The advanced bioeconomy’s second technology wave: a sneak preview of ABLC Global

August 13, 2018 |

We’re just a few days out from ABLC Global’s 2 for 1 deadline. Time to give some perspective on what we’re driving at.

The Rationale

It’s all about our continuing mission to boldly go where no event has gone before — specifically, to bring the whole of the bioeconomy’s leadership to be in one place at one time for real dialogue with the real leaders.

Leadership is not just big companies, it can be technology leadership and sometimes that happens at the smallest of early-stage ventures. But size helps. And leadership is not just about policy and technology — it’s also about how to take technologies all the way through to scale — and there are leaders in finance, site selection, scale-up and process engineering that are essential to know.

Who’s coming

Around 600 industry leaders — including the IEA Bioenergy Group, the DOE BioEnergy Technologies office team in force, a large delegation from the US National Lab system to drum up industry collaborations, the multi-nation Biofutures Platform, leaders from below50/SE4All , students and academics of the CABLE consortium, and of course the companies and their stakeholders building and financing the bioeconomy’s projects.

The advanced bioeconomy’s technology spread has been a challenge for many events — the conventional bioeconomy has been in food and materials for eons, but advanced technology in protein, nutrition and advanced materials is really shaking up the space. It’s not just about fuels and chemicals and more. And, there are the leaders in the underlying sciences of computation, genetics, robotics and mobility to consider. More about ABLC Global registration and the agenda of presentations and events here. 

That’s one of the reason we’re especially glad to have the IEA Bioenergy Triennial Summit taking place as part of ABLC, and the DOE Bioeconomy Summit, and the Biofutures Platform group’s sessions, and groups like the CABLE consortium bringing along future leaders out of universities to interact with industry. Rather than having five separate events drawing leaders away from each other, we’re all combining forces to make it easier for one investment of time to result in a comprehensive set of knowledge gained and relationships established and strengthened.

What’s helped is the people themselves. Although the technologies and applications have changed, many of these new ventures are being launched by advanced bioeconomy veterans well known from other, earlier ventures. So, just as companies like BP, Cargill, DuPont, DSM, ADM and more provided the senior leadership for the first wave of advanced biotechnology — now it is individuals first known from companies like Amyris, Cobalt, Diversa, Solazyme and more who are providing much of the leadership in this new phase.

The Basic background

180 speakers will be on stage at ABLC Global, which will be staged November 6-9 at the Hotel Nikko in San Francisco’s Union Square area. The main onstage presentations will take place on November 7-9, while November 6th will feature industry tours and the Digest’s State of the Industry Presentation and Networking Kick-off.

Changes

This year, the name of the event has changed from ABLC Next to ABLC Global to recognize the participation of two special co-presenters in the International Energy Agency’s IEA Bioenergy unit, and the US Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO). The program content on Wednesday November 7th will bring on-stage many IEA Bioenergy personalities from around the world to chart the progress and promise of biofuels, renewable chemicals and biomaterials on a global scale.

Meanwhile, on November 9th we’ll have BETO’s leadership both on stage and in driving an agenda that looks critically and thoroughly at the progress of industrial biotechnology and bioenergy on the US domestic front.

On November 8th, ABLC Next will look at a host of hot bioeconomy sectors, including fuels, chemicals, materials, advanced agriculture, animal and human nutrition, and the underlying advances in genetics, robotics, computation, open innovation, and mobile technologies that are powering a revolution in the scope, yields and costs of biobased materials and liquid fuels.

17 different summits, really

Delegates will be able to choose from 17 distinct forums, summits and workshops to optimize their content and networking experience.

These are:

The Biochemical Conversion Summit
The Thermal Conversion Summit
The Disruptive Technology Workshop
The Advanced Nutrition Summit
The Digital Biology Summit
The Advanced Agriculture Summit
The Financing & Investing Workshop
The Biogas Forum
The Innovative Conversion Technologies Forum
The Advanced Biofuels Summit
Sustainable Feedstocks Summit
Biomass Mobilization & Sustainability Summit
The Open Innovation Summit
The Advanced Organism Summit
The Global Actions Forum
The Global Cooperation Forum
The Global Bioeconomy Forum

Topics we’ll be covering

Drop-in fuels, advanced ethanol (including cellulosic feedstocks), genetics, protein, woody biomass, organic acids, novel high-performance chemicals, advanced clear plastic packaging, olefins, nylon, industrial sugars, robotics, CRISPR tech, drones, farm management systems, advanced computation, nanocellulose, digital biology, molecular engineering, crop yield enhancement, crop protection, biodiesel and renewable diesel, pyrolysis, advanced gasification, gas fermentation, electrofuels, organism optimization, genetic toolkits, novel oilseeds, vegan meats, milk without the cow, eggs without the chicken, nanotechnology, advanced imaging, advanced catalysts, advanced distillation & separation tech, directed evolution, advanced alcohols, high FFA tech, oil stripping, nitrogen fixation, legal strategies, mandates, tariffs, tax credits, first-of-kind financing, due diligence, risk assessment and mitigation, equity & debt structuring, offtake agreements, TOSCA approvals, GRAS and FDA processes, support available from government R&D, partnering for progress, process development from pilot to player, and more.

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