“For sure, we see this period as the most difficult, the most critical.” From remarks by Antonio De Palmas — president, Boeing Italy, at the World Bioenergy Leadership Forum In aviation we have changing demographics, and climate urgency. Climate change and pollution is a big challenge for us. At the saem time, aviation is expanding and […]
By Corinne Young and Michele Jalbert, special to the Digest Any day now, the final rules governing implementation of the USDA 9003 biorefinery loan guarantee program will be issued. Years of advocacy have led to this moment – one to savor. Program changes garnered in the most recent Farm Bill reauthorization have, for the first […]
By Richard E. Engler, Ph.D., special to The Digest In the second installment of this series, I wrote about how the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) regulates products across a manufacturing process, from feedstock to product. In this last installment, I present options for updating TSCA and the related implementing regulations to put novel, biobased […]
By Richard E. Engler, Ph.D., special to The Digest In the first installment of this series, I wrote about how the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) regulates products. In this article, we will look across a manufacturing process. TSCA applies to chemical substances that are used for purposes other than food, food additives, animal feed, […]
By Richard E. Engler, Ph.D., special to The Digest When I meet people from bioeconomy companies, I ask them about their products’ status under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The most common answers I receive are: “TSCA doesn’t apply because our product is not toxic,” “TSCA doesn’t apply because our product is naturally occurring,” […]
The renewable energy industry was saddened on March 3 by the news of the death of Guido Ghisolfi, Vice Chairman of the Mossi & Ghisolfi group and CEO of Beta Renewables. Mossi & Ghisolfi is a worldwide leader in the bottle-grade PET industry, owner of the world’s first commercial-scale cellulosic ethanol plant, located in Crescentino, […]
By Brent Erickson and Brooke Coleman Last week, ABFA made headlines by calling the federal Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) an “obstacle” to the commercial deployment of advanced biofuels and publicly supporting opening up the program in Congress. While the Biotechnology Industry Organization and the Advanced Ethanol Council certainly agree that the RFS is off track, […]
By Brent Erickson, Executive Vice President, Industrial and Environmental, Biotechnology Industry Organization Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack recently announced funding for the Biomass Research and Development Initiative (BRDI) as well as published the final rule for the Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP). BIO and the industrial biotech sector worked hard to ensure that these and other […]
Thought Leadership: The Digest speaks with Sebastian Soederberg, Novozymes’ VP for Biomass Conversion on the cellulosic ethanol industry. Sebastian, you are fond of saying that the cellulosic ethanol production is a technology that is evolving beyond market hype to commercialization. Why? If you look at charts of installed capacity since the 1990s for a variety of clean-tech […]
By Brent Erickson, executive vice-president, the Biotechnology Industry Organization; head, Industrial & Environmental Section The World Resources Institute (WRI) recently issued a new working paper, authored by Tim Searchinger and Ralph Heimlich, resurrecting a previously discredited attack on the carbon neutrality of biomass feedstocks. Ironically the working paper makes plain the fallacies behind this attack […]
