Though readers now routinely make news about Joule Unlimited a “must-read”, when this “Fuel From Thin Air: No Biomass, No Extraction, No Kidding” profile ran last December as our second in-depth look, many readers had not acquired the Joule habit, and page views were respectable but not outstanding. The idea of solar liquid fuels – […]
This June article on renewable chemicals, “When Life Gives you Lemons, Make Ethyl Acetate,”was not widely read, compared to most Digest Top Stories, covering a trend that was unmistakable at the BIO World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology: the shift from biorefineries making fuels to integrated biorefineries producing a host of high-value, small-volume chemicals in addition […]
“The lesson for policymakers,” we quoted an Iowa State research team in “Chicken Little, Corn Little, Jatropha Little: Is the Sky Really Falling?“, “is that results from economic models depend heavily on assumptions, and because we are trying to predict long-run human behavior, there can be legitimate differences in these assumptions.” Readers generally avoid indirect […]
When the Digest first began running articles about the military orders for biofuels – particularly renewable jet fuel – readers were polite but not overwhelmingly attentive. A trickle of interest last fall has turned, by summer, into a torrent, as bioenergy producers and strategists are beginning to realize that the US military, with its large […]
Digest readers have been occasionally interested in, but not compelled, by a series of articles that have looked at the potential return of slave labor conditions and neocolonialism in South America, Africa and other sections of the “growing zone” as rich northern nations use their industrial wealth to buy vast tracts of land for the […]
In this November story, the Digest covered the opening of the Inbicon cellulosic ethanol plant in Kalundborg, Denmark, which briefly became the largest single producer of cellulosic ethanol with its 1.4 Mgy (demonstration scale) production volume. Digest readers, 60 percent of whom reside in the US, have generally overlooked foreign developments, but when Great River […]
This past year, nothing drew your attention more than awards and recognition, with algae-based companies like Solazyme and Sapphire Energy rocketing to the top of this year’s 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy poll. Solazyme edged out corn ethanol giant POET, which attracted attention in both reader voting and a poll of 75 international selectors for […]
Among all (non-award) articles that ran in the Digest this year, none picked up as much readership as a summary from this year’s Dodgen Lecture at Mississippi State University, “Four Principles for the shift from a fossil-fuel based society.” Digest editor Jim Lane identified “the right to clean, affordable energy,” “Energy must be consumed within […]
December is usually a slow month for readership, but the DOE’s announcement of $564 million in Recovery Act grants to 19 integrated bioenergy projects attracted a huge readership on the 68th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day, commemorating the beginning of a war between Japan and more than 40 nations that had its origins in trade […]
Remarks by Secretary Chu showing a decided preference for electric cars and battery technologies, over bioenergy, drew a large readership, as well as a swift rebuke from the DOE for irresponsible publishing. The heavy tilt of DOE funding towards electric vehicles and electric technology throughout 2010 made it clear that the DOE “doth protest too […]
