Fair to say that, hands-down, the most interesting bioconversion engines ever assembled were crowd-sourced, if you will, via evolution — and they reside inside plants (aquatic and terrestrial). There appears to be no end to the metabolic pathways they contain. And, despite millions of years of frenetic evolution, as Sinatra sang it in 1964 with […]
Winter barley and early tomatoes may sound like a dull foundation upon which to further a revolution in agriculture — but then again, the Spanish hardly developed California in two centuries of sovereignty because they couldn’t see the point. As Master Po said in Kung Fu, “Because a man can see, he does not look.” […]
In Minnesota, Cargill and Calysta revealed that they will co-create the world’s largest gas fermentation facility in Memphis, Tennessee to produce Calysta’s FeedKind protein, a family of sustainable, traceable nutritional ingredients for fish, livestock and pets. Start-up is expected in late 2018. So we’re going to Graceland. Memphis that is, home to Elvis. What exactly is […]
BETO. I think it’s Latin for “I forbid petroleum.” So while presidents have the Veto, technologists have the Beto. It’s most widely known in its modern variant, as the acronym for the DOE’s Bioenergy Technologies Office, the hearth and home of the US government’s efforts to change the energy mix. At ABLC Next 2016, the Bioenergy Technologies Office’s […]
This week, in Washington and Brussels, four news flashes on global renewable fuel volumes appeared on the radar. Can you safely ignore them and get on with other work, or is there something to get deeply informed about? Let’s look into it. #1. The Point of Obligation RFS Crisis. The issue. Several parties petitioned the US EPA […]
In Montana, Blue Marble Biomaterials will become the first biomaterials company to utilize Regulation A+, a type of equity crowdfunding regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and will offer equity shares to the public. Regulation A+ differs from other popular crowdfunding methods, such as Kickstarter. Under Reg A+, investors buy equity in the company. A natural-biochemical […]
In Florida, The Digest announced the initial agenda for ABLC 2017 (the Advanced Bioeconomy Leadership Conference) on March 1-3, 2017 at the Mayflower Hotel and in Washington DC. The theme of the conference is “Performance and Value in the Trump Era” and the speakers will cover more than 200 organizations and technologies from feedstocks through […]
For some time in The Digest, we have examined the problem of matching capital to projects. As Ecostrat’s Jordan Solomon observed at ABLC Next a few weeks back, “the vast majority of projects are given junk ratings, if they can get rated at all”. And that leaves aside all the fine technologies that falter or […]
In Canada, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna announced that Canada will adopt a national clean fuels standard, as an important step for climate action and the growth of Canada’s cleantech economy and green jobs. This federal leadership builds on the early actions of British Columbia, Oregon and California, and will greatly improve […]
Our story so far In 2011, KiOR raised $150 million in its June IPO, claiming that it was generating yields of 67 gallons per ton in its Demo unit operations. But it was miles short of that. In our previous installments, we have charted how KiOR moved from a promising early-stage technology to a public […]
