Category: News Analysis
What’s the Buzz? Inside the Advanced Biofuels Leadership Conference
Tweet What’s the buzz when 560 advanced biofuels delegates, including 120 C-level executives get together for deal-making, scuttlebutt, and comparing perspectives? Here’s our Top 10 from Day 2 at ABLC. Best line at ABLC? SynGest CEO Jack Oswald, comparing the opportunities between chemicals and fuels, opined “I pity da fuel.” Digest editor Jim Lane pulled [...]
Solazyme, Bunge Form JV for commercial-scale renewable oils plant in Brazil
Tweet In California and New York, Solazyme and Bunge Global Innovation announced today that they and other Bunge subsidiaries have signed definitive agreements forming a Joint Venture to build, own and operate a commercial-scale renewable tailored oils production facility adjacent to Bunge’s Moema sugarcane mill in Brazil. The JV, which will operate under the name [...]
EPA approves E15 ethanol blend registrations
Tweet Agency approves first applications for registration of ethanol to make E15 In Washington, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approved the first applications for registration of ethanol for use in making gasoline that contains up to 15 percent ethanol – known as E15. To enable widespread use of E15, the Obama Administration has set a [...]
Sapphire Energy closes $144M Series C investment round
Tweet In California, Sapphire Energy announced that it has secured the final tranche of a $144 million Series C investment funding. The Series C backers include Arrowpoint Partners, Monsanto, and other undisclosed investors. All major Series B investors have participated. This round of funding is being used to directly support Sapphire Energy’s active and on-schedule [...]
First Micron, Last Micron: teency frontiers, big upsides in bioenergy
Tweet First mile, last mile? Forget it. The next big value opportunities now, as the current generation of bio-technologies head for scale, may be on the nanoscale. Upstream, midstream, downstream. Terminology from the world of oil & gas, but useful for bioenergy too. We broadly understand upstream to mean the world of feedstocks, midstream as [...]
Politics, Policy and Principles
Tweet By Mary Rosenthal, Executive Director, Algal Biomass Organization In the past few weeks we’ve seen and heard a lot of chatter about high gas prices, domestic energy and biofuels – algae biofuels in particular. Some took the opportunity to turn President Obama’s support for algae into a liability for him, and the algae industry [...]
Advanced Biofuels and Chemicals Leadership Week preview
Tweet Vilsack, Clark, New, Melo, Wolfson, Gruber, Schilling among the headliners as 120 C-level executives and more than 500 delegates converge on DC for Leadership Week. What exactly goes on at a major biofuels summit – what happens on and off the platform when people like Tom Vilsack, Wes Clark, Phil New, John Melo, Jonathan [...]
The Victory Plant
Tweet Biofuels Council of Advisors on Science, Technology and Economics complete the Victory Plant draft standard; certification, promotion expected to start in 2012 Last July, the Digest launched a project called “Victory Plants” and set about recruiting a Biofuels Council of Advisors on Science, Technology and Economics to define a threshold standard for advanced manufacturing [...]
Pie in the Sky
Tweet Companies like KiOR, ZeaChem, Virent take aim at a tasty aviation biofuels market with new recipes and game-changing economics Seattle, as just about anyone can surmise from the soaring Space Needle and the sprawling Boeing complex south of downtown, has a pretty long tradition in aviation and transportation, and a progressive tradition based in [...]
Virdia, Virent pioneer new super-performing, parity-cost renewable jet fuel pathway
Tweet Virent, Virdia debut super-performing drop-in aviation biofuels made from drop-in cellulosic pine tree sugars; “passed under conditions where conventional jet fuels would fail,” says Air Force. In Wisconsin, Virent and Virdia (formerly HCL CleanTech), announced the successful conversion of cellulosic pine tree sugars to drop-in hydrocarbon fuels within the BIRD Energy project, a joint [...]
