Author Archive: Jim Lane

Catch & Kill: the Velocys, Oxy, Cemvita, Carbon Engineering, BHP, Ginkgo chase to catch waste, kill emissions, armed with new organisms to liberate value

October 10, 2019 | Jim Lane

In Mississippi, Velocys’ Bayou Fuels project has signed with Oxy Low Carbon Ventures to capture carbon dioxide from Velocys’ planned Bayou Fuels biomass-to-fuels project in Natchez, Mississippi, and securely store it underground in a geologic formation. OLCV, a wholly owned subsidiary of Occidental, will take, transport and store CO2 captured from the Bayou Fuels facility, […]

The Digest’s 2019 Multi-Slide Guide to Fuel pretreatment of biomass residues for thermal conversion

October 9, 2019 | Jim Lane

For some time it’s been widely thought amongst the Digestsceni that there a need to ‘demonstrate to market actors and policy makers how existing bioenergy chains can be made more fuel flexible, efficient and cost effective through the application of (a combination of) pretreatment technologies,” and along cmes this project team and a presentation to […]

Faux snow, faux fur, wool surfboards, green hydrogen, Hawaiian algae, Next-gen Mirai: The Digest’s Top 10 Innovations for the week of October 10th

October 9, 2019 | Jim Lane

This week there’s faux snow, there’s faux fur, wool-based surfboards and seaweed pods filled with a burst of Glenlivet whisky. Not to mention some biogas based fuels cells, an algae-based solar startup, news on the next-gen Toyota Mirai, and a skincare line that harnesses the protective power of Hawai’ian algae faster than you can say […]

The 10 Most Overlooked Stories in the Bioeconomy

October 8, 2019 | Jim Lane

Shhh! This is such Top Secret stuff that every announcement was, we surmise, buried in the hardest-to-find hole, on the loneliest street, of the most out-of-the-way town on Planet Neptune. Just shows what you might find down a rabbit hole. Share this at your peril, it rocks the status quo of pushing electric cars, electric […]

The Digest’s 2019 Multi-Slide Guide to Technical, Economic and Environmental Assessmentof Biorefineries

October 8, 2019 | Jim Lane

First comes the techno-economic assessment, then comes the deployment, as perhaps someone once said, or should have. For the road to bioeconomy passes through the graces of a successful evalutation of the inputs anf the outputs and the costs and values thereof. Those thoughtful assessors are a TEA Party anyone can get behind. And as […]

The Digest’s 2019 Multi-Slide Guide to Commercializing Conventional and Advanced Transport Biofuels from Biomass and Other Renewable Feedstocks

October 7, 2019 | Jim Lane

Several of the better known IEA Bioenergy rock stars — there are four and possibly five in this set, from the US and Canada, so we’ll put them somrt of on a par with Neil Young and Crazy Horse for representing somethng tuneful, must-know and American-Canadian in character. In this case, our research team led […]

Evolved by Nature aims to make supermaterial producers out of silkworms, and Chanel’s a backer

October 7, 2019 | Jim Lane

Chanel has been on the move of late going deeper into sustainability, of course reminding one of how Coco Chanel used to say “In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.” Just last December we reported that the French luxury house decided to back Sulapac’s development, thus becoming its first investor coming from […]

Ya Happy Now? Trump Administration reveals grand bargain on biofuels volumes, E15, small refinery waivers

October 6, 2019 | Jim Lane

In Washington, details of a grand bargain over US biofuels blending have been released by the US Environmental Protection Agency. The 4-Point Agreement The Administration announced that the following actions will be undertaken by EPA and USDA. 1. RFS Integrity. In a forthcoming supplemental notice building off the recently proposed 2020 Renewable Volume Standards and […]

The present and future for pure-plays: The Digest’s Multi-Slide Guide to Pacific Ethanol

October 6, 2019 | Jim Lane

Pacific Ethanol is a leading producer and marketer of low-carbon renewable fuels and high-quality alcohol products, and in some ways more importantly, they are a beacon for us to understand the future of pure-play ethanol and protein companies, going forward. Among the major players are mostly privately-held concerns, major integrated ag or oil & gas companies, […]

TechnipFMC and BTG-BTL to build bio-oil production in Sweden

October 5, 2019 | Jim Lane

In the Netherlands, cars in Sweden will soon be powered by a fuel made from wood residues such as sawdust. TechnipFMC and the Dutch company BTG-BTL based in Twente will design and build a production facility in Sweden where wood residues will be converted into bio-oil. The plant will convert roughly 35,000 – 40,000 tons […]

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