From left to right: Michael Doane, Monsanto; Maria Wellisch, Natural Resources Canada; McKenna Long and Alderidge rep; Terry McIntyre, Environment Canada. Photo Credit, Nigel Tunnacliffe.

The final session of the conference, called “Sustainable Development of Bioenergy and Biofuels Production Systems”, was the most representative of the relationship between industry and our government when it comes to biotechnology and biofuels. (more…)

I am sitting throught the third session in which the speaker claims to have solved the “food vs. fuel debate”. This particular company produces a biproduct which currently has no industrial use but it can be fed to cows. Therefore, the food vs. fuel problem is solved, right? Well he later mentioned that they are developing a way to turn the biproduct into ethanol.
Nice try. It’s just more PR - Predictable Rhetoric.

Yesterday two speakers made arguments for biofuels projects. One said that there are good and bad biofuels projects. That is difficult to argue with, especially when using a fallen tree on your yard to heat you home, or burning waste veg oil in a diesel engine are considered biofuel projects. The other speaker outlined for criteria for evaluating biofuel projects, which are as follows:
1. No displacement of food crops
2. No conversion of undeveloped land
3. No errosion, runoff, or NOx emissions
4. All GHG emissions assessed on full lifecycle
These guidelines are very well thought out, and would be good for determining the environmental sustainability of any given project.
The problem is that the projects these two gentlemen were promoting did not meet the criteria. In fact, I believe that the criteria statement is purely PR. The biofuels industry has a PR problem.

As an attendee at this event, I will be covering many of the sessions on generic engineering, biofuels, nanotechnology, and synthetic biology.
As best as I can, I will be posting short snippets via my iPhone, and then I will do a more in depth report at the end of the conference.
Stay tuned.

I haven’t spent much time discussing alternatives to petrolium on this blog, but it is an issue that I think is very important. I personally drive a car that runs on waste vegetable oil, or WVO, and I will write more about that technology at a later time.
Yesterday I drove a friend’s Toyota Prius, and the experience was quite different then any other car I have driven. I usually try to conserve fuel as much as possible, but driving a hybrid really changes how you think about driving. The highly graphical display shows you when the car is running on gas and when it is running on electricity, and it also gives you your fuel economy. All the feedback makes the driver highly motivated to conserve fuel.
While I think that hybrid technology is a great way to reduce consumption, I can’t help wondering if the graphics and feedback on fuel consumpion would increase the fuel economy of any vehicle. Perhaps non Prius drivers could get into hypermiling too.