Advanced Biofuels Leadership Conference

The ABLC commenced this morning with invigorating presentations from the DC legislation. Invigorating because they all called for the biofuels company leaders present to make sure that what they're doing is truly sustainable. YES! That's what we're about at SGD!

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
  

and some tips:

• monitor those tradeoffs!
• diversify your portfolio- don't look for that silver bullet solution in just cellulose or just algae.

more to come as the Conference progresses...