4 minutes with…Ben Thorp, Chairman, Bioenergy Deployment Consortium

Tell us about your organization and it’s role in the advanced bioeconomy.

BDC role is to track, validate, and evaluate deployments and business strategies that promote the bio economy by gaining more value from biomass.

Tell us about your role and what you are focused on in the next 12 months.

BDC is a member driven organization so my focus will be whatever the members select for their focus. Currently we are evaluating the underlying technologies that are involved in the 85 million annual gallon cellulosic ethanol that will be on-stream in the US this year. We have discovered that there is equal capacity in value added products coming on stream around the world. While this capacity is small verses say the ESIA goal of 16 billion gallons of “advanced” biofuels the technology behind all of these deployments is enormous.

What do you feel are the most important milestones the industry must achieve in the next 5 years?

1-Capacity that will be possible because of the technology. Due to policy uncertainty much of this will be overseas.
2-Bio chemicals like para-xylene from Virent or n butanol from Green Biologics
3-Realization that significant economical improvement is possible through horizontal integration with existing plants

If you could snap your fingers and change one thing about the Advanced Bioeconomy, what would you change?

I would create policy certainty.

Of all the reasons that influenced you to join the Advanced Bioeconomy industry, what single reason stands out for you as still being compelling and important to you?

All 3 BDC Co founders have similar influences
1-The technical and economic challenge
2-Improving the value of existing facilities and creating good paying manufacturing jobs
3-Improving sustainability

Where are you from? 

I was born in upstate NY but left when I was two and grew up in the Southern US mostly on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

What was your undergraduate major in college, and where did you attend? Why did you choose that school and that pathway? 

I started College as an electrical engineering student but switched to a physics major when I was not learning how the physical world functioned.

Who do you consider your mentors. What have you learned from them?

I have literally hundreds of mentors. In early sports the outstanding coaches proved that the focus must always be on humility and getting better. In business it was those who were sincerely customer focused. They included Irving Peters, Gordon Chalmers and Ted Kennedy who was the K in BE&K. They did QFD before QFD was invented. In life the people you learned to trust were those with high attention to detail like the one who wrote down every promise he made, then kept them.

What’s the biggest lesson you ever learned during a period of adversity?

The time that you get in the most trouble is when you are correct and know you are correct. That is when you do not back down even when all other conditions indicate that you should ease up.
The way to deal with or overcome adversity is to admit any fault correct that fault and live by your principles.

What hobbies do you pursue, away from your work in the industry? 

I live in a 110 year old hose and use my woodworking skills for restoration and repair.
I also attempt to play golf.

What 3 books would you take to read, if stranded on a desert island?

1-How to extract drinking water from salt water without machinery
2-How to grow eatable crops in sandy soil.
3-The History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell

What books or articles are on your reading list right now, or you just completed and really enjoyed?

See number 4 above. After learning about all this we will write a summary article

What’s your favorite city or place to visit, for a holiday?

I like the city in which I live because family is here. I like to visit Scotland and major cities in Europe.