The Biobased Industry Center (BIC) leverages the intellectual resources of interdisciplinary research and educational programs to address critical business, infrastructure, supply chain, and policy issues facing the growing biobased economy.
Biobased Industry Center News
BIC’s Babcock Remarks on Future of Cellulosic Biofuels
Remarks by Bruce Babcock, Biobased Industry Center director, lead the article, “Save $270M! (and Make Biofuels Feedstocks, er, Feasible, er, Now),” published recently in Biofuels Digest. “The future of cellulosic biofuels in the United States hinges on whether three under-construction plants are successful,” Babcock said. Read the entire article in Biofuels Digest
Outlook for Ethanol and Conventional Biofuel RINs in 2013 and 2014
This policy brief by BIC Director Bruce Babcock provides insights into how the next two years will unfold in the ethanol market by focusing on whether the supply of banked RINs will be used in 2013 to help offset current high production costs or in 2014 to help offset low ethanol prices. Read the entire policy brief the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development Web site
BIC’s Babcock Answers Drought Questions on The Colbert Report
Bruce Babcock, director of the Biobased Industry Center and an agricultural economist at Iowa State University, recently appeared on The Colbert Report to answer questions on how the drought will affect the price of foods around the country. The Colbert Report is a satirical late night television program with a large following. Watch the video
Workshop Examines Renewable Fuel Standard Policy
To help congressional staff members and U.S. federal agency staff members better understand the facts and science of advanced biofuels, Iowa State University held a workshop entitled, “Advanced Biofuels and the RFS: The State of Technology, Investment and Market Outlook” in June 2012 in Washington D.C. “The more informed decision makers are, the more likely that any change to the RFS will be based on facts and science rather than beliefs, myths and politics,” said Bruce Babcock, director of the Biobased Industry Center and leader of the Iowa NSF EPSCoR energy policy platform. Babcock is also a professor of agricultural economics at Iowa State. Read the article
Babcock named Iowa State’s Cargill Chair and leader of the Biobased Industry Center
Bruce Babcock is ready to focus on the bioeconomy as Iowa State University’s next Cargill Endowed Chair in Energy Economics and director of the university’s Biobased Industry Center. Babcock, an Iowa State professor of economics and current director of the university’s Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, assumed his new position in October 2012. He succeeds James Bushnell, who is now an associate professor of economics at the University of California Davis. See news release