PMs Takaichi and Modi are set to turn cow dung into vehicle fuel and build a 2.5-million CNG-car market in India — a clean-energy deal that doubles as a hedge against China's grip on electric cars.
Kagawa, Japan's self-styled udon prefecture, throws away thousands of tons of noodles a year. Two teams found wildly different uses for the waste: a small factory that turns it into electricity, and a professor who turns it into surprisingly tough paper grown by microbes, now made at a welfare facility for Marugame's traditional fans.
In 2012, the Sankei Shimbun reported a biofuel revolution centered on Enomoto algae, a hyper-growth Botryococcus discovered by Kobe University professor Taira Enomoto. Heavy-industry giant IHI joined biotech venture Neo-Morgan Laboratory to commercialize it, with then-CEO Tomohiro Fujita declaring he wanted to cut the price to one-tenth within ten years. Fourteen years later, the joint venture has dissolved, but the algae produced the world's first commercial flight to use SAF certified under ASTM D7566 Annex 7, and a Japanese-led 5-hectare facility in Malaysia is now the largest of its kind on Earth. Did the promise come true, or is the dream over?