In 1970, an oil company launched the first major ad campaign around environmental benefits of a new fuel formulation. Then, a radical shift in gasoline pricing occurred just as those remarkable ads went off the air. What were lessons that industry learned about alternative fuels? How might it be still impacting us today? The Digest […]
Italy’s Navy joins the global green fleet movement with its first sea trials and certifications. Including a dramatic at-sea rescue, powered by alternative fuel blends. The complete story, in pictures. By Commander Pasquale Tripodi, Italian Navy “The ship performed smoothly and we didn’t notice any difference in switching from conventional F76 to green F76,” said […]
By Brent Erickson EVP; Head, Industrial & Environmental Section, The Biotechnology Industry Organization Advanced biofuels companies are in the process of constructing first of a kind cellulosic biofuel facilities this year. Fortunately, the Administration’s budget for 2014 contains a proposal for a nearly 10-year extension of the advanced biofuel tax credit, which was first adopted […]
Reminiscent of 2009’s Summer of Algae, when those technologies were coming out of the woodwork, we appear to be in the Hydrogen Spring. Every time we write about them, more pop up, like a Prairie Dog town. Over the past couple of months we have written several times about the hunt for hydrogen and effective […]
What about this speed-up in biobased chemicals, this slow-down in biofuels, and the frenzy in natgas? Real, imagined, over-sold, under-cooked? We know where the puck is – but where actually is the puck going? We look at two reports and three project announcements for the skinny. Over the past few weeks, Lux Reseach released a […]
In California, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) hosted a workshop yesterday to discuss potential changes to indirect land use change (iLUC) penalties under the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS). Based on a review of materials made available by CARB prior to the workshop, Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) President and CEO Bob Dinneen offered the following […]
Have a wonderful strain of algae, but struggle to find a project location that optimizes climate, inputs and infrastructure? With Zillow not yet providing real estate services for choosy microbes, PNNL and Sapphire Energy come to the rescue. The Digest has often criticized synthetic biologists, in genetically enhancing microbes, for failing to endow them with […]
Brazil, Russia, India and China — and throw in South Africa for a complete BRICSA set. The vaunted new economic engines for the 21st century — and, lately, home to a beehive of activity around drop-in, sustainable, aviation biofuels. What’s up, with whom, where, when and why? In the motion picture Casablanca, most of the […]
Which are the most transformative bioeconomy technologies? In the Transformative Technologies awards for 2014, you decide. In Florida, The Digest announced nominations for Transformative Technologies 2014, in which organizations are recognized for their impact in transforming a feedstock, a process step, a processing technology, a molecule — and in which plants, towns or industrial complexes, […]
OK, you have a carbon strategy, and that’s good. But how’s your hydrogen strategy coming along? In our “100 Fortune Cookies,” we put it as plainly as we could: “You will never have enough affordable hydrogen.” Perhaps that is the attractor in the news from little-known Solarvest Bioenergy, when they announced third party confirmation of […]
