Last week, Digest readers around the world rated feedstocks for the Advanced Bioeconomy. In a 200 million ton scenario, we wondered, which feedstocks are the best bets — and at what price? We say relatively novel because some of them exist in our everyday world — woody biomass for lignocellulosic conversion, or the residues (animal, […]
Overall, the BIO mood differed by BIO sector. For foods and proteins, it feels like boom times as companies are raising substantial amounts of money and we see companies like Calysta moving ahead fast with its protein product, FeedKind — while TerraVia (the former Solazyme) has brought in a whole group of name-brand food investors […]
These days, palm oil plantations are about as popular, and popularly criticized for immorality, as a red light district. Just about everyone who is anyone criticizes the trade in palm oil because of the sustainability trade-offs, yet as Cher once observed in her anthemic Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, “every night night all the men would come […]
At 8:30am, there’s a standing daily meeting of the key traders in Gary Haer’s sales group at REG headquarters in Ames, Iowa. And they’re not kidding. Everyone stands. For 15 minutes there’s the rat-a-tat-tat of rumor, fact, competitors, pricing, spreads, the who’s selling what and where, the buying and selling of diesel, renewable diesel and biodiesel across North […]
As we begin to prepare for the annual Advanced Bioeconomy Feedstocks & Supply Chain event in Miami this June, you might find yourself asking whatever happened to some of the feedstock darlings like jatropha. If jatropha faltered, never mind, went the argument, we’ll always have switchgrass. Or giant miscanthus, or pongamia, or poplar, or camelina. […]
“The World Starts from Tomorrow” says UN Secretary-General In France, representatives from 195 nations approved the Paris Agreement on global, coordinated response framework for climate change. Acceptance of the Agreement arrived at the end of COP 21. Paris: What it Says The signatories aimed “to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change, […]
In Colorado, Gevo closed a $10 million offering of common stock. Cowen & Company’s Jeffrey Osborne writes: Funds raised through the equity offering will be used to execute capex at the company’s Luverne facilities. After having settled ongoing legal issues with Butamax in the previous quarter, Gevo is poised to ramp up isobutanol production for […]
By Mark Warner, PE, Founder, Warner Advisors LLC, Special to The Digest Two questions have dominated the responses received after my Lessons Learned series on commercializing industrial biotechnology (here) and the deep-dive into the industrial biotechnology commercialization process (here), the questions are what makes scale-up of industrial biotechnology so difficult and of course how can risk […]
By Joe Hrdlicka, Executive Director of the Iowa Biotechnology Association (IowaBio) Iowa’s investment in biofuels, driven by the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), has brought the state new business and job opportunities. Iowa is home to three of the first-in-the-nation cellulosic biofuel refineries that are producing the lowest-carbon fuels in the world. Iowa has also […]
In Washington, the US Environmental Protection Agency published in the Federal Register a highly anticipated final rule implementing its Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Electric Utility Generating Units, also known as the Clean Power Plan (80 Fed. Reg. 64662). A prepublication version of the final rule has been available since August 3. However, the […]
