Category: Top Stories

When the Clock Is Ticking, but the Rules Aren’t Set: Clean Fuels Conference 2026 delegates assess a Wonderland of market opportunity and policy uncertainty

January 20, 2026 | Jim Lane

If the clean fuels industry is living through an Alice-in-Wonderland moment, it’s not because things feel fanciful. It’s because the rules keep changing shape just as the clock gets louder. That was the unspoken theme running through the Clean Fuels Conference this year, where delegates heard repeated variations on the same question: Are we on […]

Where Worlds Meet: How FlyORO Is Unlocking a Missing Link in Sustainable Aviation Fuel

January 19, 2026 | Jim Lane

On February 6, 1819, Stamford Raffles signed a treaty on a humid strip of land at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. Singapore had no army, no natural resources, and no clear sovereign authority he could legally negotiate with. So Raffles did something more subtle. He elevated Tengku Hussein to the sultanate of Johor, […]

The Spirit of ’06: As New Mexico’s LCFS approaches, health outcomes hang in the balance

January 15, 2026 | Jim Lane

On June 30, 1906, President Theodore Roosevelt signed a bill that many American businesses believed would ruin them. The Pure Food and Drugs Act had been opposed for more than two decades by patent-medicine manufacturers, whiskey rectifiers, and food producers who warned that regulation would destroy consumer choice, cripple commerce, and hand the federal government […]

Row, Row, Row Your Molecule: Why 3-HP Finally Learned to Move

January 13, 2026 | Jim Lane

I was standing at the Institute for Sustainability, Energy, and Environment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign a few months ago, giving a keynote. I came to Illinois more or less to see the corn — every year, we do a “harvest tour” to look at the changing face of American feedstocks and supply chain […]

Escape from Peanut Butter Lake: When SAF deployment stalls, synchronization is the fix

January 12, 2026 | Jim Lane

Last week at Paine Field, something important happened. More than 175 people gathered inside Boeing’s Future of Flight building to launch the Cascadia Sustainable Aviation Accelerator—not as a ribbon-cutting exercise, but as a declaration of intent: to turn sustainable aviation fuel ambition into commercial velocity. The room was full of people who have been pushing […]

Speed, Baby, Speed: How Washington State’s Cascadia Accelerator Turned a Launch into Lift

January 8, 2026 | Jim Lane

Editor’s Note: This is part III of a four-part series on the Cascadia Sustainable Aviation Accelerator and opportunities in the Pacific Northwest. Part I is here: Notes from Peanut Butter Lake: Why SAF Is Moving Slower Than It Should — and What Cascadia Teaches Us About Real Take-Off. Part II is here: Beat Crude with […]

Will 2026 be a renewable fuel turning point?  7 Areas to watch out for….

January 6, 2026 | Jim Lane

By  Mikala Grubb, Sandra Winter-Madsen, Milica Folić and Sylvain Verdier  , Topsoe Special to The Digest The renewable fuels industry has reached a critical juncture. After years of incremental progress, false starts and regulatory uncertainty, the sector is entering a phase that experts describe with cautious optimism. The question is not whether the fuel transition will […]

Beat Crude with Altitude: Why Cascadia Needs a Place Where SAF Risk Can Clear

January 6, 2026 | Jim Lane

Editor’s Note: This is part II of a four-part series on the Cascadia Sustainable Aviation Accelerator and opportunities in the Pacific Northwest. Part I is here: Notes from Peanut Butter Lake: Why SAF Is Moving Slower Than It Should — and What Cascadia Teaches Us About Real Take-Off. Part III is here: Speed, Baby, Speed: […]

Notes from Peanut Butter Lake: Why SAF Is Moving Slower Than It Should — and What Cascadia Teaches Us About Real Take-Off

January 5, 2026 | Jim Lane

Editor’s Note: This is part I of a four-part series on the Cascadia Sustainable Aviation Accelerator and opportunities in the Pacific Northwest. Part II is here:Beat Crude with Altitude: Why Cascadia Needs a Place Where SAF Risk Can Clear. Part III is here: Speed, Baby, Speed: How Washington State’s Cascadia Accelerator Turned a Launch into […]

Selling the Oomph, Not the Oil: Aemetis, XCF, and the Invisible Value Shift That Will Define Renewables in 2026

January 1, 2026 | Jim Lane

Hollywood figured this out a century ago. They don’t sell celluloid — they sell star power. If you have an established icon like Clara Bow, you sell It: allure, magnetism, and the special sparkle that turns a performer into a phenomenon. If you have a rising force like Ann Sheridan, you sell Oomph: that impossible-to-bottle […]

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