Biobased Products ‘Our Silicon Valley,’ Nebraska Governor Says

The federal government’s multibillion-dollar investments to develop plant- and microbe-based products and markets for them offers the US profound opportunities, says Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R).

But high interest rates for loans and the need for carbon offset measurement methods are among the challenges that must be addressed to realize that opportunity, other speakers said Nov. 12 at an Alternative Fuels & Chemicals Coalition conference.

The conference is taking place a year after President Joe Biden issued an executive order requiring agencies to push forward the development of products derived from plants, trees, microorganisms, and food wastes. Agencies also must help develop carbon impact and other information and technologies to enable biological resources to help address climate change, food security, energy independence, and environmental sustainability, according to the order.

“The biobased economy is gigantic for the future. It’s our Silicon Valley,” said Pillen, Nebraska’s first farmer-turned-governor. He started both Pillen Family Farms and DNA Genetics, which develops swine with useful feed efficiency and meat characteristics.

Biden’s biotechnology order will have as great an impact as former President George W. Bush’s renewable fuels policy, Pillen said.

He referred to the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (Public Law 110-140), which is credited with the dramatic rise in US biofuel production and use, particularly corn ethanol.

Cargill Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc., and KPMG International Limited, a multinational accounting organization, are among the speakers at a conference that continues near Washington, D.C., through Tuesday.

California Drives Data

Companies doing business in California can benefit from research, services, and products the executive order intends to spur, said Jay Golden, director of Syracuse University’s Dynamic Sustainability Lab.

California, the world’s fifth largest economy, “just leapfrogged over everyone” through legislation that became law last month that requires companies to start reporting carbon emissions from the energy used for operations and outputs beginning in 2026, he said.

Indirect emissions reports, such as those from a company’s supply chain, start in 2027.

“This is changing the game,” Golden said. Companies will need to know the carbon intensity of their products, and agricultural products will play a huge role, he said.

Data and standards that allow analysts to know whether one agricultural product or another is more effective at achieving net-zero carbon emissions or better are essential, said Venki Kumar, a director at KPMG.

New types of insurance and creative approaches to financing in a world where interest rates make loans costly and hinder venture capital investments also are needed, speakers and audience participants said.

USDA Awards $3 Billion

Spending directed by the executive order is supporting initiatives to measure farm-enabled carbon sequestration, research on ways to increase that sequestration, and research on the use of plants and microbes to make active pharmaceutical ingredients, federal agency speakers said.

The order also builds on existing efforts like the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Grand Challenge and the Billion Ton report on the amount of biomass available for biofuel, biopower, and bioproducts, said Valerie Sarisky Reed, Bioenergy Technologies Office Director at the Department of Energy (DOE). The 2023 Billion Ton report is in development.

DOE is hosting a Sustainable Aviation Fuel financing workshop in New York City on Tuesday.

The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded more than $3 billion in loans and grants in September to help agricultural producers and forest landowners both conserve land and adopt climate-smart practices.

Funded projects include researching camelina, a cover crop that could be used in winter to provide a low carbon nonfood renewable fuel feedstock and low-carbon corn for sustainable aviation fuel production, said Gregory Jaffe, a senior adviser in the USDA secretary’s office.

Two reports stemming from the executive order were released on Monday. The first summarizes views interested parties shared with federal agencies about the ambiguities, gaps, and uncertainties they experience in the federal biotechnology regulatory system. The second describes the current regulatory system used by four agencies.

A third report describing ways the government proposes to ease problems the public described will be developed, but the timeline for producing it isn’t clear, Jaffe said.

‘Good Business’

Sustainable farming that creates products with lower carbon scores is good business and involves building upon practices farmers already are doing, Pillen said.

Pillen Family Farms irrigates 80% of its land with large sprinklers called pivots, he said. “We don’t even drive out to the field anymore. We start our pivots with cell phones.”

“We’ll know how much fossil fuels is used per acre,” Pillen said.

Farmers should own the data they produce and keep making improvements that give them credit for their carbon reduction efforts, he said. “We’ll be rewarded for what we’ve done; the data and science will win out.”