By Douglas L. Faulkner, The Cleantech Conservative Special to The Digest As strange as it may seem to rely on “conventional wisdom” in this crazy election cycle, odds are high that whoever wins the White House will face significant resistance in Congress. If elected: Hillary Clinton likely will face at least a Republican House of […]
Researchers from Oak Ridge National Laboratory have come up with a highly-efficient process to make liquid fuels directly from carbon dioxide and water. Because burning fuels in an internal combustion engine produces CO2 and water as its byproducts, the new discovery is, essentially, a form of reverse combustion. It’s a simple concept, but over the […]
Of all the many wonders at the Algae Biomass Summit this week, perhaps there was nothing more interesting in terms of the Department of Energy’s laudable attention to the sector than a poster from NREL on a project “to screen microalgal biomass to discover novel molecules which have potential to be used as gasoline fuel.” In […]
If you’ve been following the Sunday news programs in the past week, or breathless reporting in the Wall Street Journal (“John Podesta and the Russians” ) or Breitbart over the past few months, you’ll find that Clinton campaign chief John Podesta has come under fire for his ties to Joule Unlimited. Let’s look at the charges […]
By Neil A. Belson Special to The Digest The biobased economy or “bioeconomy” has the potential to create new companies, new jobs and even entirely new industries. In a bioeconomy, renewable biobased materials such as crop residues and dedicated energy crops replace petroleum as a primary source of industrial and energy raw materials. A growing […]
By Dr. Mahmood Ebadian Special to the Digest The procurement of low-cost feedstock has been the focus of the pioneering bio-conversion technology developers in commercializing their first industrial-scale projects. Low-cost feedstock is critical in such projects as most of the existing bio-conversion technologies are not yet mature enough to process multiple streams of biomass and […]
In Arizona this week, the Algae Biomass Summit kicks off — the industry’s largest and most glamorous get-together — and it affords us all an opportunity to measure algae’s progress and prospects. It was almost nine years ago that the Algae Biomass Organization debuted at high tide for biofuels, hailed as a wonder crop by […]
In Washington, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization called for the extension of renewable energy tax credits slated to expire at the end of 2016. In its letter, BIO urges Congress to advance a multi-year extension of the Second Generation Biofuel Producer Tax Credit, the Special Depreciation Allowance for Second Generation Biofuel Plant Property, the Biodiesel and […]
In Missouri, James Umen, Ph.D., associate member at Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, and colleagues have discovered a way to make algae better oil producers without sacrificing growth. Umen and his team found the oil-accumulating mutation in Chlamydomonas, called vip1-1, while investigating how two conserved signaling systems interact with one another. One system involves a […]
In Washington, according to EIA data as analyzed by the Renewable Fuels Association, ethanol production averaged 998,000 barrels per day (b/d)—or 41.92 million gallons daily. That is up 36,000 b/d from the week before and a five-week high. The four-week average for ethanol production stood at 982,000 b/d for an annualized rate of 15.05 billion […]
