ABLC 2026 --- March 18-20, 2026 --- Washington, DC and ONLINE

November 13, 2025

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The house lights dim. Conversations soften to a hum. In a ballroom a few blocks from the Capitol, the people who move the bioeconomy—scientists, financiers, policymakers, and entrepreneurs—lean forward. This is ABLC 2026, the long-anticipated turning point from development to deployment, when feedstocks, finance, and technology finally converge in one room and on one timeline. But this year feels different.

Pressure has been building on five fronts—the Grand Challenges of feedstock cost, offtake certainty, policy stability, technology readiness, and project finance. Each is difficult on its own; together they’ve held the industry at the threshold of scale. At ABLC 2026, those lines cross. Deals close, laws take shape, investors commit, and systems align.

Yet, the momentum is building, too. From the closing bell of ABLC Next, through the daily news flow of deployment-scale projects as reported in the Digest, via Digest Connect, in Digest AI, the postings and meeting-flow at the ABLC Community. The memberships piling up at The Sunrise Club.

The activity reveals that at ABLC, we have big work to accomplish to do — raise capital, sign offtakes, choose sites, license process technology, acquire feedstock, de-risk supply chains, lock in policy paths. ABLC is where it gets done.

The Five Grand Challenges: Where Scale Meets Reality

Challenges and opportunities about, but the core of ABLC 2026 is the Five Grand Challenges. If these aren’t cracked, the bioeconomy stalls at the gate.

1. Feedstock and preprocessing. The first bottleneck. Feedstocks remain “way, way, way too expensive.” The target is a $50-per-ton universal standard—without it, the industry starves. Leaders such as Wendy Owens (Hexas) are proving new supply models using purpose-grown crops like XanoFiber to stabilize cost and quality.

2. Offtake Structure. No contract, no project. Bankability depends on long-term, refiner-focused, 15-year take-or-pay agreements at cost parity with petroleum. Without them, finance freezes.

3. Policy Structure. Good policy “doesn’t pick winners—it builds survivors.” The call: 40 percent carbon reduction, a $50-per-barrel Investment Tax Credit, and direct carbon accounting that replaces the impossible-to-model ILUC rules. Policy resolution here is critical; delays in federal guidance, such as the missing 45Z credit clarifications, have already cost producers tens of millions—Aemetis alone estimates over $40 million in deferred revenue and investment.

4. Gasifiers and Liquefiers. The missing link in scale: affordable, reliable systems widely-deployed, that turn cheap solid feedstocks such as wood and ag residues into affordable, reliable bio-crude. Fermentation works; conversion capacity must catch up. Leaders like SunGas Renewables are demonstrating the leap in carbon performance the sector demands, targeting –90 gCO₂e/MJ carbon intensity for renewable methanol—proof that deep decarbonization and bankability can align.

5. Finance Alignment. Investors need clarity, durability, and proof. The industry must translate vision into spreadsheets that survive diligence.

These five challenges frame the debates that animate every hallway and panel—from Sustainable Aviation Fuel to carbon markets and biobased chemicals. HEFA, ATJ, GTL, gas fermentation, anaerobic digestion, HTL, eFuels, to name just a few.

Washington 2026: The Arena of Consequence

The United States prepares to host the G20, with ABLC as a policy lever at a global inflection point,, bringing discourse not only on US markets, but from global research from the IEA, global leadership from the likes of the Global Biofuels Alliance and the BioFuture Platform. Agriculture, The Washington dialogue builds directly on two landmark global compacts—the Belém 4X Pledge and the Osaka Call to Action—which together anchor a shared international agenda to quadruple sustainable-fuel output by 2035.

Policy turbulence has left investors whiplashed—delayed IRS guidance on the 40B/45Z Clean Fuel Production Credit, outdated GREET data, and inconsistent carbon-intensity scoring have frozen billions in potential investment. Amid the gridlock, a new bipartisan language is emerging—what Lane calls the “purple issues”: health, clean air, domestic jobs, and national resilience. These are benefits that reach every district and every household. While Washington wrestles with guidance, states are already moving—California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia forming the Cascadia Clean Fuel Alliance to build regional certainty from the ground up.

Global Momentum: Belém 4X and the Osaka Call

Beyond the Beltway, the world is aligning. The Belém 4X Pledge, signed by Brazil, India, Italy, and Japan, commits nations to quadruple sustainable-fuel production and use by 2035. The Osaka Call to Action follows suit, urging governments to craft long-term, technology-neutral, feedstock-agnostic policies that value more than carbon reduction alone—policies that strengthen energy security, reward sustainable agriculture, and support the net-zero transition in hard-to-abate sectors.

The war in Ukraine, volatile oil markets, rampant growth in energy demand, the race for clean and supply chains have turned bio-based carbon into strategic currency. The conversations in D.C. now echo in Brasília, Brussels, Delhi, and Tokyo.

Networking Like Crazy: The Human Factor

If the plenary hall is the brain of ABLC, the hallways are its heartbeat. Deals start in panels and end over bourbon at the receptions. The week runs on caffeine, curiosity, and carbon scores. From The Digest 50 Awards Gala to The Wolfpack Showdown, the event fuses substance with celebration—hard questions by day, standing ovations by night.

Attendees consistently report the same discovery: the conference pays for itself in the first afternoon. The people you need to see are all there—the feedstock suppliers, technology developers, bankers, offtakers, and policymakers who can move a project from slide deck to steel. Networking like crazy isn’t a slogan; it’s a strategy.

Continuous Momentum: The Digest Engine

ABLC’s power comes from what happens between conferences. The Daily Digest, Digest AI, Digest TV, and ABLC Connect form a continuous vector of engagement that keeps the ecosystem aligned and accelerating. Digest AI now translates this dialogue into Impact Proofs—quantified outcomes such as CapEx savings of 8–12% across project portfolios, verified CI reductions up to 40 points, and documented ROI uplift for partners who integrate Digest AI’s analytics into capital planning. Sponsors and startups alike turn their stories into measurable outcomes: CapEx savings, CI reductions, jobs created, tons sequestered. The rhythm moves from personality-driven to system-driven, from event-based to cadence-based.

The Bottom Line

We make a bold claim—and the record bears it out: no advanced-bioeconomy technology has ever reached commercial scale without appearing on the ABLC stage.

That’s because ABLC is for propulsion and acceleration — the advanced bioeconomy's annual ritual of alignment. For one luminous week each March, Washington becomes the command center of a movement measured not in slogans but in steel, carbon scores, and cash flow.

So when March arrives, everyone in the room knows: the next chapter of the bioeconomy is about to begin—and they’re not here to watch it. They’re here to write it.

ABLC 2026 — March 18–20, Washington D.C. Dates and details are available here at the ABLC 2026 website. READ MORE

Wednesday March 18th

2:00pm ABLC Leadership Summit: Global Agriculture & Supply Chain Summit

This session examines how global feedstock systems are evolving to support scale—covering advanced crops, residues, land use, economics, and logistics. Leaders discuss what it takes to build resilient, financeable agricultural supply chains for fuels, chemicals, and materials.

Jordan Solomon, CEO, Ecostrat

William Kusch, Director + Product and Process Development, TerViva

Greg Jaffe, CEO, Jaffe Consulting

3:00pm ABLC Leadership Summit: BioMade Summit

Doug Friedman, CEO, BioMade

High level official, War Department

High level official US Congress

3:45pm ABLC Leadership Summit: National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology

Moderator: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest

5:00pm ABLC Leadership Summit: The Path to SAF at Scale

Brentan Alexander, CEO, Roebling

Andy Billig, Senior Advisor, SkyNRG Americas

FlyORO, Speaker TBA

Siegfried Knecht, Chairman, aireg

Moderator: Lonnie Rosenwald, Partner, Zuber Lawler LLP

5:45pm ABLC Leadership Summit: FOAK Survival and Networking Like Crazy

This session introduces a new practical toolkit for First-of-a-Kind survival — a way to design projects that remain financeable, buildable, and operable under real-world uncertainty.

How to diagnose cliff risk vs. slope risk — why FOAK failure is usually participation collapse, not price movement. Spot weak coupling early — where buyers, lenders, and policy are aligned on paper but not built to stay aligned under stress. Audit commitments for durability — distinguishing reputational promises from structural ones. Design repairable deal structures — clauses and mechanisms that trigger adjustment instead of cancellation when conditions shift. Engineer coordinated timing — staged commitments and synchronization tools that prevent hesitation cascades.

Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest

Tad Dritz, Bioconversion & Hydrogen Advisor, Ariel Green

Steve Weiss, President, Grey Heron Consulting

Thursday March 19th

8:00am The Bioeconomy Policy Forum

This is a pivotal year for the bioeconomy — not because of a single breakthrough technology, but because policy choices now underway will determine which fuels scale, which projects finance, and where capital flows for the next decade. E15 expansion isn’t just a retail fuel story — it’s about unlocking domestic demand for low-carbon liquid fuels at scale, stabilizing agricultural markets, and delivering emissions reductions that can deploy faster than most infrastructure-heavy solutions.

Michael McAdams, CEO, Advanced Biofuels Association

Linda Schmid, CEO, Coalition on Carbon, Trade, and Technology (C2T2)

Robin Vercruse, Executive Director, Low Carbon Fuels Coalition

Gerard Ostheimer, CEO, Molecule Group

Greg Jaffe, CEO, Jaffe Consulting

Kimball Chen, Chairman, BioLPG LLC

Graham Noyes, Managing Attorney, Noyes Law Corporation

9:00am ABLC Leadership Summit: Sustainable Aviation Fuels Summit

This summit examines the rapid evolution of sustainable aviation fuels, from emerging pathways and feedstocks to project development, airline demand, and capital formation. Industry leaders discuss what it will take to scale SAF globally—technically, financially, and commercially—while navigating policy, infrastructure, and long-term offtake requirements.

Pavel Molchanov, Vice President, Raymond James

Jennifer Holmgren, CEO, LanzaTech

Mike McCurdy, Managing Director, ICF

Jim Spaeth, Managing Director, Aerovovida Bio

10:45am THE WILLIAM C. HOLMBERG AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

Presenters: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest and previous Holmberg Award recipients

11:10am ABLC Addresses

This plenary session brings together top-level and deeply experienced leaders offering strategic perspectives across technology, policy, and project development. Speakers address the state of the bioeconomy, near-term opportunities, and long-range challenges—connecting innovation, infrastructure, and investment into a coherent view of what comes next, and lessons learned.

Pat Gruber, CEO, Gevo

Matthew Clingerman, Global Head of Licensing Technology Development. Sulzer Chemtech

Milica Folic, Product Line Director, Topsoe

11:55am The Finance & Investment Summit

This session brings capital providers and risk experts together to examine how bioeconomy projects are financed in today’s market. Topics include risk mitigation, public finance, tax equity, debt structures, insurance, and investor expectations—offering a candid look at what makes projects bankable and where capital is flowing next.

George Schulz, CEO, Program Development, New Energy Risk

Joseph Abramson, Executive Director, Public Finance Investment Banking, Morgan Stanley

David Livingstone, Managing Director, Public Finance Department, Barclays Capital

Mark Glotfelty, Managing Director, RBC Markets LLC

Kenneth Hill, Managing Director, BioCarbon Strategies

Moderators: Mark Riedy, Partner, Womble Bond Dickinson LLP and Christopher Berendt, Partner, Faegre Drinker

1:55pm The Propane Opportunity Summit

Renewable propane is an intermediate product of the HEFA process used to produce renewable diesel and SAF. This session will examine the strong economic value proposition of renewable propane extraction and related commerce. A study by the National Laboratory of the Rockies shows economic benefits to biorefineries of selling renewable propane into the market rather than using it for internal process heating. Leaders will discuss the study, explore on-purpose renewable propane production, and highlight the significant demand for renewable propane across the United States.

Tucker Perkins, President and CEO, Propane Education & Research Council

Robert M. Baldwin, Principal Scientist, National Laboratory of the Rockies

Dr. Hamed Heidari, Founder, CEO, C+UP

Stuart Weidie, President & CEO, Blossman Gas

Moderator: Dr. Sai Satish Guda, Manager, Research and Development, Propane Education & Research Council

3:30pm BioMADE Summit: Crossing the Bioindustrial Valley of Death: De-Risking Investment, IP, and Scale-Up from MRL 4-7

This session focuses on the leadership challenges of translating successful prototypes into commercial reality — the phase BioMADE defines as the “Valley of Death.” The discussion centers on how smart capital, predictive tools, and IP strategy are converging to reduce risk and accelerate scale-up.

Key Topics

• De-Risking Capital: Infrastructure investment strategies that shorten time-to-market and unlock new business model

• Predicting Performance: Data collection, recovery roadmapping, and modeling to improve scale-up confidence

• Technology Protection & Transition: IP, trade secrets, and market readiness during the move to production partners

• Commercial Case Studies: Lessons from performance textiles, aviation fuels, bioplastics, and other scaled products

Ritu Bansal-Mutalik, Vice President of BioProcess Development, ZymoChem

Melik Demirel, Co-Founder, Tandem Repeat

Bryan Tracy, CEO, Superbrewed Food

Joe Shaw, Senior VP of R&D, Manus

Moderator: Steve Evans, Senior Technical Fellow, BioMADE

4:30pm BioMADE SUMMIT: Building a Domestic Bioindustrial Ecosystem: Supply Chains, Cost Reduction, and Manufacturing Innovation

This session addresses BioMADE’s vision of a sustainable, end-to-end domestic bioindustrial ecosystem. Leadership discussion will focus on material accumulation, cost efficiency, resilient supply chains, and decentralized manufacturing strategies.

Key Topics

• Cost Reduction & Throughput: Equipment design, sensors, and continuous processing for faster scale

• Domestic Supply Chain Security: Vaccine manufacturing, critical materials, and strategic commodities

• Circular & Waste-to-Value Models: Upcycling agricultural, food, and industrial waste into high-value intermediates

• Decentralized Manufacturing: Modular and distributed production approaches that enhance U.S. competitiveness

5:30pm Hot Strategies Summit

Rick Gilmore, President & CEO, GIC Group/ CPC Inset

Tom Treynor, CEO, R2DIO

Trevor Best, Co-Founder & CEO, Syzygy Plasmonics

Friday March 20th

8:00am Sustainable Futures Summit

This summit examines how companies are translating sustainability commitments into operating businesses. Leaders discuss feedstocks, conversion pathways, capital discipline, and market alignment—focusing on what it takes to build durable, scalable bioeconomy companies that can perform through policy shifts, commodity cycles, and evolving customer demand.

Eric McAfee, CEO, Aemetis

Rebecca Boudreaux, CEO, Oberon Fuels

Gerhard Muggen, Managing Director, BTG Bioliquids

Rashi Akki, CEO, Ag-Grid Energy

David Sudolsky, CEO, Anellotech

Tim Zenk, Managing Director, Earth Finance

Moderator: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest

9:15am Industry Horizons Summit

This session looks ahead at the next wave of bioeconomy platforms—from synthetic biology and biomanufacturing to advanced conversion systems. Executives explore emerging business models, technology inflection points, and commercialization pathways shaping where the industry is heading over the next decade.

Kathy Fortmann, CEO, Amyris

Hendrik Waegeman, Head of Business Operations, Bio Base Europe Pilot Plant

Cem Özsüer, CEO, SynPet Technologies

Brian Foody, CEO, Iogen

Cliff Keeler, Vice President of Business Development, SunGas Renewables

Moderator: Tim Zenk, Managing Director, Earth Finance

11:00am ABLC Plenary Addresses

This plenary session brings together senior leaders offering strategic perspectives across technology, policy, and project development. Speakers address the state of the bioeconomy, near-term opportunities, and long-range challenges—connecting innovation, infrastructure, and investment into a coherent view of what comes next.

Jeffrey O’Hara, Deputy Director, Office of Energy Policy & Environmental Policy, USDA

Jason White, CEO, LEC Partners

Gerard Ostheimer, CEO, Molecule Group

11:55am ABLC Plenary Addresses

Poornima Sharma, President, GreenBridge LLC

Mark Niederschulte, CEO, Jupeng Bio

James Dickerson, Director, ASCET (ASTM)

Nereo Rodriguez, Senior Sales Manager Licensing Biopolymers, Sulzer Chemtech

2:00pm Regulatory Divergence: Bridging the Gap Between EU Compliance and U.S. Innovation

As the bioeconomy moves from development to global deployment, the legal and regulatory landscape is becoming increasingly complex. While the U.S. continues to leverage production-based tax credits (45Z/40B) and state-level LCFS programs to drive domestic growth, international bodies are leaning into mandatory blending targets and carbon intensity caps through frameworks like the EU’s RED III/FuelEU Maritime and the IMO’s Net-Zero Framework.

This panel explores the critical differences between these regional and global legal structures—specifically focusing on the interplay between CORSIA’s aviation offsets, the IMO’s emerging marine fuel standards, and the EU’s stringent sustainability criteria. Our experts will discuss the practical implications of these diverging paths on project finance, offtake certainty, and the global flow of sustainable feedstocks. Join us as we dissect whether these frameworks are moving toward harmonization or if “regulatory arbitrage” will define the next decade of biofuel investment.

Geoffrey Dietz, Senior Director, Federal Government Affairs, RNG Coalition

Alicia Koch, Director of Global Ethanol Export Development, U.S. Grains & BioProducts Council

3:30pm ABLC Due Diligence Wolfpack

This session applies the Wolfpack’s due-diligence lens to specific companies, using publicly available information to assess technologies, business models, scalability, and risk. The discussion is practical, unscripted, and analytical—designed to surface strengths, challenges, and unanswered questions critical to investors, partners, and project developers.

The Wolfpack:

Paul Bryan, Principal, BioCurious

Dave Collings, Group Manager, Worley Consulting

David Dodds, President, Dodds & Associates

James Iademarco, President, Strategic Avalanche

Sam Nejame, Principal, Promotum

Henna Poikolainen, Director, Head of Renewable Fuels & Chemicals, AFRY

Steve Slome, Principal, NexantECA

Joel Stone, President, ConVergince LEC

Steve Weiss, President, Grey Heron Consulting