Category: Top Stories

A Yield Revolution in Row Crops Cometh

A Yield Revolution in Row Crops Cometh

May 23, 2018 |

Yield10’s Brave New World of Metabolic Engineering, Benson Hill’s cloud biology and CRISPR/Cas9 from Purdue and the Chinese Academy of Sciences? Crop yield may never be the same. And developers using crops for bioindustrials or nutrition stand to reap the benefit via bigger refineries and lower input costs. Yield, yield, yield. Just about everyone thinks […]

Read More

The Digest’s Top 10 Innovations for the week of May 23rd, 2018

The Digest’s Top 10 Innovations for the week of May 23rd, 2018

May 22, 2018 |

The pace of invention and change is just too strong, we’ve realized, to highlight annual or even quarterly or monthly rankings and summaries of significant product and service advances. For now, we’re going to be tracking these on a weekly basis to keep pace with the changes. Here are the top innovations for the week […]

Read More

Waiver Wire: Why is the biofuels industry up in arms about oil refinery waivers?

Waiver Wire: Why is the biofuels industry up in arms about oil refinery waivers?

May 21, 2018 |

It’s baseball season and the waiver wire and easy outs are the talk of ESPN and other sports outlets. But they’re part of the Washington dialogue this month, waivers and easy outs, since reports surfaced in media that the US Environmental Protection Agency granted a Renewable Fuel Standard hardship waiver for CVR Energy’s Wynnewood, Oklahoma oil […]

Read More

Banking on the bacterium bad guy: Sandia tailors E. coli to convert plants into renewable chemicals

Banking on the bacterium bad guy: Sandia tailors E. coli to convert plants into renewable chemicals

May 19, 2018 |

In California, Sandia National Laboratories scientists have demonstrated a new technology based on bioengineered bacteria that could make it economically feasible to produce things like jet fuel, pantyhose, and plastic bottles from renewable plant sources. Economically and efficiently converting tough plant matter, or lignin, has long been a stumbling block for wider use of the […]

Read More

Breaking News: attack on farm bill clean energy programs

Breaking News: attack on farm bill clean energy programs

May 17, 2018 |

Breaking news arrives from the Ag Energy Coalition regarding the 2018 Farm Bill. Green Capiltol’s Lloyd Ritter writes: Rep. Biggs farm bill amendment was made in order by the Rules Committee last night to eviscerate the clean energy title programs of the farm bill.  It will be voted on as early as this afternoon. This is […]

Read More

From the Dump to the Pump: Fulcrum BioEnergy breaks ground on landmark trash-to-jet fuel project

From the Dump to the Pump: Fulcrum BioEnergy breaks ground on landmark trash-to-jet fuel project

May 16, 2018 |

Long before the advent of renewable jet fuels, we learned about how choice works at the fuel pump from the 1980 classic The Blues Brothers: Elwood Blues: What kind of music do you usually have here? Cocktail Waitress: Oh, we got both kinds. We got Country AND Western! Yes, until recently you could have any […]

Read More

Grassley vs Pruitt: Will Billionaire Bailouts or Biofuels prevail?

Grassley vs Pruitt: Will Billionaire Bailouts or Biofuels prevail?

May 16, 2018 |

Trump in a pickle: support his beleaguered EPA Administrator over oil refinery bailouts, or rally his Midwestern farm-state base? In Washington, Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa tweeted: “I’ve supported Pruitt but if he pushes changes to RFS that permanently cut ethanol by billions of gallons he will have broken Trump promise & he should step […]

Read More

The Digest’s Top 10 Innovations for the week of May 17th, 2018

The Digest’s Top 10 Innovations for the week of May 17th, 2018

May 16, 2018 |

The pace of invention and change is just too strong, we’ve realized, to highlight annual or even quarterly or monthly rankings and summaries of significant product and service advances. For now, we’re going to be tracking these on a weekly basis to keep pace with the changes. Here are the top innovations for the week […]

Read More

Verdezyne, Ave Atque Vale

Verdezyne, Ave Atque Vale

May 15, 2018 |

From Southern California the report has arrived that Verdezyne is winding down as a company, and today is the last day of operations. The low oil price environment has claimed another victim among the renewable chemical pure-plays. Why oil prices have doomed more chemical players than fuels In a nutshell, there’s no Renewable Chemicals Standard […]

Read More

ICYMI: $227M available from US in push for vehicle, feedstock and bioconversion advances

ICYMI: $227M available from US in push for vehicle, feedstock and bioconversion advances

May 14, 2018 |

We usually say, ICYMIs for those In Case You Missed Its that show up in someone’s inbox.  This week, we might re-purpose that useful acronym to: In Case Your Money Isn’t Sufficient — because there are three funding opportunities that have been flying slightly under the radar this week amongst a flurry of announces from the […]

Read More