From Southern California the report has arrived that Verdezyne is winding down as a company, and today is the last day of operations. The low oil price environment has claimed another victim among the renewable chemical pure-plays. Why oil prices have doomed more chemical players than fuels In a nutshell, there’s no Renewable Chemicals Standard […]
Just a few years ago, one might spend $300 million, 10 years, and the work of 100 or more scientists to redesign a metabolic pathway, engineer that into a molecule and industrialize it, and measure that progress in dozens of scientific papers and patents written in a curious mishmash of jargon and hieroglyphics that only […]
If you’ve ever wondered why corn farmers march, organize and generally are adamant about the Renewable Fuel Standard, this chart will help. It will also explain why you almost never see Wall Street activists pounding the pavement for the RFS. In this illuminating graphic from the Center for Agricultural & Rural Development at Iowa State, […]
In Washington, an unplanned on-stage telephone conversation between Senators Amy Klobuchar and Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa was the highlight of ABLC 2018 as high drama at the White House over biofuels policy turned for just one moment into side-splitting comedy. “What happened with the biofuels meeting?” Klobuchar asked a small group of ABLC delegates […]
In Washington, ABLC 2018 opens amidst a flutter of government rollbacks of deployment support but the hope of regulatory relief, breakthroughs in financial structuring, a decisive shift in early-stage projects to nutrition & health, and an increasing number of deployments in advanced biofuels and a surge in exports and overseas expansion for corn ethanol. On […]
Sekisui Chemicals, LanzaTech break-through in MSW-to-ethanol demonstration Today we return to the subject of landfill, or as we like to think of it, the Island of Misfit Feedstocks. We’ll continue the storyline with a welcome technology breakthrough, and begin with the observation that of all the things that people throw into a landfill, no one […]
By Gerard Ostheimer and Doug Faulkner Special to The Digest Lost in all the wrangling in Europe and the U.S. over the benefits of biofuels and whether or not they can mitigate climate change is the recognition that in Sub-Saharan Africa a thriving indigenous bioenergy industry can play a positive and productive role in modernizing […]
As the battered but game residents of Houston drain and repair their battered city, US gasoline prices spike on fears of a refinery crunch. North Korea has conducted an underground test of a hydrogen bomb they claim to be able to couple to an intercontinental ballistic missile, and the US Navy announces an expansion of […]
Above: Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts Two GOP state governors hitting the phones and airwaves hard to restrain federal government over-reach is a common sight, but not when the Administration in question is the Trump Administration. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts are the headliners in a […]
Above: Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts Two GOP state governors hitting the phones and airwaves hard to restrain federal government over-reach is a common sight, but not when the Administration in question is the Trump Administration. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds and Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts are the headliners in a […]
