The Advanced Bioeconomy: New Fortunes 2019

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Let’s turn to New Fortunes 2019 – our overview of what we believe will be the 24 hottest market segments in the near term – places to focus your innovations and to unlock value. From cannabis and new crops to advanced materials and superfoods, the bioeconomy is $2.7 trillion in annual revenue, as big as France, and growing faster than China. In today's Digest, where research, investors, customers and strategic interests are converging, how we see the markets developing and the technology evolving, and more.

New markets, drop-in opportunities for renewables, waste based materials, but lots of new apps and some green premiums in things you taste and touch. Big markets, small markets and global too, pick your niche, there are fortunes being made and fortunes to be made still.

The bioeconomy is $2.7 trillion in annual revenue, as big as France, and growing faster than China.

Opportunity #1. Platform technologies. The genome editing market alone will reach $7.5B by 2024. It’s all happening in real time in this sector, right now, one of the very hottest investment sectors in Silicon Valley, and you see exotic amounts of capital pouring in right now. $400 million cap rounds and the like. Breeding, mutagenesis, polyploidy, DNA reading and writing, and genome editing might be the hottest of all as the impact of CRISPR is explored. Genetic transformation was at the heart of it when Frances Arnold picked up the Nobel Prize for chemistry last year.

Novel Crops #6. Hemp, cannabis, jute. Carinate, camelina, pongamia. We saw Amyris’s $300 million CBD deal this past month, causing a 70 percent jump in AMRS stock, ...

Advanced Protein #8. Protein. White Dog Lands, Calysta, KnipBio will be on stage this week. It’s huge, new ways to make it, and also new way to refine and make existing proteins better, ICM for example.

Fuel Cells #19. Moving away from personal and home applications, ket’s highlight Fuel Cells. Are electrics just a bridging technology to hydrogen? DOE is hard at work and Toyota is deploying. There are stationery and MW-scale applications.

Renewable Natural Gas #20. RNG is huge and not, like Jupiter these days, just look at the NASCAR slide of sponsors of the Coalition for RNG. Deployment is widespread, activity is at the farm and at the county project level, and we’re going to see a lot more RNG over the next 5 years, replacing fossil NG.

Novel Uses for Waste #21. We want to highlight novel waste applications — MSW, crop waste, food waste, beverages and more.

Lignin #22. Lignin. you can make anything from lignin except money goes the old saying, now we’re seeing new technologies such as cricket bacteria, but also new applications in plastic substitutes.

Intermediates #23. We want to highlight intermediates, a fungible material that can be made from biomass and transported on a plug and play basis into a host of megabio refineries. EPA is looking into it, and liquid and solid intermediates we see work from UOP, Valmet and also widely in Asia.

Defense Markets #24. Last but not least, defense markets. Often these are a starting point for biorefineries, Defense provides a lot of offtake credibility, but it’s more than just marine diesel and sustainable aviation fuels. It’s hagfish slime apps, engineered microbes that serve as soldiers, biobased fire control and more. READ MORE

Excerpt from OilPrice.com: Most people imagine pot growers like modern farmers—tilling the earth, planting their crops, gathering the harvest.

But in fact, most cannabis cultivation is done indoors, in specially-designed growing facilities that utilize heat lamps and temperature control to maximize yields over a year-long growing season.

When you factor in additional energy costs, like fertilizer and water, cannabis is one of the most energy-intensive crops out there.

In 2017, about 1 mWh went towards cannabis cultivation—but projections have that figure rising to 2.79 mWh by 2022, an increase of 162%.

Compared to business or residential use, energy demand in cannabis grow houses is staggering.

In fact, falling prices and shrinking margins (as well as general concerns with reducing carbon emissions) are driving cannabis cultivators and state regulators to take aim at electricity use in the cannabis sector.

The amount of carbon emissions being pumped out by cannabis cultivators will double by 2020—so if the industry wants to stay green, it’s going to have to make some changes. READ MORE