Ethylene is a key component of the world’s vast appetite for plastics. It’s normally made using fossils as a feedstock, and is energy-intensive to produce. So the chemicals industry has long sought a way to biologically manufacture ethylene. It would be a double-win for clean energy: it would capture CO2 and displace the fossil-based feedstocks. Connor O’Neil at NREL describes new research that makes ethylene in a “one-step” process fuelled … [Read more...]