By Douglas L. Faulkner, “The Cleantech Conservative”, with contributions from Jacques Beaudry-Losique We all applauded often at the recent Advanced Biofuels Leadership Conference the progress many individual companies are making in getting to market. But, those successes are fighting growing headwinds from the nation’s capital. What do coaches do when the season is not living […]
Toray demonstrates products made from renewable PBT — another landmark step in “replacing the whole barrel of oil”. In California, Toray Industries announced that it has successfully made a partially bio-based PBT (polybutylene terephthalate) using 1,4-butanediol (BDO) made with Genomatica’s bio-based process technology. Toray is the first company to publicly confirm successful PBT polymerization of […]
Strong Involvement from Strategic Investors Representing almost 91 Percent of Deals China Remains Active, India Shows Projected Growth In New York, PwC reports that U.S. transactions led M&A activity in the chemicals industry in the first quarter of 2013 by driving almost 45 percent of the total deal value as companies focused on domestic growth. […]
What Do I Absolutely Need to Know About… Florida’s repeal of the state’s Renewable Fuel Standard. Bob Dinneen, CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, and Tom Buis, CEO of Growth Energy said: “A pyrrhic victory for ethanol detractors. It substantively changes nothing because the state mandate was redundant. The federal Renewable Fuel Standard will still […]
Heliae emerges from stealth with Volaris — its next-gen algae platform — “This technology will unlock the industry,” the company says. Is the secret in the mixology? OK, algae fans, you’ve been waiting a long while for a production platform that will produce algae on a commercially competitive basis. It’s been like the search for […]
In Belgium, PANGEA (Partners for Euro-African Green Energy) launched an update to its report “Who’s Fooling Whom? The Real Drivers Behind the 2010/11 Food Crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa”. The report demonstrates an important conclusion: the degree of price transmission from international to local markets has been quite limited. The research found there is little room […]
Pilot-scale biorefineries for drop-in military diesel, jet fuel the focus of the DOE’s latest grant round. In Washington, the US Department of Energy announced up to $17.7 million in grants to four pilot-scale biorefinery projects aimed at military-spec hydrocarbon fuels. Cobalt Technologies, Mercurius Biofuels, BioProcess Algae and Frontline BioEnergy were selected for negotiation. Recipients are […]
This past week, we have been relaying reports, originally from Bloomberg and now including crowdsourced reaction on the scale-back of the Catchlight Energy project. Reporting has focused on the 5-10 percent return on capital which was expected for the Catchlight drop-in fuels project, using solvent liquefaction, compared to the average 17 percent returns achieved by […]
Takeaways from the Advanced Biofuels Leadership Conference By Pavel Molchanov Senior Vice President, Raymond James & Associates Earlier this week, we attended the Advanced Biofuels Leadership Conference, a major gathering of public and private companies in an industry that should, over time, become a mainstream component of U.S. and global fuel markets – next-generation (Gen2) […]
Readers inundate the Digest with old slide shows, perspective, anecdotes. On Friday morning, the Digest published “Who killed $2.18 gasoline?”, reviewing an explosive investigative report from Bloomberg that itself looked at low-cost, low-carbon fuels technology developed by Catchlight Energy. “They say [Chevron is] pushing back against the California rule because it demands technology that may […]
