same thing your whole life: ‘Clean up your room. Stand up straight. Pick up your feet. Take it like a man. Be nice to your sister. Don’t mix beer and wine, ever.’ Oh yeah: ‘Don’t drive on the railroad track.’”

That’s the voice of every veteran in this business — another year, another permit, another pilot, another well-meant memo from Treasury.

I hear Bill Murray at his most cynical: “I’ll give you a winter prediction: It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.”

But here’s what the movie really taught us — the loop only feels endless until you start learning. Each day, a little better, a little smarter, until finally you can play the piano, fix the truck, kiss the girl, maybe even save the town. And that’s the bioeconomy in 2025 — still waking to the same song, but finally learning how to play along.

Here’s Why We’re Optimistic

Because this time, when the alarm clock rings, we’re not hitting snooze.

At ABLC Next 2025, the same hurdles—financing, feedstocks, and scale-up—are meeting a new cast of characters who’ve stopped trying to bulldoze through the mountain and started tunneling around it with circular chemistry, regional clusters, and rigorous due diligence.

Feedstocks: The Weather Always Changes
Every forecast in Punxsutawney was “cold and grey,” yet the world kept shifting.
That’s feedstocks. SunGas Renewables is scaling gasification platforms that turn forest residues into renewable syngas, while SynPet takes a thermochemical route—recycling mixed wastes into renewable oil intermediates.
Meanwhile, Hexas Biomass is developing fast-growing plant fiber crops that don’t compete with food supplies.

Carbon Becomes a Love Story
Phil learned to love the town he once despised. We’re learning to love carbon. Companies like Industrial Microbes and Mango Materials are implementing a true paradigm shift—treating greenhouse gases not as waste but as feedstock within an integrated circular-carbon framework. Industrial Microbes engineers microorganisms that convert gases like CO₂ or ethylene oxide into valuable chemicals; Mango Materials turns methane emissions into high-value PHA biopolymers; Licella uses hydrothermal liquefaction to turn plastic waste into circular oils. It’s chemistry as redemption arc — the waste of yesterday becoming the wealth of tomorrow.

Hydrogen Learns to Dance
Hydrogen used to stand awkwardly at the party—too costly, too complex. Now Topsoe and Linde are pairing renewable hydrogen with methanol-to-jet and biorefinery systems, providing the catalysts and infrastructure that make industrial-scale deployment real. Hyera explores hybrids linking electrolysis with bioenergy, bridging electrons and molecules in one smooth motion. The shy kid’s found rhythm — and this time, the floor’s industrial-scale concrete.

SAF: The Long Flight to Morning
Aviation still depends on dense liquid fuels — and Gevo is showing how to make them low-carbon from field to flight.
At the Cascadia Sustainable Aviation Accelerator Summit, regional leaders and policy champions such as Washington state Senator Mark Liias are proving that state-level incentives can accelerate national progress.\ Meanwhile, Vertimass is retrofitting existing ethanol infrastructure to make jet fuel, turning yesterday’s biofuel assets into tomorrow’s climate solution. The flight plan is clear; the runway lights are on.

Finance Gets Out of Bed — and Stays Awake
Capital was always half-asleep. Now it’s caffeinated. New Energy Risk is de-risking early projects with performance insurance. ICF and Merrick are designing pathways that actually pencil. Faegre Drinker and Kilpatrick Townsend are wiring the legal and tax circuits for billion-dollar deployments. And the Due Diligence Wolfpack — ABLC’s own band of veteran analysts — is teaching the industry how to learn smarter. They dig into readiness levels, process economics, and now, carbon-intensity metrics alongside financial viability. The Wolfpack knows that investor confidence depends on lifecycle transparency under ESG mandates — the difference between hope and proof.

Phil Connors had to learn the hard way; so did we. Because as Rita told him, “This day was perfect. You couldn’t have planned a day like this.” And Phil replied, “Well, you can. It just takes an awful lot of work.”

The New Morning

Sure, sometimes we still drive the truck off the cliff.

Larry: He might be okay.
[truck explodes]
Larry: Well, no. Probably not now.

Projects blow up. Markets stall. Feedstocks freeze. But each time, we come back wiser, armed with better data, tighter diligence, and a stronger sense of what it takes to finally “get the day right.”

That’s ABLC in a nutshell — the same day, lived better. The same molecules, rearranged smarter. Still in Punxsutawney — but the sun’s breaking through. The clock rings tomorrow, and this time, we don’t hear “I Got You Babe.”