The ABLC NEXT Agenda will be finalized September 1, 2026.

ABLC Next 2026 is being designed around a central idea: the bioeconomy is no longer defined primarily by molecule categories, but by stages of industrial development and the systems required to support durable deployment.

In prior years, conferences across the sector often organized around fuels, chemicals, proteins, or materials as separate domains. Increasingly, however, the industry’s core challenges are shared across technologies: feedstock integration, scale-up, financing, market qualification, systems coordination, infrastructure readiness, permitting, carbon accounting, and commercialization under real-world operating conditions.
This year’s agenda reflects that evolution.

The program is structured around the progression from bench to pilot, pilot to demonstration, and demonstration to commercial deployment, alongside the parallel challenges of finance, market formation, systems integration, and risk management. The objective is to create conversations that are more actionable, operationally grounded, and relevant across multiple technology pathways.

Speaker selection reflects this same philosophy. Alongside established industry leaders, the agenda introduces more regional ecosystem builders, deployment strategists, infrastructure experts, pilot-scale operators, critical materials innovators, and emerging company founders. The emphasis is on practitioners actively solving coordination, scale-up, and deployment problems in the field.

The resulting event is intended to feel less like a collection of disconnected technology showcases and more like a systems-level conversation about how durable bioindustrial ecosystems are actually built.

Wednesday October 21st

3:30pm The Bioeconomy and the First of a Kind Fragility Index
Moderator: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest
FOAK projects increasingly fail not because of single technical flaws, but because of synchronization breakdowns between technology, finance, policy, operations, and market timing. This session examines modern approaches to project resilience, execution risk, and uncertainty management.
Speakers TBA

4:00pm NEXT Feedstocks Leadership Summit
Moderator: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest
The future bioeconomy begins with resilient, scalable, financeable feedstock systems. This summit explores the evolution of agricultural residues, energy crops, forest resources, waste streams, carbon intermediates, and circular feedstocks as industrial platforms. Topics include supply security, preprocessing, logistics, land-use realities, carbon accounting, and the growing regional integration of feedstocks, infrastructure, and end markets.
Speakers TBA

5:00pm NEXT Maritime Fuels & SAF Leadership Summit
Moderator: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest
Aviation and maritime fuels are moving from demonstration markets toward strategic infrastructure. This summit explores the next phase of deployment: feedstock competition, refinery integration, marine fuels, synthetic fuels, offtake structures, infrastructure constraints, and the growing convergence between aviation, shipping, refining, and industrial decarbonization.
Speakers TBA

6:00pm SUNRISE CLUB OPENING SESSION and NETWORKING LIKE CRAZY
Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest
ABLC’s signature networking session returns with structured introductions designed to accelerate meaningful connections across the bioeconomy ecosystem. Investors, developers, technology providers, policymakers, engineers, strategic partners, and founders introduce themselves and their priorities for the week ahead. And Networking: Self-introductions by all attendees

Thursday October 22nd

7:00am REGISTRATION OPEN 

7:30-8:15am COFFEE & PASTRIES

8:15am The West Coast Bioeconomy Policy & Programs Forum
Moderator: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest
Regional Systems, State Leadership & Industrial Deployment
Across the American West, state and regional initiatives are emerging as some of the most important drivers of bioeconomy deployment. Sustainable aviation fuels, circular carbon systems, low-carbon fuels, industrial decarbonization, and biomanufacturing are increasingly scaling through interconnected regional ecosystems linking feedstocks, infrastructure, utilities, ports, workforce development, policy frameworks, and finance.
This forum examines how organizations across California, Washington, and the broader West Coast are building durable deployment corridors through collaboration between industry, government, technology developers, and investors. Leaders discuss LCFS evolution, SAF acceleration strategies, circular manufacturing systems, permitting and infrastructure coordination, and the growing importance of regional industrial ecosystems in reducing deployment friction and accelerating commercialization.
Speakers TBA

9:00am Industry Horizons Forum
This session explores how companies are building durable businesses capable of surviving policy shifts, commodity cycles, infrastructure constraints, and evolving customer demand. Leaders discuss operational resilience, commercial discipline, strategic partnerships, and long-term scalability across fuels, chemicals, materials, and industrial systems.
Moderator: Tim Zenk, Managing Director, Earth Finance
Speakers TBA

10:15am Coffee Break & Industry Networking

11:00am ABLC KEYNOTES
Moderator: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest
Senior leaders offer strategic perspectives on industrial deployment, commercialization, infrastructure integration, biomanufacturing, and the next phase of the advanced bioeconomy.

11:30am The Finance & Investment Summit
Capital formation remains one of the defining challenges of industrial deployment. This session examines project finance, tax equity, insurance, public-private structures, risk mitigation, deployment capital, and the emerging transition from technology risk toward coordination and execution risk in FOAK and NOAK projects.
Moderators: John Kirkwood, partner, Faegre Drinker and Mark Riedy, partner, Womble Bond Dickinson
George Schulz, CEO, New Energy Risk
Allison Larr, Director, Public Finance Department, Barclays Capital
Ken Hill, Managing Director, BioCarbon Strategies
Mark Glotfelty, Managing Director, RBC Capital Markets
Jim Alderson-Smith, Managing Director, Crux Climate
Joseph Abramson, Executive Director, Public Finance Investment Banking, Morgan Stanley

12:30pm Lunch & Industry Networking

1:30pm TRACK A — The Bench to Demo Summit: Getting off the Bench
Moving from laboratory success to integrated pilot operations introduces new technical and operational realities. This session explores scale-dependent chemistry, reproducibility, instrumentation, process control, and the engineering lessons that emerge when technologies leave the bench.
Speakers TBA

1:30pm TRACK B — Commercial Scale Summit: The Business of Bio
Commercial success depends on more than production capacity alone. This session examines how developers align feedstocks, infrastructure, carbon intensity, certification systems, logistics, customer requirements, and regional market conditions while positioning projects within evolving fuel, chemical, materials, and carbon markets.
Speakers TBA

1:30pm TRACK C — NEXT Technologies Summit: Horizon 2030 Technologies
This session examines emerging technologies approaching potential commercial relevance by 2030, including advanced conversion pathways, carbon utilization, AI-enabled process systems, advanced materials, industrial biomanufacturing, and integrated energy platforms. Topics include scalability, infrastructure compatibility, commercialization timelines, and the transition from technical promise to industrial deployment.
Speakers TBA

2:30pm TRACK A The Bench to Demo Summit: Making Pilot Scale Work
Pilot plants are not miniature commercial plants — they are learning systems. This session focuses on operational reliability, process variability, troubleshooting, modularity, data collection, and the role pilot infrastructure plays in attracting partners, customers, and investment.
Speakers TBA

2:30pm TRACK B Commercial Scale Summit: Making Commercial-Scale Finance Work
Scaling projects requires capital structures capable of surviving volatility, delays, and operational uncertainty. This session explores debt structures, tax equity, insurance, infrastructure capital, deployment finance, and the evolving requirements of lenders and institutional investors.
Speakers TBA

2:30pm TRACK C – NEXT Technologies Summit: Catalysts & Downstream Processing
Catalysts remain central to industrial efficiency, feedstock flexibility, process intensification, and commercial scalability. This session explores emerging catalytic systems, reactor innovations, separations technologies, upgrading systems, carbon utilization pathways, purification platforms, and downstream processing technologies shaping future fuels, chemicals, and carbon conversion systems.
Speakers TBA

3:30pm Coffee Break & Industry Networking

4:00pm TRACK A The Bench to Demo Summit: Risk Mitigation for Early-Stage Projects
Early-stage projects face technical, organizational, market, and financing risks simultaneously. This session examines practical approaches to reducing fragility, improving development confidence, structuring partnerships, and building resilient commercialization pathways.
Speakers TBA

4:00pm TRACK B The Commercial Scale Summit: Mastering the Risks
FOAK projects increasingly fail not because of single technical flaws, but because of synchronization breakdowns across technology, finance, policy, operations, and market timing. This session examines modern approaches to project resilience, execution risk, uncertainty management, and industrial coordination.
Speakers TBA

4:00pm TRACK C NEXT Technologies Summit: Industrial Fermentation and Biomanufacturing
Synthetic biology and industrial fermentation are increasingly evolving into large-scale manufacturing platforms. This session examines scale-up biology, process economics, precision fermentation, downstream processing, manufacturing infrastructure, and the emerging industrial biomanufacturing ecosystem.
Speakers TBA

5:00pm TRACK A The Bench to Demo Summit: Pilot to Demonstration
Demonstration scale introduces new challenges in integration, permitting, staffing, logistics, financing, and operational synchronization. Speakers discuss what changes at demonstration scale — and why many projects underestimate the complexity of this transition.
Speakers TBA

5:00pm TRACK B Commercial Scale Summit: Systems Integration
Industrial deployment increasingly depends on coordination across feedstocks, utilities, logistics, software, permitting, workforce development, carbon accounting, and infrastructure timing. This session focuses on how successful projects synchronize complex systems into financeable, operable industrial platforms.
Speakers TBA

5:00pm TRACK C NEXT Technologies Summit: Thermochemical Technologies Summit 2030 Technologies
Thermochemical conversion pathways continue to evolve through advances in gasification, pyrolysis, hydrothermal liquefaction, syngas conversion, and process integration. This session explores commercialization lessons, feedstock flexibility, operational performance, and integration into emerging fuel, chemical, and carbon markets.
Speakers TBA

6:00pm Bioeconomy 500 Honoree Party

Friday October 23rd

7:00am REGISTRATION OPEN

7:30-8:00am COFFEE & PASTRIES

8:15am Sustainable Futures Summit
This session explores how companies are building durable sustainable businesses capable of surviving policy shifts, commodity cycles, infrastructure constraints, and evolving customer demand. Leaders discuss operational resilience, commercial discipline, strategic partnerships, and long-term scalability across fuels, chemicals, materials, and industrial systems.
Moderator: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest
Speakers TBA

9:30am National Laboratory & BRC Innovation Summit
Moderator: Tim Zenk, Managing Director, Earth Finance
National laboratories and Bioenergy Research Centers discuss emerging technologies, pilot infrastructure, advanced materials, carbon systems, separations, AI-enabled scale-up tools, and industrial deployment capabilities shaping the next generation of bioeconomy systems.
Speakers TBA

10:30am Coffee Break & Industry Networking

11:00am ABLC Next-Gen Companies Summit
Moderator: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest
Emerging founders and fellows present breakthrough technologies, commercialization strategies, and operational lessons from the frontier of industrial innovation spanning fuels, critical materials, industrial biology, carbon systems, and advanced manufacturing.
Speakers TBA

12:15pm Lunch & Industry Networking

1:15pm Global Markets, Regulatory, Carbon Markets & Trade Summit
As the bioeconomy globalizes, projects increasingly navigate divergent regulatory frameworks, carbon accounting systems, sustainability standards, trade structures, and regional market incentives. This session examines how global policy divergence affects finance, feedstocks, market access, infrastructure strategy, and industrial deployment.
Speakers TBA

2:30pm The Due Diligence Wolfpack
The Wolfpack applies practical due-diligence analysis to technologies, projects, and market claims using operational, technical, commercial, financing, and deployment perspectives developed through decades of industrial project experience.

The Wolfpack:
David Dodds, President, Dodds & Associates
Henna Poikolainen, Director of Renewable Fuels & Chemicals, AFRY
James Iademarco, President, Strategic Avalanche
Steve Slome, Director, Nexant ECA
Steve Weiss, Co-Founder and CEO, Grey Heron
Joel Stone, President, ConVergince (LEC)
Sam Nejame, President, Promotum
Dave Collings, Group Manager, Worley Consulting
Michele Rubino, Principal, 3Peaks Consulting
Moderator: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest

4:00pm ABLC Closing Remarks