The Supreme Trial of the Bioeconomy is Here

In today’s bioeconomy, the theoretical has no value. Only the tangible survives.

The Advanced Bioeconomy Leadership Conference convenes in March not as a symposium but as an operational summit in the middle of policy crossfire, capital hesitation, and supply chain fragility. 
The era of “design, build, test, learn” has given way to something more blunt: Maneuver. Concentrate force. Deliver.

Churchill used to stamp urgent memos with three words: Action This Day. That’s the instruction on the cover sheet for ABLC 2026. Because the question is no longer whether markets will move. It is whether supply will exist when they do.

Why the Hour Is Now

The Trump Administration’s assault on EV mandates and incentives has scrambled the decarbonization playbook. Federal signals are inconsistent. Long-range policy visibility is gone.

But in pulling support from one sector, Washington exposed another reality: aviation, marine and heavy-duty transport still have to burn massive pools of energy — and decarbonize at the same time. There is no battery cavalry riding to the rescue.

That creates a narrow but powerful window for liquid renewable fuels over the next 15 to 20 years. Not as a research pathway. As an operational necessity. And the clocks are already running.

Federal Renewable Fuel Standard volumes are rising faster than in their history, and those production targets must be met. New state clean fuel standards in Washington state and New Mexico have moving from rulemaking to implementation, including the newly adopted New Mexico Clean Transportation Fuel Program, which begins generating compliance demand this spring.

These programs do not reward intention. They reward delivered gallons and tonnes. It is not the case that there is interest in advanced biotechnology still far from commercial readiness  — there is.  It is that the incentives in place are insanely great, for now, and are unlikely to persist — just as EV incentives did not.

At the same time, airlines and shipping companies face emissions pressure from customers, investors, and international frameworks. They cannot electrify at scale. They must secure compatible liquid fuels — or, they must turn away from the bioeconomy and embrace offsets for volumes, gallons for show.

Two Bioeconomies

There are two bioeconomies operating today. One has steel in the ground, feedstock contracts, and operating facilities. The other has engineering drawings and pending guidance. 

For the former, this is a golden hour. For the latter, a grand chance to take the leap in an hour fraught with risk, to produce a fuel or chemical that is not only advanced, but advantaged.

In this environment, ABLC is where real leaders bring real projects to make real gallons for real profits — where the people responsible for feedstocks, technology, capital, risk, and markets close gaps and deliver for markets that need them now.

On the feedstock front, leaders like Jordan Solomon (Ecostrat), Naveen Sikka (TerViva), and Joelle Simonpietri (Aloha Carbon) are tackling the upstream truth: projects succeed or fail before financing, at the level of biomass reliability, logistics, and land use. On the policy front, Robin Vercruse (Low Carbon Fuels Coalition) and Linda Schmid (U.S. Grains Council) join industry leaders to navigate the frameworks shaping fuels, feedstocks, and carbon markets — the rulebooks projects must actually operate under. On the aviation front, scaling sustainable aviation fuel isn’t theory — it’s being addressed by companies like SkyNRG with real projects now on the boards — alongside capital markets voices and project developers aligning airlines, technology, and finance.

On the technology front, the people building the next wave of operating platforms — Eric McAfee (Aemetis), Rebecca Boudreaux (Oberon Fuels), David Sudolsky (Anellotech), Rashi Akki (Ag-Grid Energy), Brian Foody (Iogen), and Mark Niederschulte (Jupeng Bio) — are not pitching ideas. They are navigating scale, integration, and commercial reality at a time when instruments such as loan guarantees are becoming unicorns. In finance, the conversation is not “is there capital?” but “what risk still kills deals?” That discussion is led by Morgan Stanley, Barclays, RBC, New Energy Risk’s George Schulz, and investors and structurers who decide which projects move from models to money.  ABLC’s Due Diligence Wolfpack brings a different lens. We bring them to the stage to deliver unscripted scrutiny to technologies and business models — surfacing risks and assumptions that slide decks skip.

There are many others on stage at ABLC — and in the deal-making corridors. The question is not whether they are going to ABLC — it is, will you?

Action This Day

The safety nets are thinner. Mandates are less predictable. Capital is more selective. Which means this is the moment when only real projects advance. ABLC is where the people who can move now find each other and align.

The industry has spent decades saying ‘Make ready’. It has spent years saying ‘Aim‘. At ABLC, it is time, and we will say, ‘Fire’.