Wallace's Farmer, IA
090-26-07
ISU Bioeconomy Conference Set for Nov. 5-6
Rod Swoboda rswoboda@farmprogress.com
Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla told last year's Biobased Industry Outlook
Conference at Iowa State University why he believes fuel blends containing 85%
ethanol can replace this country's gasoline supply. Khosla – who says he's
invested "tens of millions of dollars" in private companies developing ethanol
production technologies – ticked off several reasons: Political and special interest
groups back ethanol, there's land to grow new energy crops, ethanol's energy
balance and emissions are good. "The single most important issue for me is how
many miles can you drive per acre of land," he says. Today's technologies
produce about 500 gallons of ethanol per acre. In 25 years he believes
production could jump to about 3,000 gallons per acre. What else is he saying
about ethanol and the bioeconomy these days? Khosla – co-founder of Sun
Microsystems and founder of Khosla Ventures in Menlo Park, Calif. – will share
his views during a keynote address at the 2007 Biobased Industry Outlook
Conference, "Growing the Bioeconomy," Nov. 5 and 6 at the Iowa State Center
on the Ames campus. He's scheduled to speak at 12:30 p.m., Tuesday, Nov. 6 in
Hilton Coliseum.
Farmers and others invited to attend
The conference is targeted for elected officials, economic development
professionals, manufacturers of biobased products, biofuel producers, farmers,
bioprocessing engineers and venture capitalists. Presentations cover plant
sciences; feedstock production; conversion of biomass into fuels and products;
bioproducts use and energy efficiency; conservation and sustainability; and
economics and policy. Early registration for the two-day conference (including a
welcome breakfast, two lunches, receptions and materials) is $219 before Oct 1.
and $299 after. Student rate is $139.Conference information is at
www.bioeconomyconference.org and registration information is at
www.ucs.iastate.edu/mnet/bio2007/quickregister.html. Khosla isn't the only big
name who will address the conference about the future of the bioeconomy. J.
Craig Venter – the scientist who engaged the publicly funded Human Genome
Project in a race to map the human genome and who recently announced he had
sequenced his own genome – will address the conference at 9:15 a.m. on Nov. 5
in Hilton Coliseum.Venter is founder and president of the non-profit J. Craig
Venter Institute and a co-founder of Synthetic Genomics, Inc., in Rockville, Md.
The company is using genomics in a variety of ways to design or engineer
microbes that can efficiently produce fuels. "Genomics is going to do for the
energy and chemical field what it did in the early 1990s for medical
biotechnology," says Venter.
Speakers are a who's who in bioenergy
Also addressing the conference will be Broin, chief executive for the POET
biofuel company; Phil Frederickson, executive vice president of strategy and
corporate affairs for ConocoPhillips; Suzanne Hunt, bioenergy project manager
for the independent Worldwatch Institute that advocates for a sustainable world;
and Jeremy Tomkinson, executive director of the National Non-Food Crops
Centre, the United Kingdom's national center for biorenewables. The
conference's primary sponsors are ISU's Office of Biorenewables Programs,
ISU Plant Sciences Institute, Iowa State University Extension,
ConocoPhillips and Pioneer/DuPont. Last year's conference attracted 620
people.