Changing of the Guard: Legendary Association Heads, Technologists Head off to New Adventures

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) With the news that Matt Carr is leaving his post as the Executive Director of the Algae Biomass Organization, it’s beginning to feel like a real changing of the guard is taking place on the watchtowers that surround and advanced the bioeconomy.

It was only a few months ago that long-time RFA CEO Bob Dinneen stepped into an emeritus role as a senior advisor and Geoff Cooper was appointed RFA’s new CEO. And some time next month Brent Erickson will give up his role as the head of BIO’s Industrial and Environmental Section. Between these three, there’s more than 60 years of experience in the advanced bioeconomy’s trade associations.

We also note that the long-time head of REG Life Sciences, going back to LS9 days, Steve del Cardayre, went on a sabbatical in recent months; and we’ve seen some of our longest-serving CTOs like Virent’s Randy Cortright move over to new organizations and new roles.

It is because, to a great extent, that the bioeconomy is not organized like the old petroleum-based economy — with giant companies, stifled for innovation, grinding down the costs and grinding down the competitors, in a grasping oligopoly. Instead, there are hundreds of companies and technologies vying for their day in the sun, not through predatory influence and the competitive advantage expressed in economies of scale created through government fiat over the years, but through technological innovation and improvement. Case in point, the Navy paid $25 a gallon for renewable fuels early in this decade and by 2016 the Navy made a huge 70 million gallons by of a biofuel blend at $2.07 per gallon. “That’s the story, that’s the success,” said Navy Secretary Ray Mabus at the time.

But our love of innovation has not made a generation of science projects — in the past two years, more than 1 billion gallons of advanced biofuels, chemicals and materials projects have been built or are under construction around the world, and hundreds of first-generation ethanol and biodiesel plants are operating at scale today. Ethanol is priced at less than $1.50 a gallon today, a third of what it cost a decade ago.

Yet, the bioeconomy is not shrouded in secrecy, run by cabals and created on the back of predatory railroad dealings as the petroleum refining industry was. There is a great difference between the openness of the supports that renewables receive and the nearly-invisible yet massive supports that petroleum receives. This industry has been built not only to deliver a different product, but to do business differently, and everyone will benefit by the world these gentlemen and their colleagues have built.

They are not risk-takers, but risk-minimizers, and because they are so focused on minimizing the risks, they are generally very good at taking the outsized risks associated with transformation of the world’s energy supply chain.

These leaders have labored hard to assure that supply-chain and to assure, in del Cardyre’s case, that the technology would be affordable to deliver.

This then, is the type of economy and body politic they have developed — open, clean, renewable, protective of our environment, an affordable path to a new economy, using today’s infrastructure, something that auto manufacturers can work with in their existing designs and that astonishes local mechanics when they see how clean the engines are, and how long they last. They have supported energy independence with every effort they have made — not just energy independence for Americans, but energy freedom for all. And they have supported the men and woman in uniform by giving them affordable, renewable fuels that do not have to be purchased from forces who oppose our national aspirations, and which assure us of a supply of affordable fuels no matter what happens in the international oil markets. Our soldiers and sailors know that funds to cover spikes in energy prices, which almost invariably come at times of international crisis, are routinely taken out of funds earmarked for training and readiness.

These four men — and countless men and women who have labored beside them — have made friends for the bioeconomy, and helped assure that there is a business for the bioeconomy, by building coalitions and making friends for industry. The story of the bioeconomy is one of partnerships for progress — policymakers, strategic customers and investors, bankers, researchers, consumers, auto manufacturers, environmentalists, farmers, urban interests, and more. All of these have to come together to create legislation like the Farm Bill and to develop and deploy technology. policy requires advocacy and partnership requires a medium and that is the work that associations do.

Matt Carr transformed ABO into an organization representing the full universe of opportunities made possible by advanced algae cultivation, ....

Brent Erickson arrived at BIO on March 17, 2000, following highly-regarded staff positions in the U.S. Senate and trade association world. Brent came here to head up the then newly-created Industrial and Environmental Section (IES).

As the first and only Industrial and Environmental Section leader, he helped establish the fledging industrial biotech sector as a key part of the biotech business community.

Dinneen was with RFA for more than 30 years, including serving as the organization’s president and CEO since 2001. During his tenure, Dinneen led the industry and achieved a number of landmark legislative and regulatory victories for ethanol, including passage of the original Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) in 2005 and significant expansion and extension of the RFS program in 2007. Dinneen also played a crucial role in the creation of the reformulated gasoline and oxygenated fuels requirements; securing the RVP waiver for E10; working with states to adopt bans on MTBE; and multiple extensions of the ethanol blender’s tax credit and secondary tariff on imported ethanol, among other important victories.

Prior to joining REG Life Sciences (then LS9), Dr. del Cardayre spent 9 years at Codexis and Maxygen, where he was directly involved in the development, application, and commercialization of technologies for the engineering of biocatalytic processes for the pharmaceutical and chemical industry.

Steve published extensively on the application of evolutionary engineering of biological systems, focusing primarily on the engineering of whole cell biocatalysts.

But it was the work on REG Life Sciences that he’ll be known for, for some time to come.

First, there was the astonishing possibilities that flowed from proving out the concept that you could have a one-step process and produce a fuel or a chemical, instead of a fat, from sugar. It seemed like a crazy idea when Jay Keasling, Chris Somerville and George Church sketched out the idea on a napkin.

You could do it with chemical intermediates and also with an expensive hydrogenation step in there — but, one-step? It seemed astronomically difficult and ambitious, and yet del Cardayre and his team proved it out on the bench, and later in 1000 liter fermebters, and ultimately in a demonstration at scale in Okeechobee, Florida. The oil price debacle had dimmed the prospects for renewable chemicals and fuels for a while, but California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard has been strongly driving demand, and now ExxonMobil and REG Life Sciences are engaged in some serious work aimed at commercializing the technology, and now Clariant is part of that effort aimed at moving from sugars to biodiesel. READ MORE