Category: Thought Leadership

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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A Hint of Mint: Europe’s Quiet Green Chemistry Revolution

A Hint of Mint: Europe’s Quiet Green Chemistry Revolution

July 3, 2025 |

Europe’s dual playbook—scaling the proven while seeding the radical—offers a lesson for everyone who cares about defossilization: sometimes the future arrives without trumpets. It slides under doors. It settles in the corners. It smells faintly of something fresh. Yes, electric vehicles glide past you without a sound. Solar panels sit silent on the roof. Yet […]

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The Big Beautiful Bill: Biofuels Win Big as Clean Energy Fractures

The Big Beautiful Bill: Biofuels Win Big as Clean Energy Fractures

July 1, 2025 |

Senate passage sets the stage for House vote, reshaping renewable incentives along partisan and regional lines In Washington DC, the US Senate’s hard-fought budget bill delivered an emphatic victory this week for America’s biofuels industry—while exposing a growing fault line in U.S. clean energy policy. On Tuesday morning, after more than 24 hours of amendments, […]

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Watch out for that Tree! The journey to a cleaner economy through the Jungle of Hype and Stealth

Watch out for that Tree! The journey to a cleaner economy through the Jungle of Hype and Stealth

June 30, 2025 |

George, George, George of the Jungle, Strong as he can be. (Yell) Watch out for that tree! (“Oooh!”) Lately, it feels like we—investors, journalists, grantmakers, the yearning public, idealists, politicos—are all a little like George of the Jungle. We mean well. We want to rescue the world from climate disaster, energy insecurity and collapse.  But […]

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High Noon at the Strait of Hormuz, Part 2: Biofuels, the swing producer, the market stabilizer

High Noon at the Strait of Hormuz, Part 2: Biofuels, the swing producer, the market stabilizer

June 24, 2025 |

This is Part 2 of our two-part series — part one is here. The Strait Is Still Open. But the Signal Is Clear. The Strait of Hormuz remains navigable—for now. But the headlines are unmistakable: armed exchanges between Israel and Iran, U.S. warnings of retaliation, and a cease-fire that could dissolve overnight. This time, oil […]

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High Noon for energy supply at the Strait of Hormuz

High Noon for energy supply at the Strait of Hormuz

June 23, 2025 |

This is Part 1 of our two-part series, Part 2 is here. It’s High Noon at the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s parliament has voted to close it, and while the final decision now rests with its national security council, the message is already echoing through global oil markets. One-fifth of the world’s oil moves through […]

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