The National Bioeconomy Blueprint describes five strategic objectives for a bioeconomy with the potential to generate economic growth and address societal needs.

1. Support R&D investments that will provide the foundation for the future U.S. bioeconomy.“Coordination of Federal bioeconomy-related research activities can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of those investments and is especially important when budget growth is constrained. Coordinated strategic programs and targeted investments will accelerate progress in biological research and technology areas, and this in turn will drive discovery for an American bioeconomy.”Moving Forward: Coordinated, integrated R&D efforts will help strategically shape the national bioeconomy R&D agenda.

2. Facilitate the transition of bioinventions from research lab to market, including an increased focus on translational and regulatory sciences.“If it is to be successful and thrive, the bioeconomy will be based on a steady flow of new products and services that address American needs. To ensure this flow, policies must be developed and taxpayer dollars must be used responsibly to foster an ecosystem that supports discovery, innovation, and commercialization.”Moving Forward: A dedicated commitment to translational efforts will accelerate movement of bioinventions out of laboratories and into markets.

3. Develop and reform regulations to reduce barriers, increase the speed and predictability of regulatory processes, and reduce costs while protecting human and environmental health.“Regulations are essential for protecting human health and the environment and reducing safety and security risks associated with potential misapplications of technology. When they are not carefully crafted or become outdated, however, they can become barriers to innovation and market expansion and discourage investment.”Moving forward: Improved regulatory processes will help rapidly and safely achieve the promise of the future bioeconomy.

4. Update training programs and align academic institution incentives with student training for national workforce needs.“Many jobs in science and technology-related businesses remain unfilled despite high rates of local unemployment. Opportunities exist to enhance training efforts at all levels to keep pace with changing career pathways.”Moving forward: Federal agencies should take steps to ensure that the future bioeconomy has a sustainable and appropriately-trained workforce.

5. Identify and support opportunities for the development of public-private partnerships and precompetitive collaborations—where competitors pool resources, knowledge, and expertise to learn from successes and failures.“Partnerships enable private industry, government agencies, and academic institutions to pool resources and expertise around an idea, dramatically improving chances for success. Many companies do not invest in early ideas because they are unlikely to pay off immediately.This is one place where the government can play a crucial role.”Moving forward: Federal agencies should provide incentives for public-private partnerships and precompetitive collaborations to benefit the bioeconomy broadly.

Complete Bioeconomy Blueprint (PDF)

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CLEAN GREEN SCAMBiofuel producers and oil refiners were roiled last October when the federal government charged Rodney Hailey, the owner of Clean Green Fuel, with carrying out a $9 million scam involving the distribution of 32 million fake credits, or renewable identification numbers.Oil companies are required to purchase RIN credits from producers of renewable fuel to comply with federal targets for biofuel output.OceanConnect bought more than 27.7 million credits from Clean Green Fuel between November 2009 and December 2010, some of which it later resold to various companies.Companies that used the fake credits from Clean Green Fuel, including Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, to meet their renewable fuel obligations, were served with notices of violation from EPA in November of last year and now face fines of up to $37,500 a day per violation.Earlier this year, another company, Absolute Fuels, was also cited by the EPA for issuing more than 48 million fake credits.DUE DILIGENCE?The EPA has maintained that companies are ultimately responsible for ensuring that the credits they purchase are valid.The agency declined to comment on the OceanConnect lawsuit, but pointed out that 30 of 33 companies that used the fake credits to meet the renewable target have agreed to settle with the EPA and pay “modest” penalties.”When fuel credits are used that do not represent actual renewable fuel, regardless of a company’s good faith belief that the RINs were valid, it undermines Congress’ goals in creating the program, creates market uncertainty and is a violation of the standard,” the EPA said.With some OceanConnect customers demanding to be reimbursed for the fake credits, OceanConnect has charged that the EPA did not properly vet Clean Green.”As traders in these financial instruments we did our due diligence, unfortunately EPA didn’t do its due diligence in registering these individuals,” OceanConnect President Eric Rubury told Reuters.In its lawsuit, OceanConnect said the EPA was aware of the possible fraud for months before it notified market participants, and during some of this time Clean Green continued to sell fake credits.The EPA’s approach to fraud in the RIN market has been that companies have to replace the invalid credits that they may have used, Rubury said.”It is really nothing more than a fine on the parties who did no wrong, broke no laws, violated no regulations,” he said.The government’s response has basically frozen the market for renewable energy credits, threatening the survival of small biodiesel producers, Rubury added.Top Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works committee have raised concerns about the EPA’s oversight of the renewable energy mandate since these fraud cases were revealed.

Trading firm sues US EPA over biofuel credit scam | Reuters

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In California, OriginOil reports that, in recent independent third-party testing, the company’s algae harvesting process was able to remove 98% of hydrocarbons from a sample of West Texas oil well ‘frac flowback’ water in the first stage alone. Frac flowback describes water used in a drilling process called ‘hydraulic fracturing’, or ‘fracking’.This test sample was taken from an oil well from which 200,000 gallons of oil-rich water flowed back over a period of two weeks. The water resources firm PACE Engineering supplied the sample and analyzed the resultsAccording to OriginOil, Greentech Media states that energy companies pay between $3 – $12 to dispose of each barrel of produced water.

OriginOil’s algae harvest technology removes 98% of hydrocarbons from frac flowback : Biofuels Digest

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The Intermittency Challenge and the approaching need for massive storage of rapidly dispatchable energy has led the concept of the National Battery, a unified facility that holds the aggregated outputs from an array of intrinsically episodic renewable sources, releasing energy as demand requires. In this contribution, the original demonstration of Murphy that lead-acid batteries are inappropriate is first reviewed and then extended to show that no commercially available battery technology is at present appropriate. However, prospectively, underground pumped hydro storage could suffice, and at a lesser cost than suitable batteries.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.02.027

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This paper quantifies the relative cost-savings of utilizing a greenhouse gas emissions-weighted Clean Energy Standard (CES) in comparison to a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS). Using a bottom-up electricity sector model for Hawaii, this paper demonstrates that a policy that gives “clean energy” credit to electricity technologies based on their cardinal ranking of lifecycle GHG emissions, normalizing the highest-emitting unit to zero credit, can reduce the costs of emissions abatement by up to 90% in comparison to a typical RPS. A GHG emissions-weighted CES provides incentive to not only pursue renewable sources of electricity, but also promotes fuel-switching among fossil fuels and improved generation efficiencies at fossil-fired units. CES is found to be particularly cost-effective when projected fossil fuel prices are relatively low.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enpol.2012.01.068

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We find that the potential for sustainable bioenergy from residues and waste, complementary fellings, energy crops and algae oil in 2050 is 340 EJ a−1 of primary energy. This potential is then compared to the demand for biomass-based energy in the demand scenario related to this study, the Ecofys Energy Scenario [1]. This scenario, after applying energy efficiency and non-bioenergy renewable options, requires a significant contribution of bioenergy to meet the remaining energy demand; 185 EJ a−1 of the 340 EJ a−1 potential supply. For land use for energy crops, we find that a maximum of 2,500,000 km2 is needed of a 6,730,000 km2 sustainable potential. For greenhouse gas emissions from bioenergy, a 75%–85% reduction can be achieved compared to fossil references.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biombioe.2011.12.049

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