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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Weekly Industrial and Environmental Bio Blog Roundup

This week we start off with a little Road Music, From Bluegrass to Switchgrass, from our colleagues at the Biofuels Center of North Carolina. They’ve put together a nice set of bluegrass pieces. To listen visit their web site.

Gas2.0 announces this week that BP could start selling biofuels in 2010, writing that,
“BP [...]

Road Music: From Bluegrass to Switchgrass

To get from here to there sometimes you need a little road music, and that’s just what the Biofuels Center of North Carolina is aiming to do. Earlier this week, according to Science in the Triangle,

a RTI Fellows Symposium,
“was held Monday and Tuesday at the University of North Carolina’s Friday Center [...]

Webinars for Reporters: Pacific Rim Summit to Host Forums on Algae, Cellulosic Biofuels and Renewable Chemicals

BIO will host three webinars from the Pacific Rim Summit on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy in Honolulu, featuring companies, researchers, and policy makers at the forefront of efforts to commercialize algae applications, cellulosic biofuels, and renewable chemicals.
1.International Developments in Algae Commercialization
Valerie Reed, U.S. Department of Energy;
Patrick McGinn, Institute of Marine Biosciences, National Research Council, Canada;
Ravi [...]

Weekly Biofuels and Climate Change Blog Round Up

This week in the blogosphere in Industrial & Environmental Technology we start off with NASCAR. Yes that’s right NASCAR . Domestic Fuel.com quotes an article in USA Today about NASCAR,
“The concept might seem incongruous in a sport inherently tied to an internal combustion engine that many find synonymous with global warming, but [...]

Industrial and Environmental Biotech in the Blogosphere

This week we start off with a United Nations report that urges caution on biofuels. Green Inc, a New York Times blog writes,

“The study concluded that whether a biofuel is climate-friendly or not depends largely on whether it is based on crops or production residues. Biofuels of the latter category were generally considered beneficial [...]

Compounded Climate Accounting Errors

Timothy Searchinger, visiting scholar at Princeton University, Dan Kammen of the University of California Berkeley, David Tilman of the University of Minnesota and other authors from the Environmental Defense Fund published an interesting new proposal in the Policy Forum section of Science magazine today. The argument put forward is that “Replacing fossil fuels with bioenergy [...]

Weekly Blog Roundup

This week in the blogosphere there’s a lot of chatter about synthetic biology. The Columbia Journalism Review says that synthetic biology is still not a story. They cite a number of articles in a number of publications however they say,
“According to a recent poll, Americans know very little about synthetic biology, which seeks [...]