Today, 22 April, is Mother Earth Day. It is an international event, supported by the United Nations. This year’s theme is: ‘It’s our turn to lead’. ‘The big decisions that lie ahead,’ explains UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, ‘are not … Read more
The production of levulinic acid is gaining momentum. Levulinic acid is one of the chemicals on the famous list of green ‘chemical building blocks’ of the US Department of Energy, some ten years ago. Chemical industry is organised around the … Read more
Sorry, we publish this article on Dutch research policy only in Dutch.
Green, oil-producing algae appear to be able to remove problematic pollutants from waste water. So they clean up the waste and produce fuel at the same time. Researchers of the US Rice University discovered that oil-producing algae can eliminate more … Read more
So far, the laws of marketing have been insufficiently dealt with in our articles on biotechnologically produced food, and consumer reaction to it. In marketing, all revolves around a very old principle: how do I position my product on the … Read more
Industry is going to embrace synthetic biology. It can hardly do otherwise, following the promises of higher yields, purer products and greatly reduced environmental impact. But will their customers accept that? This is the sixth article in a series on … Read more
Poor Rabobank! Potentially it is one of the main financiers of the biobased economy. But will it have to say goodbye to its successful cooperative model, whereas the biobased economy seems to need it now? Cooperative banking has powered its … Read more
In the tension between sustainability and efficiency something strange is going on: it seems as though the concepts belong to two different worlds, with separate languages. As becomes apparent from reading “The Master and his Emissary”, a 2010 book by … Read more
Agriculture and chemistry are moving closer to each other. If they would integrate, Rabobank’s Daan Dijk said at the World Bio Markets conference, they will trigger the 21st century innovation wave. Together they will form a new economic sector as … Read more
Last year, Ecover made a courageous decision. It decided to kick out palm kernel oil (widely known for its shaky sustainability) as a feedstock for many of its detergents, and replace it by a bio-equivalent oil produced by engineered algae. … Read more
A ‘disruptive technology’, that is what Elevance Renewable Sciences calls the metathesis reaction on which the company is built; never omitting the proud words ‘Nobel Prize winning’ (Chemistry, 2005). They use it to turn their feedstock, mainly palm oil (but … Read more
Synthetic biology offers us a countless number of opportunities to reshape natural materials, and even our food. Yes, that would mean synthetic food. Many people would dismiss this right away as a viable opportunity, but it might be worthwhile to … Read more
Novamont is an Italian company that aims to develop materials and biochemicals through the integration of chemistry and agriculture. It is one of the flagships of the rapidly expanding Italian bioeconomy. At the World Bio Markets conference in Amsterdam, we … Read more
Yesterday’s article was about Friends of the Earth’s problems with vanillin sold on the market by Evolva. This substance is produced by organisms modified by synthetic biology, but nevertheless called ‘natural’ by permit of US agencies, because its production involves … Read more
Last year, Friends of the Earth launched a campaign called ‘Extreme Genetic Engineering in Your Ice Cream?’, directed against ‘natural’ vanillin produced by genetically modified yeasts. It got assurances from major ice cream producers like Häagen Dasz that they would … Read more
One of the main concerns about world food supply is the production of proteins. Lux Research, in a new study, suggests that ‘the current dominance of meat and seafood will wane in the coming decades,’ and that ‘several alternative protein … Read more
Public judgement surprises biotechnological researchers again and again. Sometimes it is surprisingly favourable, like in the case of the development of artemisinin, an anti-malarial drug, using modified organisms. Often it is unfavourable, like when public judgement was squarely negative on … Read more
Today and tomorrow is Global Divestment Day, the day when concerned citizens around the world ask institutional investors like universities and pension funds to withdraw their investments from fossil fuel companies. Because, as gofossilfree.org puts it, ‘as governments fail to … Read more
The Myco Design Lab of the international art foundation Mediamatic based in Amsterdam, links the worlds of industry and art. This program is about everything we can do with mycelium, the predominantly underground fungi threads or hyphae that form the … Read more
We should create a carbon tax now, as energy prices are low, said the British economist Paul Ekins last week in The Hague, at a conference on green growth. That will allow us to start the necessary transformation towards taxation … Read more
This site recently ran fine stories about more sugar, soon on the market in North-western Europe; industry will process that to bioethanol and further to bioethylene, with ethylene oxide and ethylene glycol in its trail. That is the basis for … Read more
In the future, we might not blow, mould or cast most of our materials, but grow them. That is, if we embrace mycelium, the ultimate biobased material: fully green, growing on any substrate (particularly on waste) and fully biodegradable. We … Read more
Nothing is wrong with bioenergy; something is wrong with the ambitions that its proponents have: bioenergy should save the climate. Because that ambition would require the production of biomass in amounts beyond the capabilities of agriculture and forestry; or else … Read more
Sorry, we publish the review of this book ‘Connecting Industries’ only in Dutch.
At first sight, the discussion was quite adequate at the meeting ‘A sustainable bioeconomy in 2030: are we on the right track?’. Organised by the Dutch Commission on Biomass Sustainability Issues, usually called Corbey commission after its chairwoman. But beneath … Read more
‘Companies that consider the construction of a factory for biobased bulk chemicals, will have to consider Europe. Some years ago, this was quite different. Nobody even considered the option of going to Europe; the United States, Brazil and Thailand were … Read more
At EFIB, last October, the most brilliant lecture – in my humble opinion – was delivered by Johanna Buchert, a Finnish professor who works at VTT, the Technical Research Centre of Finland. She showed the vast range of products that … Read more
Energy efficiency is our cheapest energy source, with a very large potential. It has been so for forty years and will probably continue to be so for decades to come. And yet, 99% of energy policy and energy debate is … Read more
Marine biotechnology is a challenging field of research with the prospect of very interesting discoveries like new antibiotics, cosmetics and food additives – albeit with few commercial projects so far. Both the very demanding environments (some very hot, some down … Read more