By Mark Warner, PE, Founder, Warner Advisors LLC Special to The Digest In my previous series What makes the scale-up of industrial biotechnology so difficult?, I discussed the need for a fully integrated pilot plant and reviewed common pitfalls that companies face on their path to commercialization. The series generated the obvious question as to how […]
By Steve Weiss, Co-Founder, Grey Heron venture consulting Special to The Digest Have you ever read articles with fund-raising advice? They have titles like “how to create an elevator pitch” or “the ten slides you need” – and can be very useful. And most of us already know how to show off our technology – the […]
By Dick Roche, Special to The Digest Just as the EU institutions were shutting up shop for the long summer break the EU Commission issued its strategy to reduce transport emissions in the post 2020 period, ‘European Strategy for low Emission Mobility’. The strategy will ‘axe’ any support for conventional biofuels. This should come […]
By James Cogan, Special to The Digest Europe’s Big 4 ethanol CEOs (Tereos, Cristal Union, Alco Group, Crop Energies) are in a curious situation. Together with their smaller peers they produce about 6 million tonnes of the fuel commodity annually, with combined revenues of around 4 billion euro. The product gets blended into petrol accounting for 4% of […]
By Susan Olson, Ph.D. Managing Director of Ag & Biofuels, Genscape Overview Biomass-based diesel mandates for blending in transportation fuel have increased in many nations worldwide over the last year. In several of these countries, domestic biodiesel production is underutilized and many of these same countries are net exporters. These increases don’t necessarily create the […]
By Lorenz Bauer and Gerald Kutney, Lee Enterprises Consulting Special to The Digest The concept of early stage, breakthrough technologies is a bit of an oxymoron: at an early stage how do you determine if it is a breakthrough technology? The only way is for experts to give their opinion, and, usually, they are wrong, […]
By Dr. Terry Mazanec, Lee Enterprises Consulting Special to The Digest Landfills contain a toxic stew of biomass materials from old tires to food wastes to animal manure. It is literally the bottom of the rubbish barrel. The US EPA estimates that 250 million tons of municipal solid wastes are sent to landfills each year. […]
By Lorenz Bauer, PhD, Lee-Enterprises Consulting Special to The Digest Recent declines in oil prices and the failure of start-up biofuel processes to meet production cost targets have increased the interest in producing value added chemicals from biomass as coproducts. The vision is that these products can leverage the production of fuel by providing revenue to […]
By Brent Erickson Executive Vice President, Biotechnology Innovation Organization; head, Industrial & Environmental Section Special to The Digest Members of Congress just returned to their home states and districts for the August recess to meet with constituents and campaign for the upcoming elections. You can be sure the oil producers will be seeking meetings with […]
By Irshad Ahmed, Consultant with Lee Enterprises Consulting and Member of MITSBAA Entrepreneurs Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Special to The Digest The story of cellulosic ethanol in the United States has had more plot twists than The Crying Game, the acclaimed Hollywood brain twister—except that this story promises to end with a predictable happy […]
