Category: Top Stories

Hain’t We Growed Up Yet? The Digest Turns 18: Reflections on the bioeconomy journey

Hain’t We Growed Up Yet? The Digest Turns 18: Reflections on the bioeconomy journey

July 25, 2025 |

By Huckleberry Finn (mostly) Special to The Digest You don’t know about me, Huck Finn, without you have read The Digest or Mr. Mark Twain before, but that ain’t no matter. Mr. Jim started the Digest 18 years ago today with not much more’n two readers and a notion about that folks could use a […]

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Awakening Brünhilde: Anellotech heads to Japan to complete the plastics redemption quest

Awakening Brünhilde: Anellotech heads to Japan to complete the plastics redemption quest

July 24, 2025 |

Once, “Made in Japan” meant cheap. Post‑war trinkets and tinny radios. Disposable goods from a defeated nation. Today, it means something else entirely: precision, patience, and enduring quality — a symbol of how a fallen power can reforge itself through discipline. And now, in an irony almost Wagnerian, that same label carries the banner for […]

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Return of The Rubik’s Cube: Higher Blends the Simple Solution to Match Up RVOs, SREs, E15, Tax Credits, & RINS

Return of The Rubik’s Cube: Higher Blends the Simple Solution to Match Up RVOs, SREs, E15, Tax Credits, & RINS

July 21, 2025 |

by Doug Durante, Executive Director, Clean Fuels Development Coalition Special to The Digest The only way to ensure the long term health of the biofuel (RFS) program is with more biofuels. That is because the construct of the RFS allows RINS and SREs to eat away at the volumes, which by definition, would make the […]

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The Pure Player: XCF Global Pursues a Winning Hand in SAF

The Pure Player: XCF Global Pursues a Winning Hand in SAF

July 21, 2025 |

Somewhere near Virginia City. The sun sets blood-red over the Nevada desert. A wind kicks up the dust along a broken rail spur. Inside the Old SAF Hotel—half saloon, half mirage—the lamps flicker as the dealer fans a fresh deck. At the felt-covered table, the chairs are full tonight. There’s Wyatt Earp, eyes sharp as […]

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Green 
Hydrogen’s 
Double Bind: Is it about Global Breakthroughs or Market Breakdowns?

Green 
Hydrogen’s 
Double Bind: Is it about Global Breakthroughs or Market Breakdowns?

July 17, 2025 |

Green hydrogen stands at a crossroads—hailed as a linchpin of the low-carbon future, yet caught in a double bind between stunning technical progress and the stubborn realities of implementation. Shanghai Electric just delivered its first barrels of green methanol at a wind-and-biomass facility hailed as a world first. Envision Energy is ramping up to 320,000 […]

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Jack, the Giant, the Beanstalk, and SAF: 
A Battle for the Golden Skies

Jack, the Giant, the Beanstalk, and SAF: 
A Battle for the Golden Skies

July 15, 2025 |

In the old story, a scrawny farm boy traded the family cow for a handful of magic beans—and woke to find a beanstalk clawing at the clouds. In the modern version, those beans are billions of dollars in SAF investments, audacious policy mandates, and blockchain platforms curling skyward in defiance of gravity. But the giant—the […]

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Recarbonizing Industry with Biomass-Derived Syngas for Green Carbon, Real Impact

Recarbonizing Industry with Biomass-Derived Syngas for Green Carbon, Real Impact

July 14, 2025 |

By Dr. Qi Chen, Pete Rocha, LEC Partners Special to The Digest While the electrification of many industrial sectors is accelerating the energy transition, it is not a silver bullet that will get us to net-zero economies.  From aviation to cement, industries reliant on fossil based-carbon need a sustainable substitute—not just to meet climate targets […]

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The Paramount Refinery: If you’re the new lucky owner, how will you play it?

The Paramount Refinery: If you’re the new lucky owner, how will you play it?

July 10, 2025 |

If you had the keys to America’s first commercial SAF refinery, how would you play it? Welcome, new Sheriff in town. You’re not just acquiring some sleepy old plant. You’re stepping into the long, layered saga of the Paramount Sustainable Fuels Facility—a place whose ownership story is less a deed than a palimpsest. In 2018, […]

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Got My Mind SAF on You: Avalon, NWABF and the New SAF Horizon

Got My Mind SAF on You: Avalon, NWABF and the New SAF Horizon

July 8, 2025 |

If there’s one refrain running through this week’s sustainable aviation fuel headlines, it’s that Rudy Clark had it right all along in Got My Mind Set on You, which most of us remember from the George Harrison cover version: It’s gonna take timeWhole lot of precious timeIt’s gonna take patience and time, mmmTo do it, […]

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How Big and Beautiful is the One Big Beautiful Bill? Defossilistas spar over measures, consequences

How Big and Beautiful is the One Big Beautiful Bill? Defossilistas spar over measures, consequences

July 7, 2025 |

On July 4, President Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), a sprawling piece of legislation as flamboyant as its title. Ostensibly a tax and immigration package, OBBBA has triggered some of the most polarized reactions in recent memory from the clean energy and fuels sector, the Defossilistas. To supporters, it […]

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