Author Archive: Jim Lane

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Letter from Byzantium: Answers to Your Questions about Byzantine Biofuels Budgets and Policy Moves

Letter from Byzantium: Answers to Your Questions about Byzantine Biofuels Budgets and Policy Moves

July 2, 2018 |

Those who take heed that ancient Byzantium (and today’s Istanbul) is not far from the ruins of Troy and the setting of Homeric tales, will remember as we turn our gaze to biofuels politics that Homer wrote “Hateful to me as the gates of Hades is that man who hides one thing in his heart […]

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Synthetic Methylotrophy: The Digest’s 2018 Multi-Slide Guide to Engineering Platform Organisms for Methane & Methanol Conversion to Fuels & Chemicals

Synthetic Methylotrophy: The Digest’s 2018 Multi-Slide Guide to Engineering Platform Organisms for Methane & Methanol Conversion to Fuels & Chemicals

July 2, 2018 |

Harnessing Methane & Methanol as Feedstocks, that’s the subject of this overview of the uses of methanol when used by engineered platform organisms for fuel and chemical production. The background is the abundant CH4supply of recoverable natural gas (US and worldwide), and the CH4 and/or syngas (from various renewable sources) that is readily converted to […]

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Leveling the Playing Field: The Digest’s 2018 Multi-Slide Guide to Renewable Reserves Accounting

Leveling the Playing Field: The Digest’s 2018 Multi-Slide Guide to Renewable Reserves Accounting

July 1, 2018 |

In November 2011, the Digest ran a story on a remarkable proposition — advanced by Richard Hamilton, then CEO of Ceres — that biofuels companies – on the “level playing field” theory advanced by opponents of government mandates and subsidies, should  have a mechanism to book their reserves of crude renewable fuel production, in a […]

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The Digest’s Top 10 Innovations for the week of June 28th, 2018

The Digest’s Top 10 Innovations for the week of June 28th, 2018

June 28, 2018 |

The pace of invention and change is just too strong, we’ve realized, to highlight annual or even quarterly or monthly rankings and summaries of significant product and service advances. For now, we’re going to be tracking these on a weekly basis to keep pace with the changes. Here are the top innovations for the week […]

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Bioenergy & the Grid: The Digest’s 2018 Multi-Slide Guide to load-balancing, energy storage via bioenergy

Bioenergy & the Grid: The Digest’s 2018 Multi-Slide Guide to load-balancing, energy storage via bioenergy

June 28, 2018 |

What are the roles of renewables, bioenergy and bioelectricity today? What are the challenges of balancing the grid with large shares of variable generation. What are the opportunities for bioenergy in balancing the grid. This, and the opportunities thereby to increase market demand for renewables in 2030 meeting Paris Agreement (and future) climate targets, these […]

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The Yosemite Sam of the microbial world, Hot Rodded Lichen, BYO Nitrogen, The Microbial Marx Brother, Sexy Hexy and more: The DOE delves into new orgamsism for fuels & chems

The Yosemite Sam of the microbial world, Hot Rodded Lichen, BYO Nitrogen, The Microbial Marx Brother, Sexy Hexy and more: The DOE delves into new orgamsism for fuels & chems

June 27, 2018 |

The meanest, nastiest, ornierest, heat-seeking organism ever found that munches biomass and other microbes that got a booster via the DOE’s $40M grants for advanced microbes R&D. And aromatics without the mess, a sky-vacumming organism and much more. As we reported last week here, the U.S. Department of Energy announced $40 million in funding for […]

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“To-mah-toe, to-may-toe…”: Consequences of valorizing biobased carbon over biobased matter

“To-mah-toe, to-may-toe…”: Consequences of valorizing biobased carbon over biobased matter

June 27, 2018 |

By Michael A. Fatigati, Special to The Digest It’s not news to the readers of Biofuels Digest, but it bears repeating that we find ourselves in an age of heightened awareness of the impact of drawing down the fossil carbon savings account of our precious blue orb as quickly as we’ve managed to do in recent […]

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GoBiGas: The Digest’s 2018 Multi-Slide Guide to advanced biofuel production via gasification

GoBiGas: The Digest’s 2018 Multi-Slide Guide to advanced biofuel production via gasification

June 27, 2018 |

High quality biomethane from biomass through gasification? A Swedish plant is now a first for injecting biomethane into the national grid. That’s the Gothenburg Biomass Gasification Project (GoBiGas), and its the suject of this illuminating deck on the project’s promise and progress, as presented by IEA Bioenergy in their webinar series by Prof. Henrik Thunman of Chalmers […]

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The Digest’s 2018 Multi-Slide Guide to Biofuels for the Marine Sector

The Digest’s 2018 Multi-Slide Guide to Biofuels for the Marine Sector

June 26, 2018 |

Biofuels for marine diesels — a biofuel developers dream? That’s the premise of his IEA webinar deck on the promise and progress in marine biofuels, a 330 Mton fuel market with both fuel technology in transition, and where anything that is carbon-based, liquid, stable and low in sulphur might work. This illuminating overview of the opportunities and […]

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Ready to Eat, Ready to Wear, Ready to Move, Ready to Go: a look at the Bio World Congress plenary sessions and the shift in industrial biotechnology

Ready to Eat, Ready to Wear, Ready to Move, Ready to Go: a look at the Bio World Congress plenary sessions and the shift in industrial biotechnology

June 26, 2018 |

This July, industrial biotech returns to its largest and grandest stage at the BIO World Congress, which convenes in Philadelphia on July 16th through the 19th, and the plenary program brings CRISPR technology under the klieg lights and moves into the world of pret-a-porter — the biobased type— as the industry’s opportunities turn towards advanced […]

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