In Finland, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd has developed a new technique based on gasification, which offers a sustainable way to turn forest industry byproducts, such as bark, sawdust and forestry waste, into transport fuels and chemicals. The new technique reduces carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 90 per cent compared to fossil fuels. […]
By Andrew Grant, member, Lee Enterprises Consulting Special to The Digest This article addresses the due diligence requirements for the increasing variety of waste-to-energy projects investors are now considering. The topics apply to both early and later development stage project assessment. Twenty-five years ago, the North American and European waste-to-energy business model was well-established, with […]
An interesting addendum appeared in recent days on the Anellotech website — a notation, not seen before from the Sultans of Stealth, that “Anellotech has raised US$80 million in cash and in-kind contributions to date. These considerable investments come from our highly-motivated and engaged strategic partners, who are working with us to develop and commercialize […]
All through this month, Digest subscribers have been voting on the 40 Hottest Transformative Technologies in the Advanced Bioeconomy. While the Hot 50 concentrates on organizations — this set of rankings could include a complete process, a component, subprocess, a metabolic pathway, a computational system, a sensor, a control, a high-performing organism, a protective technology, […]
In Australia, Mid North Coast of New South Wales could become home to the world’s first biorefinery turning sawmill residues into renewable diesel and renewable bitumen. On behalf of the Australian government, the Australian Renewable Energy Agency has announced up to A$500,000 in funding to Boral Timber, a subsidiary of Boral Ltd., to investigate the […]
In Sweden, researchers from Luleå University of Technology (LTU), IIASA, and RISE Research Institutes of Sweden found that increased biofuel production will not affect the production of wood products and that increased biofuel targets will introduce fringe feedstocks to the fuel mix. An opportunity that the forest industry, including sawmills and pulp mills, provides is […]
In the bioeconomy, the grass is always greener on the other side of a corporate repositioning, and we’ve seen the product and feedstocks fads roll onto the shoreline with numbing regularity. We had ethanol until there was biodiesel, and algae until there was jet fuel. Then, chemicals until there was Brazil, and drop-in fuels until […]
In Washington state, efforts to create an environmentally friendly catalyst that will lower the cost and increase the efficiency in producing bio-based jet fuels has netted Washington State University researchers a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Researchers aim to develop a catalyst from forestry and agricultural […]
According to BIO, the global economic value today of the biobased economy – including industrial biotechnology, renewable chemicals and polymers, biofuels, enzymes and biobased materials – is $355.28 billion. And looking at the new USDA Indicators report and other sources, BIO estimates that the United States generates 58 percent of the global value of biobased […]
This week we reported that Steeper Energy is partnering with Silva Green Fuel, a Norwegian-Swedish joint venture, to construct a $59M industrial scale demonstration plant at a former pulp mill located in Tofte, Norway leading to a future commercial scale project. Let’s look at that item in more detail. Silva is a joint venture between Norway’s […]
