Biotech in the Blogosphere

New Mexico is ready to develop a biofuels plan according to KRQE.com and the Associated Press,

They write,

“New Mexico’s elected officials want to develop a strategic plan to make the state a leader in the biofuels industry.

Gov. Bill Richardson said New Mexico is in a good position when it comes to biofuels, given its combination of economic policies, business infrastructure, natural resources and scientific expertise.

State leaders and the Southwestern Biofuels Association are planning a series of meetings over the next three months that will bring together dozens of experts from industry, science, education, agriculture and government to begin developing a roadmap for growing the state’s biofuels industry.

Officials expect to have a proposal completed by mid-April. The public will have an opportunity to comment on the plan.”

We look forward to seeing that proposal and will keep you posted.

Automotive.com takes on the topic of algae

in, “Algae-based Biofuels faster to produce than Conventional Ethanol, E85, Biodiesel”

Algae is fast becoming a new area in industrial and environmental technology, with wide ranging possibilities. Stay tuned to our site for updates in the area.

Biotech in the Blogosphere

Wow, what a blog post title, “Synthetic Biology: Why Not Pursuing Crazy Biotech Is Dangerous.” The the crew at Gizmodo who came up with that title talks with Michael Spector who covers science for the New Yorker and is the author of Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives.

The Gizmodo crew says about their discussion with Specter,

“For our discussion—fitting the theme of This Cyborg Life—we singled out synthetic biology, a pursuit, as Specter describes it, that “by combining elements of engineering, chemistry, computer science and molecular biology, seeks nothing less than to assemble the biological tools necessary to redesign the living world.”

To find out what Specter had to say about synthetic biology read the blog.

Next, Xconomy of San Diego, writes a post, Big Energy Collaborations Seen to Jump-Start Emerging Biofuels Technologies .

Xconomy attended presentations organized by Biocom, San Diego’s life sciences industry group. Xconomy says according to industry experts at the conference,

“As startups developing next-generation biofuels emerge in San Diego, Boston, and elsewhere, a business model for rapidly expanding to commercial-scale operations already can be found in the biotech industry”

“The premise of presentations organized by Biocom, San Diego’s life sciences industry group, is that collaborations being formed between biofuel startups and big energy are comparable to the partnerships formed between biotech startups and big pharmaceutical companies.”

Slice of MIT writes about, Synthetic Biology Rodeo: Designing Living Materials at iGEM where they mention a story on the iGEM competiton in WIRED UK.

Slice of MIT says,

“The Wired story, written as a first-person account by a friend of the winning team, describes arriving at MIT with the crew from the UK: “seven rainbow-haired undergraduates who spent their summer engineering a new kind of E.coli that secretes a palette of seven colors, christened E. chromi after a tense online vote.”

To find out more about iGEM, check out the slice of MIT.

Industrial and Environmental Biotech Weekly Blog Roundup

In industrial biotechnology this week the Wall Street Cheat Sheet says algae is the next great thing.

“Algae could be the most promising candidate yet for the future of the biofuels industry.

Although algae-based fuels won’t be commercially available for several years, algae offers several advantages over other first-generation renewable fuels, such as corn and soybeans. For example, algae grows faster, requires less resources, can be used as jet fuel, can use existing distribution systems, and absorbs carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses.”

The post closes with,

“All of this syncs up neatly with a White House concerned with climate change and looking to develop “green energy” technologies with long economic coattails.

While it may be too early to call algae the clear winner in the biofuels race, at least for now, the future of algae-based biofuels looks bright.”

The Biofuels Digest

writes about BIO’s recent Pacific Rim Summit,

“In Hawaii, at the BIO Pacific Rim Summit, Joule Biotechnologies announced that it has achieved direct microbial conversion of CO2 into hydrocarbons via engineered organisms, powered by solar energy.

Joule’s Helioculture process mixes sunlight and CO2 with highly engineered photo synthetic organisms, which are designed to secrete ethanol, diesel or other products.

However, unlike algae and other current biomass-derived fuels, the Helioculture process does not produce biomass, requires no agricultural feedstock and minimizes land and water use. It is also direct-to-product, so there is no lengthy extraction and/or refinement process.”

Sounds interesting, guess we’ll have to stay tuned.

Yesterday the DOE and the USDA announced,

“projects selected for more than $24 million in grants to research and develop technologies to produce biofuels, bioenergy and high-value biobased products. Of the $24.4 million announced today, DOE plans to invest up to $4.9 million with USDA contributing up to $19.5 million. Advanced biofuels produced through this funding are expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50 percent compared to fossil fuels.”

Pacific Rim Summit: Renewable Chemicals

Two companies commercializing different techniques to produce chemicals from renewable resources gave presentations this morning at BIO’s Pacific Rim Summit.

Christophe Schilling, CEO of Genomatica in San Diego, outlined the company’s strategy for making butanediol (BDO) directly from sugars. BDO is a polymer used in things such as spandex, betadine, and car parts including tires. Genomatica says its process uses 30 percent less energy, reduces CO2 and GHG emissions, and produces a 40-60 percent saving in capital expenditures. Plus, there is a $3 billion existing market.

Sam McConnell of Myriant described his company’s strategy for making succinic acid, which is a chemical intermediate that can be converted into many other products. Myriant is partnering with the University of Florida and Buckeye Technologies on a plant in Perry, Fla., which they project to be completed in 2010. The output of the plant is already 80 percent sold, according to McConnell.

A recording of the session is available from bio.org.

BIO Pacific Rim Summit: Biofuels from Coal and Sunlight

On day two of BIO’s Pacific Rim Summit on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy, attendees heard some fascinating presentations at the plenary lunch session, appropriately titled “Novel Applications of Industrial Biotechnology.”

Phil Hendry from CSIRO in Australia spoke about the opportunities for carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas benefits offered by coal bed methane production (coal seam gas, CBM, CSG). Coal bed methane is a type of natural gas extracted from coal beds through a natural biological process. There are great advantages to its use, according to Mr. Hendry, because coal bed methane produces around 50 percent less carbon dioxide emissions compared to coal-fired power. Coal bed methane also has great potential to contribute significantly to the supply of natural gas.

There are several international organizations involved in the production of coal bed methane, aside from CSIRO. Luca Technologies, Alberta Research Council, and the Western Research Institute are some examples. Mr. Hendry also cited the ability of CBM to stimulate under saturated coal seams, exhausted wells, and even to be injected into micronutrients.

Brent Erickson, Executive Vice President of the Industrial and Environmental Section at the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO), sits on the board of the Western Research Institute. When asked about the potential for coal bed methane, he made the following statement: “Biogenic coal bed methane generation is an elegant solution requiring the marriage of fossil fuel technology and advanced biotechnology. The potential of this energy generating process has yet to be fully realized. And when it is, it will allow us to tap into a clean, natural gas resource from deep coal beds that has been heretofore difficult to obtain.”

Also presenting at the lunch session was David Berry, a co-founder of Joule Biotechnologies. Joule announced yesterday that their Helioculture technology has achieved a breakthrough in converting CO2 and sunlight into diesel. Joule had previously announced production of ethanol.

Berry described the SolarConverter Joule is developing — a modular system of panels housing photosynthetic microorganisms. Audio of the presentation is available for download from bio.org.

Stephanie Batchelor of BIO contributed to this report.

From Pacific Rim Summit: Specialty Crops, Renewable Feedstocks & Sustainability

This panel on the second day of the Summit consisted of Richard Gustafson from the University of Washington, Gillian Madill, an independent consultant representing views of the environmental NGO community and John Sheehan, from the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota.

While Mr. Gustafson and Mr. Sheehan gave informative talks on lifecycle assessment modeling and sustainability issues, Ms. Madill lit up the room with her talk titled, “Environmental Concerns with Energy Biotechnologies.” Ms. Madill started the conversation with the assertion that the environmental community and the biofuels community have the same goal, to supply energy in a new way that preserves the environment and our earth. Renewable energy and technology are tools to get to that end.

The environmental community has several valid concerns over widespread biofuels production. They see biofuels as a transition technology on our way to an energy future less dependent on liquid fuels, some would say zero liquid fuels. Zero because of the belief that no biofuels are carbon neutral. The question asked by environmental groups is, Why incentivize an unsustainable industry? Some concerns raised by Ms. Madill on behalf of the environmental community include deforestation of sensitive lands such as rain forests, environmental degradation, incorporation and containment of genetically engineered crops and organisms and intellectual property protection.

The biofuels industry plans to be a sustainable industry, but it is a new industry on the verge of commercialization with a formidable competitor. Ms. Madill’s point was that the environmental community and industry, while striving for some common goals, are currently at odds.

As I expressed to Ms. Madill, at the heart of this debate is the fact that most of the controversy centers around land use and protecting sensitive ecosystems. If biofuels went away tomorrow, other industries would compete for those same sensitive areas. After all, solar and wind farms require significant acreage as well, not to mention building schools or highways or the new grocery store that just opened in your neighborhood. Any industry that has a footprint will at some point, one can only assume in a future low carbon world, be mandated to quantify their lifecycle assessment, including land use and potentially indirect international land use, as biofuels are today.

My suggestion would be to partner to serve the common goal, protection of our vital and sensitive areas and resources which are important and treasured by all.

BIO Pacific Rim Summit: Status of Cellulosic Ethanol Commercialization

Qteros, ZeaChem and Verenium presented updates on their efforts to bring three unique cellulosic ethanol processes to commercial status.

Qteros CTO Kevin Gray described how the company’s Q Microbe™ (Clostridium phytofermentans) enables a single step (consolidated bioprocessing) conversion and fermentation process for fuels. This approach can save as much as 40 percent in production costs. Qteros is currently scaling its technology up for a 100 liter laboratory bioreactor.

ZeaChem President and CEO Jim Imbler outlined the challenges facing the industry, which include the need for coherent government policy to help the industry make it through the “Valley of Death,” which he described as the stage between proving that a technology works and attracting enough investment to make it a reality. Raising capital for a first-of-its-kind project is particularly difficult, Imbler noted. Traditional project finance is not available; but companies could move forward with a combination of strategic investors and short-term government support.

Zeachem uses a Clostridium thermoaceticum found in the gut of termites to produce acetic acid, which is then converted to ethyl acetate and ethanol. They are constructing a demonstration-scale plant expected to be online in 2010.

Bill Baum of Verenium then described the status of the company’s joint venture with BP, Vercipia Biofuels, which is building a commercial scale cellulosic biofuel plant in Highlands County, Fla. and seeking a site for a second facility.

An audio recording of the webinar can be downloaded from BIO.org.

Pacific Rim Summit — Biobutanol: Overcoming the Barriers

The biobutanol panel at the 2009 Pacific Rim Summit on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy had three dynamic speakers from the biobutanol industry: Pat Gruber, CEO of Gevo, Inc.; Jay Kouba, CEO of Tetravitae Bioscience and Rick Wilson, CEO of Cobalt Technologies. Besides the individual company presentations the conversation concentrated on technology, risk, barriers and financing on the path to commercialization.

Jay Kouba related to the audience that the business plan with the best technology is often not the one that makes it to commercialization; the path to commercialization is often paved by the plans with the lowest barriers to commercialization.

Pat Gruber of Gevo started the session off by giving background on his company, Gevo Inc., founded in 2005. Gevo’s biobutanol plans center around retrofitting corn ethanol plants to produce isobutanol. The main thing Gevo is concerned with is access to cheap feedstock, they will make their fuel out of whatever is most economically viable, currently sugarcane and grain, but eventually cellulosic feedstocks will be used. Gevo has a 1 million gallon demonstration plant in St. Joseph, Mo. Gevo also has business plans for renewable gasoline, jet fuel and isobutylene for use in such products as rubbers and plastics. These molecules will serve as building blocks for the chemical industry and they are beneficial, because the chemical industry already knows what to do with them. Gevo plans to have a commercial plant (20-50 million gallons per year) operating in 2011.

Tetravitae will be focusing on the chemical industry for their butanol to take advantage of what they see as a weak point in the petrochemical web. They are focusing on finding a low capital route that they can get to market quickly and follow up with improvements, and they see many opportunities with biobutanol for chemicals. Tetravitae will be using a similar business plan to Gevo in retrofitting corn dry mill plants for production. Tetravitae has partnered with the University of Illinois to develop the organism they are using. Mr. Kouba said that their process is already cost competitive and they are planning on having a demonstration facility operating in 2010 and a commercial facility up and running in 2011.

Rick Wilson’s company, Cobalt Technologies, is focusing on commercializing their cellulosic butanol for fuels and chemicals business. The big question for them was, “What’s going to make the biggest difference and be the most cost effective cellulosic biofuel on the market?” The answer was biobutanol. According to Mr. Wilson, the advantage of this renewable fuel is that 15 billion gallons is mandated by the Renewable Fuel Standard, it has an estimated 70 to 90 percent reduction in lifecycle assessment in greenhouse gases versus petroleum, increases fuel efficiency, lowers tailpipe emissions and is compatible with existing fuel infrastructure. Cobalt Technologies is interested in a venture with high margins that requires low capital investments. Rick made the observation that the most important cost for them is the price of the feedstock. Cobalt currently has pilot plants constructed in Colorado and California with a 200,000 gallon per year facility planned for operation in 2011 and a 15 million gallon per year facility planned for 2013.

All of the speakers agreed that access to capital is a barrier to commercialization, and education for the public, the regulatory community and opinion leaders such as Members of Congress on the benefits and technological attributes of biobutanol is a priority. Lively discussion and debate followed during the question and answer portion of the session. Stay tuned as biobutanol moves forward into commercialization for fuels and chemicals.

International Developments in Algae Commercialization

The Pacific Rim Summit on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy hosted a webinar to discuss U.S. and Canadian government efforts to support commercial development of algae for biofuels, chemicals, pharmaceutical and food ingredients, and the long list of applications being considered.

Valerie Reed of the U.S. Department of Energy, noted that the U.S. Economic Recovery Act provided $800 million for new and existing projects, with $480 million to be allocated to pilot- and demonstration-scale biorefineries that can produce advanced biofuels, bioproducts, and heat & power in an integrated system. Algae has the potential to be a big player in this selection, she said.

She also noted that Congress has directed the DOE to spend $35 million specifically on research, development and deployment of algae biofuels.

Patrick McGinn of Canada’s National Research Council, outlined Canadian programs to support research and development of biomass, including algae. The NRC is producing and experimenting with different pathways to convert algae to biofuels, with the goal of creating a high-quality data set on their overall yields, energy and carbon balances.

A recording of the webinar can be downloaded at bio.org.

You can also listen to a streaming version at http://www2.eintercall.com/moderator/presentation/Playback?id=4d83d2db-9c43-4011-a04d-25d13c5d0672.rpm.

Wrong Question: Can Biofuels Be Carbon Friendly?

The Science Insider blog last week hosted an interesting debate between Tim Searchinger, Princeton visiting scholar, and John Sheehan, of the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota, regarding the recent policy proposal in the pages of Science by Searchinger et al. to “fix” the carbon accounting of biomass for bioenergy and biofuels in U.S. legislation and the successor to the Kyoto protocol, by giving credit only to biomass that can be managed in such a way as to sequester additional atmospheric carbon in the soil. As Searchinger puts it in the recent debate, “bioenergy only reduces greenhouse gases if it results from additional plant growth or in some other way uses carbon that would not otherwise be stored.”

To be sure, use of bioenergy can only reduce the overall level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere by sequestering carbon in the soil (in root systems). And yes, individual biofuel or bioenergy producers could use only new biomass that has recently pulled carbon from the atmosphere (although other environmentalists may differ on that) or biomass that would otherwise be left to decay and emit the stored carbon anyway. The question then is whether there is enough of this type of biomass to meet energy needs.

But that is not the point of the current Kyoto protocol or of U.S. cap-and-trade legislation. Their shared goal is to reduce overall GHG emissions, over time, ideally lowering the cap until emissions reach equilibrium.

Searchinger cites recent modeling studies to say that not employing his fix to global carbon accounting “would lead to the loss of most of the world’s natural forest because clearing those forests for bioenergy becomes one of the cost-effective means of complying with laws to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” However, the fossil fuel industries are certain to receive allowances under the U.S. legislation. Employing a carbon accounting model that treats biomass as equivalent to fossil fuel would definitely make continued reliance on fossil fuel the cost-effective alternative.

Another interesting response to the Searchinger et al article comes from Geoff Styles of the Energy Collective, who extends the carbon accounting argument to electric vehicles. All alternative energy sources can be opened up to particular scrutiny. What is needed is a truly accurate and balanced accounting of fossil fuel use to compare these arguments.

The only other political option would be to drastically cut use of all energy. Models do project that the current worldwide economic recession has brought about a reduction in climate emissions by cutting energy use.

Searchinger does note that biomass and biofuels have the potential to balance greenhouse gas emissions – depending on land management. A better question here is whether his models can show that fossil fuel use also has the potential to balance greenhouse gas emissions with proper land management.