The cleantech crowd was right, at least when it comes to the impact that climate change is having on our planet. Here are some tech trends to watch while the planet is warming.
Optimizing the combos of little organisms that live on plants could help feed the booming population of the future.
What can the internet of things learn from modern farming? Plenty given that the industry is well on its way to building viable businesses around connectivity and data analysis.
Here’s the 13 biggest things I paid attention to this year around next-generation energy, sustainability, and resource management. Oh heck, let’s just keep calling it cleantech.
There will be a wealth of innovations that will emerge out of the intersection of resource management and data/software over the coming years. And this is actually something Silicon Valley can do right.
Monsanto says it will pay almost $1 billion to bring Climate Corp.’s data analytics in house. The acquisition is an example of how the marriage of data and sensors will rapidly change established industries.
Come take a look at the first phase of Sapphire Energy’s algae farm in New Mexico. When eventually built out it will produce 100 barrels of algae biofuel a day, and currently the five-year-old startup is making algae fuel on ponds across about 100 acres.
Algae biofuel is getting a massive infusion of money. Startup Sapphire Energy, which uses synthetic biology to make a green crude out of algae, announced on Monday that it’s raising $144 million in a Series C round from investors including agriculture company Monsanto.
Agriculture and genetics giant Monsanto has made its bet on algae. On Tuesday, Monsanto announced that it has made an equity investment in, and developed a partnership with, algae startup Sapphire Energy. Sapphire Energy uses synthetic biology to make a green crude out of algae.
While the attention of the world’s food crisis critics was focused on the UN’s summit in Rome, Monsanto, the agro-biotech behemoth, publicized its plans to double corn, cotton and soy bean crop yields by 2030 while cutting water, land and energy needs 30 percent. The St. Louis, Mo.-based company’s three-point plan also stipulates it will work to help farmers, including an ill-defined “5 million people in resource-poor farm families.”
Conspicuously absent from the announcement was any mention of biofuels and how doubling the yields of corn and soy, the two largest biofuels feedstock in the U.S., might change the market economics of grain-based ethanol. All of these efficiency and yield boosts could greatly help corn and soy ethanol makers, who are getting slammed by slimming margins, and slow the switch to non-food biofuel feedstocks.
Read More about Monsanto to Double Crop Yields with Hybrids
