The Digest’s 10 Top Advanced Bioeconomy Markets & Predictions for 2020

Last Years Predictions

From last year’s predictions, we scored a pretty respectable 8.5 out of 10.

We gave ourselves a full mark for predicting a big surge for algae in 2019, which Congress helped us with via a big R&D uptick. We got a full mark for predicting the Low Carbon Fuel Standards would drive markets and policy in 2019, and they sure did — seems like everyone is getting into renewable diesel for the California market. And we got a full mark for predicting the uptick in IPOs for nutrition — though Beyond Meat’s $8B high water mark was even more than we could have hoped for. The money invested in companies like Zymergen, Gingko, Arzeda and Inscripta justified a full mark for our prediction that Strain Optimization would go big in 2019. We also got a full mark for predicting First-Gen diversification and “protein, Protein, Protein,’ though in the end those were essentially the same prediction because that’s where first-gen headed. We also got sort of a bonus point in predicting a big jump in the Big Heavy – Air, Marine and Heavy-Duty Road transport, because in many ways this was an outcome of the LCFS-a-go-go we had also tipped.

We only got a half point for three predictions — yes, India surged, and way more than China, but less than we had hoped. The Biomass Board’s Technical Advisory Committee named 2019 The Year of the Tree, so we got a half-point for pointing out that the wood basket would be hot in 2019, but we still see the pulp & paper giants finding all the usual reasons to avoid engagement until they run into too much financial ruin to play on the main stage. And we docked ourselves a half-point for tipping big progress on high-octane engines – yes, amazing work came out from the Co-Optima project but we haven’t seen as much interest in E25 and E30 as we expected.