By Don Scott, Director of Sustainability, National Biodiesel Board Special to The Digest EPA proposes to continue growing the Required Volume Obligations (RVO) for Biomass Based Diesel (BBD) under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), but at a paltry 100 million gallons a year to 2.1 billion gallons for 2018. Continued growth is a positive sign, […]
By John Diecker, Lee Enterprises Consulting, Inc. Special to The Digest Being a tropical country with a largely agricultural economy, Thailand is blessed with an abundance of biomass. The country ranks among the world leaders in production of palm oil, sugar and cassava which make it a natural location for the manufacture of biofuels. As […]
By James Cogan, industry, technology and policy analyst with Ethanol Europe Renewables Ltd. Special to The Digest There should be no cap on the amount of sustainable European bioethanol energy counted towards the EU’s 2030 carbon emissions goals. The European Commission in Brussels is right now putting the finishing touches to a Communication on […]
By Brent Erickson, Executive Vice-President, Biotechnology Innovation Organization Special to The Digest In setting the 2014-2016 Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS), the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) cited “practical and legal constraints” on the oil industry’s ability to meet the volumes established by Congress. The agency’s methodology in that rule – which it has now proposed […]
By Mahmood Ebadian, Ph.D. Special to The Digest Regardless of the type of industry, the primary goal of any supply chain is to fulfill the customers’ needs efficiently and effectively over the lifetime of the business. An efficient supply chain is capable of maximizing the use of resources across the supply chain as planned while […]
By Zoltán Szabó, Special to The Digest The sustainability aspects of transport fuels are in the spotlight this year in Brussels as a number of key files make their way through the process, namely the Energy Union package, the new Renewable Energy Directive, a communication on transport decarbonisation, and the bioenergy sustainability policy. Correct carbon accounting, […]
By Dick Roche, former Irish Minister for Environment and EU Affairs Special to The Digest When the EU Commission produced its 2012 proposal to cap at 5% the contribution crop-based biofuels can make under the Renewable Energy Directive (RED), the logic of the Commission’s position was widely questioned. Critics, including this writer, challenged the extraordinary […]
By Lorenz Bauer, PhD and William Quapp, MSME, special to The Digest Introduction The continued interest in advanced biofuels has produced numerous exciting technical advances on the laboratory, pilot and demonstration scales. However, attempts to translate these small scale successes into commercial technologies have been less successful. It is easy to blame lower oil and […]
By Brent Erickson, Executive VP, Biotechnology Innovation Organization, Special to The Digest Congress has made it a priority to try and return the annual appropriations process to regular order, following multiple years of passing late omnibus funding bills. Omnibus funding bills rob many successful programs of the individual evaluation they merit; the Farm Bill Energy […]
By Mark Warner, PE, Founder, Warner Advisors LLC, Special to The Digest Understanding the challenge of commercializing innovative foods will separate those that change the future of food, from others that become an asterisk in a market study. In my previous publication “What makes scale-up of industrial bio-technology so difficult”, I expanded on the technical challenges […]
