Category Archives: Green Chemicals
Green ChemicalsMonitoring the development of green within the chemical industry
In Focus: Waste to Energy Projects
I am still working on the weekly news roundup but this news about waste-to-energy keep popping up on my email inbox so we might as well take a brief look and see what’s going on in this sector. I have written an article on ICIS Chemical Business about the waste plastic-to-energy market last year where [...]
Japanese Firms: Embracing Green Chemicals
So the green blogger received a call yesterday from a Japanese chemical firm inquiring about bio-based paraxylene (PX). The caller said their Chinese clients have become more interested in renewable-based polyethylene terephthalate (PET). Of course, this is a very interesting news for me and I’m hoping to get first dibs on further developments from this [...]
BASF Invests in Renmatix
Just like Coca-Cola’s announcement of partnering with Gevo, Virent and Avantium, the renewable chemicals world takes notice when chemical giants such as BASF, Dow Chemical and DuPont announced further investments in this field. BASF’s $30m investment in US cellulosic sugar developer Renmatix signals the German chemical firm’s intent to expand its feedstock source especially for [...]
Green Chemicals: Growing Like Gangbusters
I hope everybody had a great holiday weekend and for those who are still on vacation (like me!!), enjoy the brief rest. The blog is working on a list of top posts of 2011 but it might take awhile given that the blog had almost 200 posts to look into. In the meantime, let’s look [...]
Green Chemical Venture Fund Launches
As I am preparing for my incoming article on ICIS Chemical Business about renewable chemicals investment 2012 outlook, I came across this news about Warburg Pincus investing up to $355m in an new private equity firm called First Green Partners based in Minneapolis. The new firm will be led by Doug Cameron – ex-Cargill official [...]
Mitsubishi Develops bio-MMA
Mitsubishi Rayon (MRC) and its subsidiary Lucite International announcedtoday that they have developed bio-based methyl methacrylate (MMA), a chemical used in coatings, transparent plastics and adhesives. Most of MMA is polymerized into polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), a transparent thermoplastic sometimes called acrylic glass which is an economical alternative to polycarbonate. Lucite by the way, is one [...]
2011 Green Chemistry Awardees
The green blogger is back from vacation and hopefully did not miss a lot of important news from the past two weeks (such as Gevo’s announcementof its isobutanol-paraxylene collaboration with Toray). Before anything else, the blog congratulates this year’s EPA Presidential Green Chemistry awardees – BioAmber, Genomatica, Kraton Performance Polymers and Sherwin Williams as well [...]
More Chemicals Investments in Solar
The green blog’s good friend Neil Burns recently posted on his own blog about the impacts of clean technologies in the energy and chemicalssectors, which reminded me of my fast-growing list of recent chemicalcompany activities on clean tech especially from Dow Chemical and DuPont who seemed to be always talking about this billion dollars globalmarket [...]
Dow Chemical Profits from Clean Technoligies $DOW
We published this week ICB’s annual Top 40 Power Players within the global chemical industry and Dow Chemical CEO and presidentAndrew Liveris was chosen as the top power player for 2010. This reminds me of my attendance at Dow’s annual investor day last monthwhere a lot of the business presentations I saw targets clean technology [...]
Renewables Growth in Latin America
Latin America especially Brazil seems to be an increasingly high growthrenewable chems sector not only because of the plentiful (and morelogistically organized) sugarcane feedstock source but its burgeoningeconomy is also an added attraction. I wrote an article (subscription only) on ICIS Chemical Business about the bioplasticopportunity in Latin America now that Braskem opened its Greenpolyethylene [...]
Sustainabillity at Eastman
My apologies for posting this interview so late…I really have tocut back on interviews lately because of my weekly column (not tomention several features stories) at ICIS Chemical Business. Eastman launched its first sustainability review in June this year and the company is actually aiming for 2/3 of itsrevenue (at a minimum) from new product [...]
Dupont Says Photovoltaics Business “Booming”
The green blog has been noticing constant new chemical introductionsfocusing on the photovoltaics market and today, DuPont confirmed in a webcast the profitability of this sector to their electronics and communications business. DuPont said it expects this year to achieve $1 billion in revenuefrom sales into the photovoltaic (PV) market — one year ahead ofschedule, [...]