50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy: Solazyme takes lead as early precincts report

In Florida, Biofuels Digest subscribers have propelled Solazyme to an early lead in 2012-13 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy balloting, with last year’s winner maintaining a small lead over last year’s #3, Gevo – with 2011-12 #2 and perennial contender Amyris dropping to #5.

New appearances in the Top 10 this year, so far, are Joule Unlimited (at #6 this year), BP Biofuels (#8), KiOR (#9) and DuPont Industrial Biosciences (#10).

Digest editor Jim Lane commented, “When we say early voting, we mean it – typically, we have about one-third of subscriber ballots in at this time, with three weeks of voting left. Plus, we are reporting subscriber ballots today – invited selectors count for 45% of the ballot, and those are just starting to come in. Meanwhile, this year, we have added a Twitter element for 10% of the ballot and those votes are not yet counted here.”

The Top 15 in early balloting are:

1. Solazyme
2. Gevo
3. Novozymes
4. POET
5. Amyris
6. Joule Unlimited
7. LanzaTech
8. BP Biofuels
9. KiOR
10. DuPont Industrial Biosciences (Genencor)
11. LS9
12. Sapphire Energy
13. Virent
14. Butamax
15. ZeaChem

The Digest will report early vote totals for the 30 Hottest Companies in Renewable Chemicals tomorrow (Oct 2nd), and will continue to report as invited selector and twitter ballots are received

Voting will continue through Thursday October 18, 2012 – and rankings will be announced on October 29, 2012 at 5pm ET, at the annual Advanced Biofuels Markets industry conference in San Francisco, followed immediately by a reception to honor the ranked companies.

Twitter balloting for non-subscribers

Twitter voting is open to all readers – to vote via Twitter, voters do not have to be subscribers to the Digest, and may cast a vote for the company of their choice by tweeting #bdigest Hot50 http://bit.ly/S93oFp (name of company)  for a Hot 50 vote, or #bdigest Hot30 http://bit.ly/S93oFp (name of company) for a Hot 30 vote. The remaining available characters in a tweet may be used in any way the voter wishes.

Complete rules

Complete rankings process rules and procedures are here.