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News In Brief, Wednesday July 14th, 2011

Big Build in Brazil.

LS9 announces plans to build Brazil’s largest bio-fuels and bio-chemicals plant, and continues its synthetic hydrocarbon research partnership with Chevron.  

Florida-based Petroalgae finds a Shell.
Petroalgae and CRI Catalyst Company LP (part of the Shell group) establish a partnership to provide feedstocks for drop-in fuels.  

OriginOil gets more green: capital, not algae (they’ve got plenty of that)
A little under a year after its first CO2 to algae deal with Australian company MBD Energy Limited was announced, Californian algae producer Origin Oil gets its first round of institutional financing.  

AGQM grants “no harm” status to IFT’s bio-diesel additives (no word yet on Col. Klink’s violin-playing). 
The Association for the Quality of Bio-diesel (AGQM) a German bio-diesel quality assurance organization (and whose standards are among the most respected worldwide in the bio-diesel community)  grants “No-Harm and Efficiency” certification status to International Fuel Technologies' bio-diesel additives.

The French Connection
Global Bioenergies, a French synthetic biology company, gets and additional  €475,000 ($673,645) from the French innovation agency OSEO, just a month after closing a successful IPO on the NSYE Alternext stock market.

News in Brief, Tuesday July 12th 2011

Talk about a hot deal 

Chesapeake Energy makes a $155 million dollar investment in Sundrop Fuels, Inc., an advanced biofuels manufacturer that uses ultra-high temperature radiation to convert biomass to syngas almost instantaneously.

Chesapeake again (this time, the bay)

AE Biofuels acquires Zymetis, an industrial biotech company from Maryland with magic bug patents (the organism is from the Chesapeake Bay).

Another man’s trash

A joint venture between GreenStar Recycling and Vadxx Energy will produce renewable crude oil from discarded plastics.

The BeNefits of working together

Solvay and Avantium announce a collaboration to produce renewable green plastics.

Talking turkey

Cereplast expands the reach of its resins in Europe through a distribution deal with Polimernet Plastik, a major Turkish plastics manufacturer.

Sweet scale-up

Codexis announces the successful scale-up to commercial quantities of its proprietary cellulase enzymes, which will be used to sustainably generate the sugars needed for bio-products of all kinds. 

News In Brief, Monday July 11th, 2011

President Obama fields questions from Twitter about renewable energy and biofuels during a town hall meeting in the Heartland.

POET gets an offer from the federal government for a $105 million loan guarantee.

Dutch company Avantium and Belgian company Solvay announce collaboration to develop green plastics.

Renewable Fuels Association’s letter to Obama: The ethanol industry is innovating and expanding beyond fuels to include animal feeds and most notably feedstocks for bio-based chemicals.

OPX Biotechnologies raises $36.5 million in investment capital to produce BioAcrylic, the company’s first renewable chemical, which will be scaled up through collaboration with Dow Chemical.

SC Johnson settles lawsuits involving Greenlist labeling; management talks increased transparency of “green chemical approval” process for consumers.

News-in-Brief: June 29th, 2011

 Danisco releases its Sustainability Report

Danisco has released its sustainability report, detailing how it has used bio-based materials to reduce its carbon footprint, with a strong focus on Life Cycle Assessment’s role in decision-making. This is the last report of its kind that will report on Danisco-only efforts, as Danisco was purchased by DuPont in January.

Biofuels Take Flight

In Paris on June 18^th 2011 a Gulf-Stream jet makes its landing. What makes this otherwise routine occurrence remarkable is that 50% of its power was bio-based using Honeywell’s Green Jet Fuel (50% here means one of two Rolls-Royce engines), making it the first Transatlantic crossing of its kind. The route closely followed that taken by Charles Lindbergh nearly a century earlier.

This was followed today by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines completed the first passenger flight using biokerosene as fuel, following an announcement last week that 200 flights between Amsterdam and Paris will use a 50/50 blend of petroleum-based and bio-based fuels, starting in September.

With positive test results coming from Gevo, and a recent announcement kicking off the Agri Energy Technology Demonstration in which Michigan State University, Detroit Metropolitan Airport, and Willow Run Airport will collaborate to grow bio-energy crops on site, the sky is the limit for bio-based aviation fuels.

Bunge expands Sugar in brazil, sees biofuels as logical expansion of biz

Bunge plans to expand its sugarcane holdings in Brazil, adding 25,000 hectares to the 200,000 hectares it already has. “You want to make sure your cane is expanding at a slightly faster pace than industrial capacity,” said Ben Pearcy, Bunge’s chief development officer and managing director of sugar and bio-energy.

Bunge owns eight mills in Brazil, and this expansion is part of an initiative to get them all producing at peak capacity, with the plan to increase its sugar unit to match the size of its agribusiness unit (its largest).

From Fuels to Chemicals

Gevo to convert ethanol plant to isobutanol plant, seeing more value in chemicals supply chain than in the gas pump.

Bayer off on the right foot

Bayer’s Green Shoe Concept.

News-in-Brief: June 28th, 2011

Light Green Is The New Shade for Cleantech VC

In a post financial-crash economy and with few successful exits on the books for green energy projects, VC’s identify “light green tech” (software and components versus capital-intensive large scale energy projects) as a potential new entry point, says Reuters.

Gevo/Toray Renewable Plastic Collaboration Is A Success

After a successful collaboration with Toray to produce fully renewable and recyclable form of PET (a plastic commonly used in packaging and other consumer goods applications), green chemicals manufacturer Gevo announces plans to scale-up production to meet “strong customer demand”.

Industry and Academic Biotech Partnership a Winning Play for Ohio

While most people associate The Buckeye State with football and farms, Ohio is also the number one manufacturer of polymers. By combining the latter two strengths the Ohio BioProducts Innovation Center, founded in 2005, is now yielding strong economic results.

Louisiana's Climate and Soil Are Assets for Algal Biomass Producers

Formerly of Maryland, Aquatic Energy finds Louisiana’s warm climate and clay soil an ideal place to grow and harvest algae for food and fuels.

News-in-Brief: June 27th, 2011

Amyris Finds Strength In Collaborations in Asia and Latin America

Synthetic biology company Amyris, Inc. will collaborate with Asian agribusiness giant Wilmar to develop NPE-alternative surfactants for use in consumer goods, personal care products and industrial applications and tackle the billion-dollar NPE surfactant market.

Amyris also entered into a joint venture with Brazilian biofuels manufacturer Cosan S.A. forming Novvi S.A., to scale-up the production and commercialization of renewable base oils, diversifying the uses for its green molecular building block Biofene.

Nestlé Talks Renewable Product Packaging 

Nestlé’s Global Head of Packaging and Design, Dr. Anne Roulin comments on the future of bioplastics and renewables for Nestle and the food industry.  

European Bioplastics Holds Board Elections

European Bioplastics elects a new Board: Rainer Barthel (Danone), Francesco Degli Innocenti (Novamont), Joeran Reske (Interseroh), and Harald Käb (narocon). Andy Sweetman (Innovia Films) was confirmed as Chairman. Jens Hamprecht (BASF) and Mark Vergauwen (NatureWorks) are Vice-Chairmen.

Dutch Company Avantium Completes Financing Round, Adding New Investors

Avantium has completed a EUR 25 million financing round with new investors Sofinnova Partners, Aster Capital and De Hoge Dennen as well as existing investors Aescap Venture, Capricorn Cleantech Fund, ING Corporate Investments and Navitas Capital.