The 31st Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals
One of the world’s most prestigious and established biofuels meetings, the 31st Symposium on Biotechnology for Fuels and Chemicals, is currently underway May 3-6 in San Francisco, with more than 800 scientists expected to attend sessions on topics ranging from commercialization of biofuels and their long-term sustainability to emerging technologies and turning algae into fuel.
We’re liveblogging (on Twitter) [...]
Yesterday’s Post-Dispatch had a story on the front page of the Business section that immediately caught my eye: St. Louis-based agribiz giant Monsanto has started blogging (and Twittering and YouTube-ing).
That’s right: Monsanto, the company many of us in the sustainability sphere love to hate, has entered the conversation.
That, on the surface, is a good thing.
Of course, the devil’s in the details. As occasional contributor Max Gladwell pointed out in “10 Ways that Social Media and Sustainability Line Up,” social media can provide a high return on investment for a business… provided its efforts are grounded in transparency. I’d add that such efforts must also be based in a genuine desire to interact: social media is conversation, and all parties have to both talk and listen. Without these elements, a corporate blog will strike its intended audience as just another effort at message control.
Monsanto’s blog also seems to validate another of Max’s points: much of the content so far has consisted of responses to grassroots criticisms of the company ventures into biotechnology, particularly genetic engineering of crop seeds. As blogger and public affairs manager John Combest told the P-D, “”There was this big conversation going on (on the Internet), and we weren’t a part of it.”
So, how’s the company doing in its initial forray into the blogosphere?
At this point, I’d argue they still have a lot to learn.
By Reenita Malhotra •
October 3, 2008
In the India Energy Conference 2008 just held in New Delhi by The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in association with Petroleum Federation of India (PetroFed) reiterated the fact that as one of the fastest growth economies of the world, India’s energy strategy is critical for achieving her development objectives and that government and corporations must improve access to economically viable, socially acceptable and environmentally sustainable energy sources.
By Nick Chambers •
August 5, 2008
Imagine a grass crop, grown on marginal, non-food bearing land without pesticides or much fertilizer, that, when harvested, produces an oil that needs almost no processing to be substituted for diesel fuel.
Much attention has been given to producing ethanol from non-food crops like grasses, but the ability to produce something indistinguishable to diesel from grass could be a game-changer. It would require almost no infrastructure change and could fuel all of the existing long-haul trucks on the road without modification.
Ceres, Inc. supports the prediction that we could grow more than 30% of US transportation fuel with dedicated energy crops. This is no pipe dream: planting starts next spring.
Ceres, Inc., the self-described “energy crop company,” is engineering plants that could play a big role in the future of sustainable biofuels. In stark contrast to food crops, what Ceres is in the business of creating are “dedicated energy crops”—like switchgrass, sorghum, and miscanthus—that are ideally suited for fuel production.
While the global “food vs. fuel” debate rages on, a few companies like Ceres are quietly moving forward with next generation technology that challenges many of the current assumptions about growing fuel. In their view, it’s time to move the conversation on from corn-based controversy to second-generation, non-food based sources of ethanol.
By Carol Gulyas •
March 2, 2008
Craig Venter, who mapped his own genome and jump-started the biotechnology business, announced this week that he is turning his attention to the creation of fourth-generation fuels — life forms that feed on CO2 and generate methane fuel as waste. The challenge, according to Venter, is not in creating the organisms to consume CO2, which already exist, it is extracting the CO2 in quantities large enough to create a fuel supply. [...]
By Janel Sterbentz •
February 8, 2008
Any time you eat non-organic food, there is a 70 percent chance you are ingesting genetically modified organisms (GMOs). Modern genetic modification is different from historical alterations–such as plant breeding–because today, genes are transferred from one species to another. For instance, when you eat GM food, there is a good chance it has been injected with genes from the bacteria Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt)—hence Bt Corn.
Are these GM foods a path to end world hunger and ensure a robust harvest in the face of possible harsh future climates? Or, is it a way for corporations to gain global control over agriculture for profit, releasing organisms that have unknown effects on the environment and human health?
According to the USDA, in 1996, less than 5 percent of soy products were genetically modified. Within 12 years, that amount increased to 90 percent. These have been in our foods for over a decade and as far as we can tell, nothing has really gone wrong. Is that why most Americans are not hearing about GMOs?
