Biofuels Digest’s 2012 Best Project (Fermentation) Award: Beta Renewables — Crescentino, Italy

There have been so many projects announced in cellulosic ethanol in the past five years, it’s hard to keep count. But the list of projects that have completed construction at commercial scale, and publicly established the financial structures for deployment at scale — that’s a list of one, Beta Renewables.

Though the project is tucked away in Crescentino, Italy — it has attracted a steady stream of visitors looking to see what “steel in the ground” really looks like: in a word, massive. A signature investment by Novozymes this year — who probably have seen almost every technology out there — tell us a lot of what we need to know about the company’s prospects.

READ MORE: All about the project, here.

The Complete 2012 Biofuels Digest Awards

Best Project – Thermochemical
Best Project – Fermentation
Best Project – Hybrid
Best Project (demonstration)
Best Project (pilot)

Best Technology Extension
Best New Fuel
Best Retrofit
Process Improvement
Pretreatment Technology

Yield Improvement
Industrial Symbiosis
New Trait
New Feedstock
New Feedstock (Demonstration)

New Feedstock (Trial)
Consumer Product of the Year (biobased)
Consumer Product of the Year (biofuels)
Partnership of the Year
Special Editor’s Award – Comeback of the year

Special Editor’s Award – Sustainable technology
Book of the Year