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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

This Week in the Blogosphere

This week industrial biotechnology is a hot topic in the blogosphere. The WWF released a report,

“Industrial biotechnology has the potential to save the planet up to 2.5 billion tons of CO2 emissions per year and support building a sustainable future, a WWF report found.
As the world is debating how to cut dangerous emissions [...]

Weekly Blog Wrap Up

There’s a lot going on in the blogosphere about the world of biofuels this week. Yesterday, the World Wildlife Fund released a report,which according to NCTechnews.com,
“concludes that industrial biotechnology can provide dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and provide strong progress toward a green and sustainable economy. WWF calls for increased political backing for [...]

New Studies Question Cellulosic Biofuels

A new study from MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change examines what it calls the Unintended Environmental Consequences of a Global Biofuels Program. Unintended consequences seems to be the watchword of the year. The authors posit that there will be a feedback loop from climate change and policies that promote [...]

This Week in Science

A group of preeminent academics put forward a policy proposal on regulating the development of cellulosic biofuels in the pages of Science magazine last week. They point out the urgent need to think about the unintended consequences of alternative fuels in order to achieve outcomes that are substantially better than “business as usual.” They conclude: [...]