Technical Program

Major efforts in the last two decades have developed processes and projects that have advanced the field while also facing technical, operational and economic learnings and challenges. This presentation provides historical context for the overall development programs, along with direct experience from developing and scaling multiple biomass feedstock processes to produce fuels, chemicals, and other products. Solutions in the circular bioeconomy are integrated from start to finish, with interrelated elements from crops through harvesting/aggregation, pretreatment, conversion processes/platforms, separation processes, coproducts, lignin valorization, etc. Case studies reviewed in this talk build on anecdotal “Lessons Learned” to create a dataset to guide future development areas and focus.

The U.S. bioeconomy offers opportunities to diversify energy options and deliver environmental enhancements. The 2023 Billion-Ton Report (U.S. DOE, 2024) estimates the US can produce 0.3–1.3 billion tons of biomass annually beyond current uses. These resources can be converted into fuels, chemicals, and products, while supporting land management and rural economies. In parallel, investments from major corporations highlight demand for environmental benefits that biomass systems can provide. At present, supply chain gaps and market uncertainty reinforce “chicken-and-egg” barriers to broader deployment. This presentation will examine how near-term, small-scale bioeconomy opportunities can be leveraged to establish flexible and resilient supply chains, which can respond to a range of future market, policy, and technology conditions.

Lignocellulosic biomass has a variety of challenges for wide-spread deployment as a renewable feedstock for biomanufacturing. These include low bulk density, inherent variability, sensitivity to climate/weather, and high resistance to conversion. However, over the past decades researchers have identified a variety of strategies to overcome many of the logistical and technical challenges inherent to working with lignocellulosic biomass. This presentation will provide an overview of these challenges and strategies and pose some possibilities for how lignocellulosic biomanufacturing could be implemented in the future. 

Replacing fossil feedstocks with renewable biomass is a key element of a successful circular bioeconomy. The carbon needed for bioproducts abounds in the environment, but it is locked into materials that are not yet cost-effective to use. Schmidt Sciences’ Virtual Institute on Feedstocks of the Future (VIFF), with support from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR), takes on the challenge of “turning the carbon we have into the carbon we want.” VIFF is a five-year research consortium of consortia engaging universities, national laboratories, and industry and community partners. VIFF’s mission is to expand the science, technology, and engineering available to advance the use of underutilized biomass byproducts in bioproduction, creating new economic and environmental benefits. Launched in 2024, VIFF funds five interdisciplinary teams of researchers, crowding in expertise from chemical, biological, and mechanical engineering, economics, marine biology, agricultural extension, community outreach, and more. Each project team focuses its innovative research on different obstacles and opportunities associated with specific prospective “future feedstocks,” processing and conversion technologies, and regional biomass utilization. Collectively, these project teams collaborate and share knowledge to help build a future in which nontraditional biomass feedstocks bring us closer to a sustainable and circular bioeconomy. Early findings indicate that the program is poised to make significant, real-world impacts, building on the projects’ active engagement with industry leaders and stakeholders.

The vision of JBEI (www.jbei.org) is that bioenergy crops can be converted into economically viable, carbon-neutral, biofuels and renewable chemicals currently derived from petroleum, and many other bioproducts that cannot be efficiently produced from petroleum. JBEI’s mission is to establish the scientific knowledge and new technologies in feedstock development, deconstruction and separation, and conversion needed to transform the maximum amount of carbon available in bioenergy crops into biofuels and bioproducts. When fully scaled, JBEI’s technologies will enable the production of replacements for petroleum derived gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and bioproducts. In doing so, JBEI will reduce the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels, significantly reduce the amount of carbon added to the atmosphere, reduce contamination of the environment, and provide the scientific tools and knowledge required to transform the bioenergy marketplace. Inside JBEI’s Emeryville laboratories, researchers use the latest tools in molecular biology, chemical engineering, computational and robotic technologies, and pioneering work in synthetic biology to transform biomass sugars into biofuels and a variety of bioproducts. As we want to maximize the overall carbon conversion efficiency of bioenergy crops, JBEI has focused on two microbial hosts that have been demonstrated to be able to co-metabolize sugars and lignin-derived intermediates, Pseudomonas putida and Rhodosporidum toruloides, and produce a targeted range of sustainable aviation fuels. This presentation highlights the latest advances at JBEI in terms of bioenergy crops, deconstruction technologies, and microbial production of advanced aviation fuels.

The emergence of biorefineries producing multiple products from renewable biomass feedstocks has long been anticipated as a key component of a sustainable, circular economy. However, with perhaps a few exceptions such biorefineries have been slow to emerge as indicated by both the deployment of cellulosic biofuels and the stock value of industrial biotechnology companies falling short of expectations. The speaker will offer perspectives on understanding this slow emergence and reasons to persist in biorefinery development and deployment. Dimensions considered will include feedstock availability and choice, conversion technology, product demand and choice, business models, and climate stabilization.