16 Candles

Today, July 27th, the Digest turns 16 years of age, and in some ways with the advanced bioeconomy we share the birthday, there was some gestation prior to the Digest’s appearance and the conventional bioeconomy had been with us for thousands of years and had experienced an energy renaissance, yes. Back then, however, there was no SAF, renewable diesel, RNG, bioDME; there was hardly a renewable chemical; vegan foods, advanced proteins, green hydrogen, vegan leathers, zero-impact plastics, and so many companies and technologies were yet to be born. Only a handful of people reading the Digest were working in the industry back then.

So in that sense, it is your birthday too. You can blow out the candles and have your wish come true, as the old doo-wop song 16 Candles reminds us. 

Here in Digestville, our wish is simple, our wish is that all the barriers that stand between you and scaling a technology, building a company, creating returns for investors, unlocking a new process — that all of them disappear. If they do so, it will likely not be the result of wish-magic, but of the hard tasks that our associations, scientists, investors, CEOs,, operators, engineers and marketing teams take on every day. For the work of the bioeconomy is the lowering of barriers — at the simplest level, that is what a catalyst does. That is what we seek in lowering the recalcitrance of feedstocks. What we seek in designing a reactor, perfecting a separation. Those who are developing book-and-claim are lowering a barrier too. The advocates for low carbon fuel standards. Those establishing new pathways that qualify for renewable fuel standards. Those proving that E15, E30, or B100 blends are safe for vehicles on the road. Those who are expanding scale to reduce cost, capturing carbon to lower carbon intensity, building rail spikes or cars for unit trains, demonstrating fuels for jets and ships, making plastics that biodegrade, meat without the cow, milk without the cow, leather without the cow.

It’s all about lowering barriers.

Perhaps the strongest barriers to overcome are the barriers we construct in our own minds that make us resistant to change, suspicious of motive, skeptics of performance, disbelievers of scientific consensus, disrespectful of objections to scientific consensus, adverse to short-term risk, oblivious to long-term risk, captives of political party, disdainful of the farm, simplistic in our beliefs about agriculture, or married to changing the fleet instead of changing the fuel.

Sometimes, I look at all we have accomplished and I think how far we have come since the days when humans lived in caves. Then I see how much more we can accomplish if we set aside these mental barriers, and I think how little we have travelled out of the cave. In the cave, in the darkness, it is a world of short-term thinking because, absent money or refrigeration, there is so little opportunity to save for tomorrow, the entirety of the effort is so focused on today — food for today, fire for today, shelter for today, trade for today, tomorrow is a mile away.

If short-term thinking were candles, the house would be on fire, and if long-term perspective were candles, it would be a cold cake served for our birthday. Setting our minds with confidence with a firm focus on the long-term, intolerant of needless delay, intent on progress, steady as she goes, absent panic, gazing into the risks less the risks gaze into us, patient in setback yet impatient in diversion, eyes on the target no matter the distance, serene in the knowledge that limits are not limitless, barriers are permeable, mountains are there to climb, valley are there to cross, for there is no valley of death there is only the valley of insufficient resource and the valley of giving up.

16 Candles, your birthday is here, much growing up accomplished, yet a life ahead to live, blow your candles with pride and set yourself a goal to leave behind your teenage angst and embrace the long desire that is the hallmark of the adult who has found maturity.

May all your barriers fall, may you bring them down swiftly, but if it cannot be swift, let ye persevere with faith that in the end, all will come right. As it surely will for those who stand fast through the trials of today because, outside of cave, technology is bringing us a fine tomorrow.