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The Class of 2011
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Will these biofuels projects make the expected steps towards commercialization?
There was a strong response to yesterday’s Top Story about technologies that were approaching make-or-break milestones in 2012. But what about 2011, asked some? What are the five key sectors where we have major milestones? …
IPO-ville After the success of the Codexis, Gevo and Amyris IPOs, all eyes have turned to Solazyme, which filed its initial S-1 last month and revised it last week. By summer, we’ll know a lot. …
Loan guarantees. Cellulosic ethanol. INEOS Bio, Enerkem, Fulcrum and Coskata have landed conditional loan guarantee commitments from the US DOE and USDA. Can they close them – and can they close the loans that will be backed by them – before any US government action on deficit-reduction shuts down the programs? …
Waste-based biofuels. The hottest area for progress in biofuels commercial-scale project development, has been in waste-based biofuels. That is, converting negative-cost municipal solid waste to ethanol. It is the technology that pencils out the best, economically, for cellulosic ethanol, and wins the broadest support as a feedstock…
International cellulosic ethanol. Will cellulosic ethanol continue to spread its technology beyond the world of US companies and a handful of important EU players such as TMO Renewables and Inbicon? Two important pilots are scheduled to complete this year. Woodland Biofuels in Canada, and the St. 1 Biofuels project in Finland. …
Algae. No sector of biofuels evokes more passionate support, capital investment, and heavy skepticism than algal-based biofuels. Three projects in 2011 should tell us a lot about whether the cynics are right to be cynical, or whether fortune will smile on the optimists. They are the Aurora Algae demonstration in Kurratha, Australia; the Phycal pilot, and a demonstration scale algal farm in Florida using the Algenol technology. READ MORE
