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
Why do projects with strong technology, experienced teams, supportive policies, and apparent market demand still fail? FOAK projects rarely fail because of a single technical flaw. More often, they break down when technology, capital, permitting, operations, markets, and timing fall out of synchronization. This session explores how as deployment becomes more complex, understanding fragility may be as important as understanding technology itself.
Speakers TBA

4:00pm NEXT Feedstocks Leadership Summit
Moderator: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest
Everyone says there isn’t enough feedstock. Is that really the problem? Developers across the bioeconomy cite feedstock scarcity as a primary obstacle to growth. Yet successful projects continue securing supply. The challenge is increasingly not resource availability, but aggregation, logistics, preprocessing, contracting, and regional integration. This session explores where feedstocks are actually being found and how companies are securing them.
Speakers TBA

5:00pm NEXT Maritime Fuels & SAF Leadership Summit
Moderator: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest
If SAF and maritime fuels are such large opportunities, why do so many projects still struggle to move forward? Fuel demand is not the issue. Economics, feedstock competition, infrastructure readiness, offtake structures, and deployment timing often are. This session examines how developers, refiners, airlines, shipping companies, and investors are addressing the barriers that stand between opportunity and deployment.
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
Why do some regions attract projects while others struggle to move beyond announcements? Policy alone rarely creates deployment. Successful regions increasingly coordinate feedstocks, infrastructure, utilities, workforce, ports, financing, and permitting into integrated industrial ecosystems. This session explores how western states are reducing deployment friction and accelerating investment.
Speakers TBA

9:00am Industry Horizons Forum
How do companies survive when markets, policies, incentives, and customer demand keep changing? The strongest bioeconomy businesses are not necessarily those with the best technology. They are often the ones that adapt most effectively to changing conditions. This session examines how leaders are building resilient businesses capable of surviving uncertainty while continuing to grow.
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
Where is the money? Capital continues to flow into bioeconomy projects, but not equally and not indiscriminately. Investors, lenders, insurers, and public finance institutions are becoming increasingly selective. This session explores what projects are doing to attract capital, reduce risk, and become financeable in today’s market.
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

Why do technologies that work in the lab often struggle outside it? Laboratory success does not automatically translate into industrial success. Scale introduces new variables, new failures, and new realities. This session examines what changes when technologies leave controlled environments and begin interacting with the real world..
Speakers TBA

1:30pm TRACK B — Commercial Scale Summit: The Business of Bio
Why do some commercial projects succeed while others never reach durable profitability? Commercial deployment depends on more than producing molecules. Feedstocks, logistics, certification, customers, infrastructure, carbon intensity, and market positioning all influence outcomes. This session explores how successful projects align these factors into sustainable businesses.
Speakers TBA

1:30pm TRACK C — NEXT Technologies Summit: Horizon 2030 Technologies
Which emerging technologies are actually advancing toward commercial relevance—and which are not? Every year produces new technical breakthroughs. Only a small fraction become industrial platforms. This session explores the technologies most likely to influence deployment over the coming decade and the factors that separate promise from practical commercialization.
Speakers TBA

2:30pm TRACK A The Bench to Demo Summit: Making Pilot Scale Work
Why do pilot facilities often reveal more problems than solutions? Pilot plants are designed to expose reality. Variability, reliability issues, instrumentation challenges, and operational surprises emerge quickly. This session examines how developers transform pilot-scale learning into commercial advantage.
Speakers TBA

2:30pm TRACK B Commercial Scale Summit: Making Commercial-Scale Finance Work
Why can raising project capital be harder than developing the technology itself? Commercial projects must satisfy lenders, investors, insurers, regulators, and customers simultaneously. This session explores how successful developers structure projects that can survive uncertainty and attract deployment capital.
Speakers TBA

2:30pm TRACK C – NEXT Technologies Summit: Catalysts & Downstream Processing
Why does downstream processing so often determine whether a technology succeeds or fails? Many promising technologies achieve conversion but struggle with separation, purification, upgrading, or catalyst performance. This session explores the systems that frequently determine commercial viability.
Speakers TBA

3:30pm Coffee Break & Industry Networking

4:00pm TRACK A The Bench to Demo Summit: Risk Mitigation for Early-Stage Projects
How do you reduce risk when nearly everything still feels uncertain? Early-stage developers face technical, commercial, organizational, and financing risks simultaneously. This session examines practical approaches to reducing uncertainty and building confidence among partners, customers, and investors.
Speakers TBA

4:00pm TRACK B The Commercial Scale Summit: Mastering the Risks
Why do seemingly strong projects collapse late in development? Many failures occur not because of technology, but because execution, timing, finance, policy, and operations fail to stay synchronized. This session explores how developers identify and manage complex deployment risks.
Speakers TBA

4:00pm TRACK C NEXT Technologies Summit: Industrial Fermentation and Biomanufacturing
How do you turn biology into manufacturing? Precision fermentation and industrial biology promise transformative capabilities, but scaling biological systems remains challenging. This session explores the operational, economic, and infrastructure realities of industrial biomanufacturing.
Speakers TBA

5:00pm TRACK A The Bench to Demo Summit: Pilot to Demonstration
Why is demonstration scale where so many projects stumble? Demonstration facilities introduce new levels of integration, staffing, permitting, logistics, financing, and operational complexity. This session examines how successful teams navigate the transition.
Speakers TBA

5:00pm TRACK B Commercial Scale Summit: Systems Integration
Why do projects with money, technology, feedstock, and customers still fail? Success increasingly depends on synchronizing multiple systems at the same time. Feedstocks, infrastructure, software, workforce, permitting, financing, and operations must all move together. This session explores how developers build coordination into deployment.
Speakers TBA

5:00pm TRACK C NEXT Technologies Summit: Thermochemical Technologies Summit 2030 Technologies
Can thermochemical technologies finally move from promise to repeatable deployment? Gasification, pyrolysis, hydrothermal liquefaction, and syngas conversion have advanced significantly, yet commercialization challenges remain. This session examines where these technologies are succeeding and what barriers remain.
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
How do companies remain durable when everything around them keeps changing? Long-term success depends on resilience as much as innovation. This session explores how leaders navigate policy shifts, commodity cycles, customer evolution, and market uncertainty while continuing to grow.
Moderator: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest
Speakers TBA

9:30am National Laboratory & BRC Innovation Summit
Moderator: Tim Zenk, Managing Director, Earth Finance
Where will the next generation of commercial technologies come from? National laboratories and research centers increasingly provide the tools, infrastructure, and discoveries that enable future deployment. This session examines emerging capabilities and their pathways to industrial impact.
Speakers TBA

10:30am Coffee Break & Industry Networking

11:00am ABLC Next-Gen Companies Summit
Moderator: Jim Lane, Editor & Publisher, The Daily Digest
What are the next generation of founders seeing that established players may be missing? Emerging companies often identify opportunities before they become obvious. This session showcases founders and innovators developing the technologies, business models, and industrial platforms that could define the next decade..
Speakers TBA

12:15pm Lunch & Industry Networking

1:15pm Global Markets, Regulatory, Carbon Markets & Trade Summit
Why can identical projects succeed in one region and fail in another? Global deployment increasingly depends on navigating different regulatory systems, carbon markets, trade structures, sustainability standards, and policy incentives. This session explores how companies adapt to a fragmented global landscape.
Speakers TBA

2:30pm The Due Diligence Wolfpack
How do you know what’s real? The bioeconomy generates no shortage of claims, projections, and promises. The Wolfpack applies practical experience to evaluate technologies, projects, and market opportunities through the lenses of engineering, finance, operations, and commercialization

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