MORE NEWS, 3-24 (NEW VOLUNTARY TRADING MARKET KICKS OFF; INNOVATION WANTED, APPLY D.C.; CAL TECH CLOSER TO BIOFUEL ENZYME REFINING)

NEW VOLUNTARY TRADING MARKET KICKS OFF
APX Launches Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) Registry; Extends APX Leadership in Global Carbon, Serving More Than 50% of Voluntary Markets
Reiner Musier, March 17, 2009 (APX)
and
The Voluntary Carbon Markets
Kate Hamilton, Reiner Musier and Milo Sjardin (APX)

"APX Inc., the leading infrastructure provider for environmental and energy markets, … has launched a state-of-the-art greenhouse gas transaction registry and related services for the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS) Association, a leading international standards organization. The APX VCS Registry adds to the unparalleled coverage that APX provides for the global carbon markets, including the Gold Standard Registry and the Climate Action Reserve, a program of the California Climate Action Registry."

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"The Registry enables the issuance, transfer, tracking, retirement and custodial services for VCS carbon credits worldwide. It also supports the VCS Association’s mission to ensure quality assurance for the world’s carbon markets through a global program for approval of credible voluntary carbon offsets, or Voluntary Carbon Units (VCUs). APX is also the exclusive solution provider for the VCS Association’s centralized project database that will present information on all VCS projects and issued VCUs, list relevant project-related documents, and track the status of issued VCUs…"

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"The web-based system will create trusted and tradable voluntary offset credits, provide a clear chain of ownership for voluntary offsets that prevents double-counting, and stimulate investments in emissions reductions and low carbon solutions…

"APX [-a privately held company-] is the leading infrastructure provider for environmental and energy markets in renewable energy and greenhouse gases including carbon commodities. Providing a bank and mint for environmental commodities, APX solutions are trusted to create, track, manage, and retire renewable energy certificates (RECs), energy efficiency and conservation certificates, carbon offset credits such as verified emissions reductions (VERs), and greenhouse gas emission allowances. The company is the solution of choice for every major renewable energy market in North America and greenhouse gas markets worldwide…"


INNOVATION WANTED, APPLY D.C.
Obama and Energy Chief Push Innovation
Andrew C. Revkin, March 23, 2009 (NY Times)

"Three months ago [The Times] asked, “Are Chemists, Engineers on Green Jobs List?” The answer appears to be yes.

"In a two-pronged push, President Obama and Steven Chu, the secretary of energy and Nobel laureate in physics, [laid out] the administration’s plans to link economic renewal with an energy revolution."

The idea is to turn this around... (click to enlarge)

"Mr. Obama met with energy-technology entrepreneurs and researchers near the White House at an event called “Investing in Our Clean Energy Future.” One highlight is $400 million set aside under the economic-recovery bill for an advanced research agency for energy, Arpa-E, modeled along the lines of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency."

...By getting the federal government to do its share. (click to enlarge)

"On eastern Long Island, Dr. Chu had a somewhat wistful air as he toured projects at Brookhaven National Laboratory…his first stop at a national laboratory since taking his cabinet job…He peppered staff scientists and engineers with questions about physics projects related to the origins of the universe and possible causes of Alzheimer’s disease before being nudged forward by hurried aides. He was there to announce how $1.2 billion in the stimulus bill would be spent on science projects at Brookhaven and elsewhere around the country’s network of 10 national laboratories…"


CALTECH CLOSER TO BIOFUEL ENZYME REFINING
Caltech scientists create new enzymes for biofuel production; Enzymes are important step toward cheaper biofuels
Kathy Svitil, 23 March 2009 (Cal Tech via EurekAlert)

"Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and world-leading gene-synthesis company DNA2.0 have taken an important step toward the development of a cost-efficient process to extract sugars from cellulose--the world's most abundant organic material and cheapest form of solar-energy storage. Plant sugars are easily converted into a variety of renewable fuels such as ethanol or butanol.

"…Frances H. Arnold, the Dick and Barbara Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biochemistry at Caltech, and her colleagues report the construction of 15 new highly stable fungal enzyme catalysts that efficiently break down cellulose into sugars at high temperatures…[and] over a wide range of conditions."

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"…Most biofuels used today are made from the fermentation of starch from corn kernels. That process, although simple, is costly because of the high price of the corn kernels themselves…Agricultural waste, such as corn stover (the leaves, stalks, and stripped cobs of corn plants, left over after harvest), is cheap. These materials are largely composed of cellulose, the chief component of plant-cell walls. Cellulose is far tougher to break down…[and] requires a whole suite of enzymes, or cellulases, working in concert.

"The [10] cellulases currently used industrially, all of which were isolated from various species of plant-decaying filamentous fungi, are both slow and unstable, and, as a result, the process remains prohibitively expensive…Arnold and Caltech postdoctoral scholar Pete Heinzelman created the 15 new enzymes using a process called structure-guided recombination. Using a computer program to design where the genes recombine, the Caltech researchers "mated" …more than 6,000 progeny sequences that were different…yet encoded proteins with the same structure and cellulose-degradation ability."

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"…the Caltech and DNA2.0 researchers were able to predict which of the more than 6,000 possible new enzymes would [have thermostability]…a requirement of efficient cellulases, because at higher temperatures--say, 70 or even 80 degrees Celsius--chemical reactions are more rapid. In addition, cellulose swells at higher temperatures, which makes it easier to break down…cellulases from nature typically won't function at temperatures higher than about 50 degrees Celsius…[C]oauthor Jeremy Minshull and colleagues from DNA2.0…synthesized [a yeast that produced] 15 new cellulases…[Each] was more stable, worked at significantly higher temperatures (70 to 75 degrees Celsius), and degraded more cellulose than the parent enzymes…

"Next, the researchers plan to use the structure-guided recombination process to perfect each of the half-dozen or so cellulases that make up the soup of enzymes required for the industrial degradation of cellulose…"