While this is exciting, Valri Lightner of DOE noted that there aren't defined or agreed upon sustainability indicators or metrics. DOE grants and loans don't require companies to prove that they are exploring sustainable technologies or at the very least are monitoring sustainability. Hello... Life Cycle Assessment people!!
While metrics aren't defined by the agencies, I think that there are some clearly unarguable ones:
- don't use more feedstock than is available
- don't increase life cycle GWP or water emissions
- don't increase tailpipe emissions
- monitor those tradeoffs!
- diversify your portfolio- don't look for that silver bullet solution in just cellulose or just algae.
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Demographics:
ReplyDeleteMostly white men ~age 40 to 60.
Why is this surprising to me?
This Conference is primarily industry and small startups. I suppose I was harboring hope that there were more women and minorities in the business world. Alas, upon visual inspection (I don't have the actual demographics of the attendees!), the only difference I see between this group and my usual academic conference is that there are MORE white men, and that they appear to be about 10 years younger than the academics at conferences.
*sigh*
Day Two: Emerging Feedstocks
ReplyDeleteToday focuses on emerging feedstocks. That means algae and microbes that are 'feedstock agnostic' - that translates to bugs that will eat anything and turn it into useful and extractable chemicals.
The most interesting tidbits that I've picked up is that in order to be successful and resilient, biofuels companies need to produce useful co-products such as chemicals, polymers, and animal feed. Second, biofuels companies need to be able to maximize their use of existing infrastructure. Ok, so sure these are 'duh' tidbits, but tons of companies tried to produce biofuels in cool new ways, but they failed because they couldn't exist in a shaky market (they needed co-products!) and their infrastructure needs were to great to get them to scale.
So what does this mean for sustainability research? I have a few ideas...
*Our tools and models should incorporate and encourage co-production of valuable products
*Algae for biofuels don't necessarily need to maximize oil production; they can also be utilized to make PHA (see the project that Willie and I are working on to produce algae from wastewater!) or even ethanol.
*others?...
What I noticed is that not many companies, except for Dupont Applied BioSciences, mentioned about LCA. It is possible that this is because LCA is not the focus of this conference. But I think when they mentioned about sustainability or the environmental friendly, they should concern more than just less water, fertilizer or energy consumptions, but from LCA perspective.
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