Blogs

On March 8, 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) filed its brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit responding to two petitions for review of its conditional registration of a nanosilver pesticide product. NRDC v. EPA, No. 15-72308. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), as well as the Center for Food Safety (CFS) and International Center for Technology Assessment (ICTA), filed suit, asking the court to set aside EPA’s final order granting...

Advance Hardwood Biofuels Northwest (AHB) is a consortium of Pacific Northwest University and industry partners. AHB's new initiative, led by the University of Washington, supports a sustainable hardwood bioproducts and biofuels industry in the Pacific Northwest with a long-term goal of developing poplar-based biofuels and high value chemicals. Ken Zarker and Northwest Green Chemistry (NGC), a Biobased and Renewable Products Advocacy Group (BRAG®) member, have been working with the group...

On March 3, 2016, The Advocate reported that the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) fined a biodiesel plant run by The Renewable Energy Group (REG) $70,000 over a September 3, 2015, hydrogen gas explosion. The explosion injured four workers and resulted in three willful safety violations from OSHA. According to The Advocate, OSHA's citation stated that REG failed "to ensure a hazardous and flammable chemical was no longer in a plant pipeline that was under...

On March 7, 2016, DOE's BETO sent out a save the date for the upcoming Bioenergy 2016: Mobilizing the Bioeconomy through Innovation conference. The ninth annual conference is co-hosted by the Clean Energy Research & Education Foundation (CEREF) and will focus on future feedstock opportunities and technology innovations in pursuit of a stronger bioeconomy. The event will take place on July 12-14, 2016, at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. For more information...

DOE's Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) has announced the extension of the response deadline for a request for information (RFI) about public and private sector capabilities in pilot scale verification of biofuels and bioproducts processes. The RFI, originally posted on February 12, 2016, with a due date of March 4, 2016, requests information on facilities that have the "capability to perform process verifications for biomass conversion pathways to biofuels, bioproducts, or...

On March 3, 2016, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Research Centers (BRC) announced the 500th invention disclosure since 2007. The BRCs, which consist of the BioEnergy Science Center (Oak Ridge National Laboratory), the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center (University of Wisconsin-Madison and Michigan State University), and the Joint BioEnergy Institute (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), work to develop advanced biofuels technologies to bring to the marketplace. Created in...

On February 29, 2016, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced eight small business contracts through the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Program. The eight Phase II contracts provide the companies with $300,000 each to develop and commercialize innovative products that address environmental and public health issues. Phase II funding is typically made available to companies that have already been granted Phase I funding through the SBIR Program. This round of funding...

The Ministry for the Environment, Energy, and the Sea has posted a report, available only in French, entitled Éléments issus des déclarations des substances à l’état nanoparticulaire:  Rapport d’etude 2015.  The report analyzes nanomaterial registrations received in 2015 for reporting year 2014.  Under Decree No. 2012-232, companies that manufacture, import, and/or distribute a “substance with nanoparticle status” in an amount of at least 100 grams per year must submit an annual...

On March 2, 2016, the renewable diesel producer and Biobased and Renewable Products Advocacy Group (BRAG®) member Neste announced that Prince Ea is joining the Pre-order the Future Project. Prince Ea, a well known spoken word artist and environmentalist, will work with Neste's Pre-order the Future team as a futurologist, researching how renewable materials can be used to build innovative new products. The project is launching in Spring 2016 and will focus on sustainable living issues and...

On February 24, 2016, the four year DIBBIOPACK project ended with a final conference at the CaixaForum Congress Centre in Zaragoza and the AITIIP Technological Centre's (AITIIP) facilities. The project was created by AITIIP, a technology center based in Spain, supported by the European Commission, and included 19 partners that worked to develop multifunctional bioplastic packaging materials across a range of production processes. The project intended to improve structural and...