Fulcrum BioEnergy has awarded a $200 million fixed-price engineering, procurement and construction (“EPC”) contract to Abengoa for the construction of Fulcrum’s first municipal solid waste (“MSW”) to transportation fuels facility, the Sierra BioFuels Plant. The Sierra BioFuels Plant will utilize Fulcrum’s process for converting everyday household garbage that would otherwise be landfilled, into renewable syncrude that will be upgraded to jet fuel.
“The bioeconomy provides new markets and opportunities for growth, which we would like to take advantage of.” To say it was last Friday Herman Onko Aikens, Minister of Agriculture and the Environment of German Region Saxony-Anhalt at the fourth International Bioeconomy Conference was held in Halle (Saale). It was organized by the ScienceCampus Halle – Plant-based Bioeconomy and the BioEconomy Cluster, a Leading-Edge Cluster of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. More than 180 international experts in science, politics and the economy discussed the conditions and opportunities surrounding the transition away from petroleum towards renewable, bio-based raw materials. The conference at the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO) demonstrated the key role the bioeconomy will play in Saxony-Anhalt’s future.
PaperFoam , a young and innovative packaging company based in the Netherlands and specialized in biobased packaging solutions with very low carbon footprint, won the DieLine Sustainable Packaging Award 2015 for its Naturally Clicquot 2, an eco-packaging design solution made from PaperFoam material for champagne producer Veuve Clicquot.
AkzoNobel has finalized the €153 million divestment of its global paper chemicals business to Kemira. The deal was first announced in July 2014.
“This is another important step in our strategy to focus on leading positions in bleaching chemicals, colloidal silica and expandable microspheres,” says Niek Stapel, Managing Director Pulp and Performance Chemicals. “The deal includes an agreement for distribution of colloidal silica to the paper industry and we are looking forward to future growth of this product line.”
FrieslandCampina, one of the world’s five largest dairy companies with annual revenue of 11.3 billion euro, plans to introduce a new bio-based beverage carton over the next 1.5 years, starting with fresh milk and buttermilk from Campina in June 2015. For the production of the cap and the coating certified organic waste material is purchased. The paper in the carton was already renewable and this innovation makes it – Dutch company says – the most sustainable beverage carton ever. The CO2 footprint of this bio-based milk carton is 20% lower than the current carton. This is a scoop on the Dutch market.
A draft law to cap crop-derived biofuel production and accelerate the shift to alternative sources was voted by Parliament on Tuesday. It aims to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions caused by the growing use of farm land for biofuel crops. Parliament has been calling since 2008 for the ILUC factor to be taken into account in EU biofuels policy, while biofuels grown on farm land have received up to €10 billion per year in public subsidies.
Global packaging is expected to be a USD 975 billion industry by 2018 with an annual growth rate of 4% which is a key driver for the use of bioplastics. In addition, numerous countries across the world implementing stringent regulations for the use of bio-based polymers for packaging is expected to fuel market growth over the next six years. To say this is a new report published by Grand View Research, Inc., a market analysis company based in California.
Bayer MaterialScience, a Bayer Group company among the world’s largest polymer companies with 2014 sales of 11.7 billion euro, is introducing a range of waterborne, bio-based polyurethane (PU) dispersions under the Impranil® eco name. With a renewable content that reaches as high as 65 percent, this product class contributes to a further reduction of CO2emissions, thus further improving the sustainability of waterborne PU. The products are part of the INSQIN® program for waterborne PU for textiles.
According to Reuters, EU antitrust regulators have raided several bioethanol companies suspected of fixing prices and at the same time stepped up their two-year investigation into possible rigging of biofuel price benchmarks by including a company in Spain in the case.
Scientists focused on producing biofuels more efficiently have a new powerful dataset to help them study the DNA of microbes that fuel bioconversion and other processes.
In a paper published in Nature Scientific Data, researchers from the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, North Carolina State University and LanzaTech describe methods and results for sequencing the Clostridium autoethanogenum bacterium. These and other microorganisms play important roles in biofuels, agriculture, food production, the environment, health and disease.
IL BIOECONOMISTA 