Track 5 Session Details
AFCC Conference Breakout Sessions
Breakout Sessions are 90 minutes, each one has one moderator with a maximum of four to five speakers.
Breakout sessions will be focused on the following five subject areas:
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Track 2: Sustainable Feedstocks and Biofuels, Driving Decarbonization
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Track 4: Synthetic Biology, Alternative Proteins, Regenerative Agriculture, Food & Fiber
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Track 5: Building the Biobased Economy Supply Chain
Track 5 Breakout Session Details
Building the Biobased Economy Supply Chain
This Track is Sponsored by:
Monday, November 17, 2025
Session 1: 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM: Overview of Technical CDRs: Advantages, Disadvantages, and Cost Components
Moderator: Paul Schubert, CEO, Strategic Biofuels
Speakers:
Carbon Dioxide Reduction Credits (CDRs) can generally be divided between nature based CDRs and technology based CDRs, with nature based CDRs being most of the current market. Nature based CDRs produced from methods such as wetland restoration, improving agricultural cropland and grassland practices, and reforestation typically represent low cost, 100-year timeline CO2 reductions that can be quite challenging to quantify and verify. Furthermore, they are subject to reversals, such as a forest fire returning the captured CO2 to the atmosphere. In contrast, technical CDRs typically are higher cost, 1000-year CO2 reductions where CO2 removals are directly measured and are easily verified. Technical CDRs include those produced by direct air capture (DAC), bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), enhanced rock weathering, and other developing methods. Advantages, disadvantages, and the cost components for these technical CDRs will be discussed.
Paul Schubert, CEO, Strategic Biofuels
The Increasing Importance of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) Credits in the Developing BioEconomy
The Voluntary Carbon Market can play a key role in channeling funding to early-stage Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) projects. The market is largely divided into nature based CDR credits (afforestation, soil carbon sequestration, etc.) and technology based CDR credits (BECCS, DAQ with sequestration, etc.), with the latter being considered to be high qualify, verifiable, and durable credits. The overall market has grown from purchases of about 0.5 million metric tons removed in 2023 to 6.4 million in 2024. In order to achieve the targeted 1.5 degree C decrease in 2050, between 5,000 and 10,000 metric tons of CDRs will be required. Prices for high quality durable CDRs are expected to remain above $200 per ton for the period, making them highly competitive with the California LCFS credits for which double counting of the carbon reductions is not allowed. The panel will discuss the development of CDR market, including technology based markets and pricing, sales channels and CDR marketing, and contractual requirements to achieve project financing.
Steven Slome, Principal Consultant, FGE NexantECA
This presentation will provide a broad overview and comparison of key emission reduction technologies, including: DAC, BiCRS, BECCS, and conventional fossil CCS(Blue CCS). Technologies will be compared on cost, carbon density, carbon reduction, storage considerations, and other key project impacting factors. Potential pitfalls and opportunities will be elucidated.
Session 2: 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM: Risk Management Innovation to Accelerate the Bio-based Economy
Moderator: Christopher Lowell, Managing Director, InnSure
Speakers:
Businesses and industry can only expand as fast as risk and risk management practices will allow. The bio-based economy is bottlenecked by innovation risk. This panel will discuss challenges and solutions to incubate, accelerate and support with risk capital novel risk management solutions necessary for early-stage innovative alternative fuels and chemical companies to flourish and grow. The scope of risk management solutions to be discussed includes: ● Enabling solutions that will support adequate assessment of risk and the development of risk management solutions. [Risk Assessment] ● In-market insurance/risk solutions designed to assess and transfer/finance not-well-understood risks emerging from innovation being conducted in the sector such as performance risk, supply chain risk, technology risk, etc. [Risk Transfer] ● Enabling solutions that support risk management/risk reduction by target AFCC innovators as necessary to derisk their solutions and make them insurable/investable. [Risk Reduction]
Session 3: 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM: High Integrity/High Quality Carbon Credits Simplified: Drivers for their High Demand and High Value
Moderator: Paul Zorner, CEO, EcoFluxNet
Speakers:
Climate Policy Journalist
Carbon markets are complex, confusing and vary significantly with respect to consumer trust and credit value. Hamerkop recently published a carbon market landscape that identified over 60 competing VCM standards present today, having grown from about 6 certification schemes during the 15-year period from 1996-2010. There are valid reasons for some of this increased complexity, but it also creates confusion and leads to a lack of trust - which in turns leads to greenwashing claims and litigation. Groups such as the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) are working to address these problems with schemes such The Core Carbon Principles (CCP) which address a portfolio of parameters that define basics such as soil carbon aggregation and GHG reduction, but also analytical variance, water conservation, proper accounting, community uplift and other variables that reflect the credits environmental benefit, their validity and the economic impact in the community in which they were generated. These high quality/high integrity credits have significantly greater value, but just as importantly support consumer trust, allow accurate brand promises and reduce the potential of greenwashing litigation. This panel will discuss these credit markets, project where they are headed, explain the protocols used to generate high integrity credits, and outline the consumer trust, economic and legal liability benefits of high integrity/high quality credits.
Session 4: 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM: Advancements in Composting and Recycling
Moderator: Leslie Rodgers, Marketing & Communications Director, Biodegradable Products Institute (BPI)
Speakers:
Plastics are inevitable in our modern day-to-day life, yet many product categories cannot be easily recycled in part due to due to food contamination or expense. At the same time, plastics capable of biodegrading in compost and agriculture systems can help divert food and other organic waste from landfills while also breaking down alongside to avoid persistent microplastics. The biodegradable plastic market is expected to grow to ~$5 billion in 2025, in part because of the enormous potential of industrially compostable, home compostable, and soil biodegradable products.
This session will provide highlights of recent innovations in packaging, both design and application. Notable misunderstandings, myths and confusion around product performance, testing, end-of-life options will be addressed.
Amar Mohanty, Professor, University of Guelph
Bioeconomy and Green Transformation: Can biodegradable plastics alleviate single-use plastic waste problem?
Plastics are inevitable in our modern day-to-day life and their use spans from packaging, auto-parts, electronics, housing structures to sports utility and many more. While plastics found many applications that benefit food preservation and lower the transportation costs, the lack of plastic waste management is creating a pervasive environmental pollution. We desperately need a “Second Age of Plastics”. We have been developing plastics with lower carbon footprint that we call “Sustainable Polymers”. Packaging accounts for 40% of the planet’s plastic waste, over one third of which is flexible packaging like films, pouches, bags, and wrappers. Waste management strategies like recycling struggle when it comes to three categories of packaging – multi-layer packaging, mixed-material (plastic, metal, and paper) packaging, and mono-material packaging that is contaminated or too expensive to recycle. Biodegradable plastics show leading trends in flexible packaging as well as in rigid packaging. This presentation will provide a high-level overview on the biodegradability and compostability of the innovative flexible as well as rigid packaging. Notable misunderstandings, myths and confusion around biodegradable plastics will be addressed. The biodegradable plastic market is expected to grow to ~$5 billion in 2025. Special interest is growing around home compostable and soil biodegradable products over industrial composting. This presentation will highlight how we can achieve a zero-waste plastics economy that will help lead to sustainable prosperity. Circularity and sustainability with the right end-of-life option will also be addressed.
Tuesday, November 18, 2025
Session 5: 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM: Application of Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) in the Production of Low Carbon Fuels and Chemicals
Moderator: Paul Schubert, CEO, Strategic Biofuels
Speakers:
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), along with its broader term Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS), CCS/CCUS is a crucial technology for producing low-carbon fuels and chemicals by capturing and either storing or utilizing CO2 emissions from various industrial processes. It is being utilized in production of hydrogen, methanol, ammonia, syngas, renewable diesel, and SAF and other products essential in the BioEconomy. Emission Reduction: CCS effectively prevents significant amounts of CO2 from entering the atmosphere, mitigating climate change. CCS is considered one of the only practical ways to achieve deep decarbonization in heavy indusries like cement, steel, and chemicals, where emissions are difficult to reduce. It can be integrated into existing fossil fuel-based infrastructure to facilitate a smoother transition towards a low-carbon energy system, allowing for continued operation while renewable energy capacity is developed. It is a key contributor to job creation and economic growth as it can generate significant job opportunities in construction, operation, and maintenance of capture facilities, pipelines, and storage sites, as well as in associated industries. This session will explore application of CCS in the BioEconomy.
Session 6: 3:30 PM to 5 PM: Potential BRC Technologies Ready for Commercialization
Moderator: Jay Fitzgerald, Center Director, Renewable Resources and Enabling Sciences, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Speakers:
Professor of Bacteriology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Director
Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center
Deputy Director for Science and Technology, CABBI
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Research Centers (BRCs) are accelerating the development of transformative biotechnologies to produce fuels, chemicals, and materials from non-food, lignocellulosic biomass. Comprising four centers led by top national laboratories and universities, the BRCs form a collaborative, interdisciplinary network that spans the United States. Together, they drive foundational science and applied research to support U.S. innovation, economic growth, and leadership in a globally competitive bioeconomy. Each center brings complementary expertise across synthetic biology, feedstock development, process engineering, and systems biology to overcome scientific and technical barriers to commercial deployment. The BRCs focus on enabling cost-effective and scalable pathways for converting renewable plant biomass into biofuels (including upgrading to sustainable aviation fuel) and value-added bioproducts. Their work has led to hundreds of patent applications, startups, and collaborations with industry partners—demonstrating strong progress from lab-scale research to market-relevant technologies. This session will showcase recent breakthroughs from each BRC, emphasizing the critical role of cross-disciplinary research in addressing complex bioenergy challenges. Speakers will highlight innovations in metabolic engineering, biomass deconstruction, precision fermentation, and the integration of biomanufacturing platforms and scale-up. The session will also explore ongoing efforts to bridge the gap between discovery and commercialization, including technology transfer, public-private partnerships, and life-cycle and techno-economic analyses to ensure environmental and economic sustainability.