By Dick Roche, former Irish Minister for Environment and EU Affairs Special to The Digest When the EU Commission produced its 2012 proposal to cap at 5% the contribution crop-based biofuels can make under the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), the logic of the Commission’s position was widely questioned. Critics, including this writer, challenged the extraordinary […]
By Lorenz Bauer, PhD and William Quapp, MSME, special to The Digest Introduction The continued interest in advanced biofuels has produced numerous exciting technical advances on the laboratory, pilot and demonstration scales. However, attempts to translate these small scale successes into commercial technologies have been less successful. It is easy to blame lower oil and […]
By Brent Erickson, Executive VP, Biotechnology Innovation Organization, Special to The Digest Congress has made it a priority to try and return the annual appropriations process to regular order, following multiple years of passing late omnibus funding bills. Omnibus funding bills rob many successful programs of the individual evaluation they merit; the Farm Bill Energy […]
By Mark Warner, PE, Founder, Warner Advisors LLC, Special to The Digest Understanding the challenge of commercializing innovative foods will separate those that change the future of food, from others that become an asterisk in a market study. In my previous publication “What makes scale-up of industrial bio-technology so difficult”, I expanded on the technical challenges […]
By Jan Koninckx, Global business director for advanced biofuels, DuPont. Special to The Digest February 2016 was the warmest February on record—perhaps of all time. Not by tenths of degrees, as records are often broken by, but by a staggering 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than average. The body of evidence for global warming continues to […]
By Brent Erickson, Executive Vice-President, Biotechnology Innovation Organization Over the past decade, federal policies such as the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the USDA Biobased Markets Program, the Navy’s Green Fleet initiative, the Second Generation Biofuel Tax Credit, and others have created momentum for industrial biotech innovations, including biofuels, renewable chemicals and synthetic biology. While policy […]
By Douglas L. Faulkner, “The Cleantech Conservative” With baseball’s spring training once again underway, it seemed appropriate to channel one of that sport’s legendary players into an article on biofuels. The late, great New York Yankee catcher and all-round American folk commentator, Yogi Berra, coined many timeless observations. “The future ain’t what it used to […]
By Sam A. Rushing, president, Advanced Cryogenics, Ltd. BACKGROUND The long term sustainability of first generation ethanol facilities, through advanced biofuels plants, is realized by making money from all the by-products; and of course, CO2 is one of the leading components of this by-product list. There are many variables associated the feasibility of adding a […]
By Brent Erickson, Executive Vice President, Biotechnology Industry Organization USDA’s Section 9003 Program created by the comprehensive Farm Bill has successfully helped fund construction of biofuel biorefineries over the past six years and it is now expanding to launch renewable chemical facilities as well. Like other USDA programs, this loan guarantee enables manufacturers to access […]
By Corinne Young and Michele Jalbert, re:chem Alliance For all of 2015’s turbulence in the renewable chemical sector, in one area – US government policy – the industry saw marked progress. For the last two years, the Renewable Chemical & Advanced Materials Alliance (re:chem), in concert with other stakeholders, has relentlessly advocated for several policy […]
