Industrial Biotechnology Reaches a Milestone: A Decade of Business Growth and Environmental Solutions

Biotechnology's Unique Contributions

EPA's 2007 state of the science report identified four unique aspects of industrial biotechnology, including sustainable use of renewable biomass, that impart environmental benefits to biobased materials.

In 2016, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) issued the 2016 Billion-Ton Report, estimating that 1.2 billion to 1.5 billion tons of biomass could be produced on an annual basis by 2040 at an average $60 per ton, and that more than half of this could be delivered to biorefineries at less than $84 dollars per ton. ² Over and above available agricultural and forest biomass, DOE identified 142 million tons of currently recoverable and reusable waste and assessed algae biomass and other energy crops for the future. DOE also assessed environmental impacts from these biomass resources—such as soil carbon, greenhouse gas emissions, water and air quality, and biodiversity.

Biotech companies continue to commercialize new energy crops that optimize the carbon profile of biobased products. In 2015, Canadian seed producer Agrisoma Biosciences (Saskatoon) contracted farmers in western North Dakota and eastern Montana to grow at least 6,000 acres of Brassica carinata, a type of mustard whose seeds can be crushed for oil to produce jet fuel. In 2015, NexSteppe (Scottsdale, AZ) produced more than 25,000 acres (10,000 hectares) of its Palo Alto biomass sorghums in Brazil, demonstrating that the crop could be produced at commercial scale. In 2016, NexSteppe entered an agreement with Longping Hi-Tech Arable Land Remediation Technology Company, a subsidiary of Chinese seed company Longping Hi-Tech (Changsha), to distribute, market and sell NexSteppe's Palo Alto biomass sorghum hybrids in China.

Industrial biotech companies also have made progress in commercializing processes that use methanotrophs and algae to ferment methane into useable products. Utilizing captured carbon dioxide (CO₂) to produce renewable chemicals can avert carbon and other pollutant emissions as well as displace fossil fuels. LanzaTech, with headquarters in Auckland, New Zealand and laboratories in Illinois, has demonstrated production of ethanol and 2,3-butanediol—a building block for plastics and jet fuel—as well as butadiene from waste stack gas or biomass syngas. LanzaTech won a Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Greener Synthetic Pathways Award in 2015 for its technology. ³

Newlight Technologies (Irvine, CA) has commercialized a process to ferment methane and CO₂ to plastics, producing AirCarbon™ plastics at a facility in California. Newlight produces almost 30 billion pounds of product per year for manufacturers, including IKEA, Dell, Hewlett Packard, and other companies. EPA's Green Chemistry Challenge recognized the plastic as net carbon negative. ⁴

California-based Intrexon (San Francisco) has formed a joint venture with Dominion Energy (Richmond, VA) to develop engineered microbes that can ferment methane to farnesene and isobutanol, chemicals that have applications in fuels, cosmetics, and solvents. A second joint venture for Intrexon Energy Partners is exploring the same technology to produce 1,4-butanediol, a building block used in polyester and other plastics.

Calysta, a Menlo Park, California-based company, is developing a sustainable feed ingredient for fish, livestock and pet nutrition. The company, through a joint venture with Cargill, broke ground on a commercial FeedKind manufacturing plant in Memphis in April 2017. An assessment of the environmental footprint of Calysta's production process demonstrates the potential to reduce carbon emissions through use of biogas as the methane feedstock. ⁵

Biocatalysis is another of the unique contributions that industrial biotechnology makes to environmental sustainability. Enzymes are selective, specific and have a high catalytic rate; they are more efficient, producing chemicals with higher purity and fewer byproducts or waste. ¹ With higher purity, end products can be separated from a reaction process with less solvent and fewer steps. Enzymatic processes—because they are biological and natural—work under mild conditions, further reducing energy inputs and costs, and they can be improved through genetic engineering. Additionally, enzymes are typically produced through a fermentation process and are biodegradable.

Industrial biotech companies continue to make progress in commercializing enzyme applications. University research in genetic engineering also continues to improve enzymes and enable novel chemical reactions. For example, researchers at the California Institute of Technology recently engineered a novel enzyme that can catalyze a carbon-silicon bond, something unknown in nature despite the relative abundance of the two elements. ⁶ This research holds potential for improved efficiency in drug development.

Challenges

In its 2007 state of the science report, EPA enumerated several challenges for biotechnology to realize its full potential for environmental enhancement, including optimizing microbes and their metabolic processes. Substantial research and development has been accomplished in the past 10 years to address these challenges—such as the ongoing rapid growth of synthetic biology—warranting optimism for the future.

Biomass recalcitrance is a well-known challenge. Over the past decade, a number of companies have made substantial progress in commercializing cellulosic sugar production. DOE's Bioenergy Technologies Office recently identified 22 companies that could supply kilograms or metric tons of cellulosic sugars and lignin to support biorefinery research. ⁷ Among them is Renmatix, based in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, which operates a demonstration-scale plant in Georgia with a capacity to make three tons of sugars per day. It also operates a feedstock processing facility in Rome, New York. The company's PlantRose^® process uses supercritical hydrolysis—high temperature and high-pressure water—to separate a pure stream of cellulosic sugars from the hemicellulose in wood chips. The company recently received a new round of investment from Bill Gates and petroleum company Total. ⁸ Renmatix was presented a Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Small Business Award in 2015. ⁹

Two other identified suppliers—Leaf Resources (Darra, Queensland) and ZeaChem (Lakewood, CO)—recently formed a joint venture to demonstrate Leaf Resources' Glycell™ process in the United States. ¹⁰ ZeaChem has built and operated a demonstration biorefinery in Boardman, Oregon.

Since the 2007 report, researchers and companies have made significant progress in engineering microbes to produce new renewable chemicals and biofuels. A number of companies have been established to provide organism design and DNA synthesis services, such as Gingko Bioworks (Cambridge, MA), Intrexon, and Twist Biosciences (San Francisco, CA). ¹¹ Synthetic-biology approaches have been used to optimize both microbial hosts and metabolic pathways. Additionally, gene editing techniques have improved the speed and precision of genetic engineering.

California-based Verdezyne (West Carlsbad, CA) is one company that has successfully commercialized a microbial production process, producing butanediol in partnership with BASF (Ludwigshafen, Germany). The company is currently building a plant in Malaysia to produce dicarboxylic acid chemical intermediates such as adipic acid, sebacic acid and dodecanedioic acid (DDDA), using a yeast fermentation platform that received a Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge award. ¹² DDDA is a building block for nylon 6,12, which is used in engineered plastics that require special properties. Verdezyne's process converts lauric acid, a twelve carbon fatty acid, derived from vegetable oil to DDDA through ω-oxidation by a genetically engineered Candida sp. yeast. Verdezyne scientists engineered the yeast to enable rapid, high-yield production while minimizing accumulation of pathway intermediates.

Conclusion

Over the past decade, companies have commercialized industrial biotech applications and processes that achieved measurable environmental benefits. These companies contribute to economic prosperity in Europe, Asia and North America, generating sustainable economic growth along with environmental solutions. Many of the companies I've discussed will be presenting at the 2017 BIO World Congress on Industrial Biotechnology, making it an occasion to recognize milestones for the industry's accomplishments in environmental sustainability. Ongoing research and development continues to address remaining challenges in commercializing cellulosic biomass conversion and building biorefineries. The development of new genetic engineering tools and gene editing techniques can help speed solutions to remaining challenges. These accomplishments realize the unique potential for industrial biotechnology to improve the life cycle sustainability of manufacturing consumer goods first identified a decade ago by EPA in its 2007 assessment of the state of the science.

At the same time, researchers continue to develop new applications that were not envisioned a decade ago. Industrial biotechnology continues to hold unique potential to generate environmental benefits that include carbon reductions, reduction of waste and energy use, and displacement of fossil fuels. A new state of the science assessment is warranted to document the potential of emerging applications and to set a roadmap for successfully addressing challenges to continued commercialization.