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
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This Track is Sponsored by:
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Monday, November 2, 2026
All sessions will be held in National Harbor 8
Session 1: 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM: Congressional Action to Support the National Biobased Economy
Moderator: Gregory Jaffe, President, Jaffe Poliy Consulting LLC
Speakers:
Policy and Legislative Advisor
National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB)
Professional Staff
U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry (invited)
Aleksi Knepp
Senior Policy Analyst
House Committee on Agriulture
Senior Professional Staff
U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry (invited)
As the current Congress comes to a close in two months, how has this Congress supported our national biobased economy in 2026? Congressional staff from both sides of the aisle will discuss support for biobased forest, energy, and chemical products in the 2026 Farm Bill, legislation already passed by Congress, and any legislation that could be voted on before the session ends. The discussion will cover topics such as reauthorization of the BioPreferred program, a USDA Sustainable Aviation Fuel Strategy, changes to USDA 9003 program, as well as supportive programs in the Forestry and Horticulture titles of the Farm Bill. It also will discuss legislation introduced and/or passed to implement recommendations by the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology. Updates will be given on any legislative activities involving alterative proteins or innovative food and feed products that build the resilience of our supply chains while driving decarbonization. Finally, attendees will learn about the House Biotech Caucus and how its activities have supported our bioeconomy. By the end of the session, attendees will come away with a clear understanding of what has been achieved in Congress in 2026, what still might come across the finish line and what they can do to help bring stakeholder priorities into law.
Session 2: 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM: Building the Bioindustrial Base: U.S. Public-Private Partnerships to Scale Critical Biomaterials, Chemicals, and Food Ingredients for National Security
Moderator: Margaret Badding, Policy Specialist, Good Food Institute (GFI)
Speakers:
In recent years, countries like China have significantly increased investments in public-private biomanufacturing projects spanning biomaterials, food ingredients, and protein diversification. In the United States, catalyzing a robust bioindustrial manufacturing base is crucial for advancing economic competitiveness, supply chain resilience, and national security—as underscored by the National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology (NSCEB).
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The Department of War’s Distributed Bioindustrial Manufacturing Program (DBIMP), launched in 2024, provides a timely policy blueprint to bolster domestic biomanufacturing capacity across the United States. Through public-private partnerships, DBIMP supports companies developing domestic production capacity for critical biomaterials, food ingredients, specialty chemicals, and fuels that can serve both commercial and defense needs.
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This session will bring together federal and industry leaders to examine early lessons from DBIMP as a landmark biotechnology program and implications for future federal programs. Panelists will discuss how DBIMP is helping U.S. companies move toward commercial-scale production, what barriers remain, and how future federal initiatives can best align agencies, private capital, and market demand. Attendees will gain insights into how public-private partnerships can advance domestic biomanufacturing, supply chain resilience, and biotechnology leadership.
Session 3: 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM: Project Derisking from Producers and Investors Perspectives
Moderator: Paul Schubert, CEO, Strategic Biofuels
Speakers:
Developing bioeconomy projects—from advanced biofuels and biorefineries to renewable chemicals—entails navigating complex risks across multiple stages: concept, feasibility, piloting, detailed engineering, permitting, financing, and Final Investment Decision (FID). This panel examines key risk components, including technical, feedstock supply, offtake/market, regulatory, financial, and execution risks, and explores what must be derisked at each phase to advance toward commercial operation. A critical focus is the differing perceptions of risk importance among stakeholders. Developers/producers prioritize technical validation and operational scalability. Equity providers emphasize long-term market upside, return potential, and strategic alignment. Debt providers demand stringent mitigation of cash flow certainty, collateral strength, and downside protection through contracts and guarantees. These divergent priorities often create friction in capital stacking and require tailored derisking strategies. The urgency of effective derisking is underscored by sobering industry statistics. While hundreds of bioeconomy projects are announced globally each year, only a small fraction reach commercial operation. Many advanced biorefinery and biofuel initiatives achieve technical success in demonstration but fail to secure FID or sustain operations due to economic, regulatory, or supply chain barriers—often described as falling into the “valley of death.” This high attrition rate highlights why structured derisking is not merely best practice but essential for improving project bankability and attracting the substantial private capital needed to scale the bioeconomy. The panel will feature producers and investors sharing practical insights.
Session 4: 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM: Bankable Funding and Financing of Biomanufacturing Projects and Assets
Moderator: Pat Sonti, Managing Director, Prescienti Partners
Speakers:
During the next decade, enhancing “bankable” funding and financing for biomanufacturing projects and assets requires a highly structured, disciplined, and systematic approach and methodology integrated with robust risk assessment/mitigation, asset valuation metrics, detailed techno-economic-financial analysis plus sensitivity and scenarios analysis. The primary underlying strategies and drivers must include, but are not limited to, conducting definitive forensic “deep-dive” due diligence by verifying and validating the technical feasibility and scalability, the economic viability, and the financial profitability from the pilot stage onwards. In addition, mitigating counterparty risks by ensuring secure feedstock supply chains as well as creditworthy offtake. Also, mitigating other risks (e.g., downside and market) by evaluating elasticity of demand and market pricing mechanisms. It is essential to navigate overarching legislative policy and federal/state regulatory pathways early – including barriers, challenges, and hurdles with permitting. To achieve and maintain investors, lenders, and insurers confidence and comfort, project developers and sponsors must focus on a rigorous capital structuring, formation, allocation, and deployment process via combinations and permutations of non-dilutive capital, development capital, structured debt finance (initially via limited recourse and later via non-recourse financing based on lenders’ comfort), equity funding, and underwriting via insurance. A critical underlying component is robust corporate governance, internal accounting/finance audits and reporting, and strict compliance with evolving statutory policies related to capital markets securities’ regulations. There is also an essential role for Public-Private-Partnerships to potentially lower the cost of capital which must be reviewed and evaluated. The panel will focus on strategies for bankable biomanufacturing projects and assets.
Tuesday, November 3, 2026
All sessions will be held in National Harbor 8
​Session 5: 1:30 PM to 3:00 PM: Piloting Your Alternative Fuel and Chemical Technology for Commercial Success
Moderator: Mike Schultz, Managing Director, PTI Global Solutions LLC
Speakers:
The pilot phase is a crucial step in the commercialization of biobased manufacturing technology. It serves as the first significant opportunity to de-risk the science, develop engineering data for scale-up, and produce product samples for market development. However, because a fully developed pilot plant may cost millions of dollars and take months or even more than a year to design and build, a natural tension exists--how do we design and execute a pilot that can meet our objectives, and lay the groundwork for successful commercialization, while managing cost and avoiding a delay in time to market? This session will explore best practices for piloting biobased manufacturing technology, focusing on setting clear objectives, scope development, and effective execution. This session will feature invited speakers who have real world experience with piloting biobased manufacturing technologies, with an opportunity to hear about their success stories, lessons learned, and how they have navigated the tension between cost, time, and piloting objectives.
Session 6: 3:30 PM to 5 PM: Feedstock Risk Is Project Risk: How Developers Are Building Resilience into Biomass Supply Chains
Moderator: Megan McCormick, Founder & Principal, SilvaCurrent
Speakers:
For developers of SAF and advanced bioproduct facilities, feedstock risk is not a single problem — it is a layered set of interdependent challenges that must be solved long before a project reaches financial close. Eligibility under RFS and other regulatory credit schemes, third-party verification, chain-of-custody documentation, CI scoring, and long-term supply contract structures are not issues that resolve at the feedstock supplier level on their own. They require active capacity building between developers and supply chain partners who, in many cases, have never navigated the compliance, auditing, and certification demands that advanced biofuel markets require. This panel examines how project developers can approach feedstock risk proactively — from first supplier engagement through FID and into operations. Panelists will address what it takes to bring feedstock suppliers up to the documentation and quality standards that lenders, off-takers, and regulators require, without creating burden that drives suppliers out of the market. The conversation will cover long-term supply availability, contract structures that create confidence without overcommitting early-stage partners, transportation and logistics constraints, quality variability, and how CI scoring interacts with sourcing decisions in ways that can make or break project economics. The overarching message is one of shared responsibility and trust-building across the full supply chain — and the frank recognition that the time to start that work is not after FID, but long before it.