The annual rankings competition opens up for the hottest companies in the sector; who will be #1 – who will get your vote? New annual Biofuels Databook published for selectors; voting by Twitter introduced this year. In Florida, Biofuels Digest announced the official opening of voting for the 2012-13 50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy for […]
With the US drought, food vs fuel has returned as an issue. What alternatives are scientists, entrepreneurs developing to take us beyond the old debate? In the past week we published a report that the chairman of Nestle, Peter Brabeck-Lemathe, has called anew for a ban on making biofuels from feedstocks that can also be […]
Can new computational power, souped-up genetic knowledge and fresh algorithms usher in a new era in crop yields, and resistance to disease and drought? Will a new model plant revolutionize energy grasses and food crops, and transform crop-based genetic engineers from a modern Stone Age family into Masters of the Digital Age? Here we are, […]
Dire US media headlines abound: “Drought!” What’s real, what’s hype, and what are the impacts? More importantly, what alternatives does science give us now, and in the future, with more drought-tolerant energy and food crops? The Reuters report could not have been more stark this week from a field in Illinois. “We’re in a critical […]
In California, Lygos appointed Paul Bryan as Vice President for Business Development. Bryan spent 15 years with Chevron, including 4 as Vice President for Biofuels Technology, and 1 year as Program Manager for the DOE’s Biomass Program in Washington, DC. Lygos, located in Berkeley, California, develops high-efficiency, novel processes for renewable chemicals via expertise in […]
At BIO’s World Congress, there are the presentations on stage, and the off-stage trade in rumors. Miscanthus dead? Iogen dead? Canada on the march? RFS amendophobia? We sort out the fact from the fiction. The World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology is underway in Orlando, with just about every company in attendance, 900 people in all, […]
IPOs are struggling, all across cleantech – and the biofuels IPO queue is long and tiring. Why Kiwano countries may be in your future. And, what is a Kiwano country, anyway? So, amidst all the legislative and policy hoopla last week for advanced biofuels, including winning funding for an energy title in the US Senate’s […]
There’s water, water everywhere, hardly a drop to use. The latest on Sustainable, Affordable, Reliable, Available biomass feedstocks that keep down the stress on our water tables. Among the compelling presentations at ABLC this month, Daphne Preuss, CEO of Chromatin, one of the leading seed developers, gave one of the real waker-uppers, this on feedstock […]
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 the […]
Yield unlocks value, and especially feedstock yield. What’s the latest? What feedstocks are reporting yields that could support 1000+ gallons per acre for terrestrial crops? It was President Kennedy’s favorite poem, Tennyson’s Ulysses, with its stirring coda: We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we […]
