Richard Branson & Suzanne Hunt Discuss Renewable Jet Fuels

Jul 3, 2013 |

The UK’s Inde­pen­dent and Media Planet asked Richard Bran­son and Suzanne Hunt to com­ment on the future of renew­able fuel and avi­a­tion in a recent arti­cle.They have been fea­tured together sev­eral times in the press, includ­ing in Time Magazine’s Jet Green arti­cle last year, sub­ti­tled “Air­lines’ need for cheap, plen­ti­ful bio­fuel is forc­ing the indus­try to scale.”

Bran­son acknowl­edged Hunt in his speech to Sec­re­tary Ray Mabus and the US Navy when he dis­cussed their bold lead­er­ship in the tran­si­tion off of petro­leum, his desire to con­tinue col­lab­o­rat­ing, and their shared sense of urgency. The full video of his speech is here.

Suzanne Named Associate at the International Institute for Sustainability Analysis and Strategy in Germany

May 13, 2013 |

I have teamed up with the Inter­na­tional Insti­tute for Sus­tain­abil­ity Anal­y­sis and Strat­egy (IINAS) as one of theirasso­ciates. This for­mal­izes the long-standing col­lab­o­ra­tion between myself and the Insitute’s founder, Dr. Uwe Fritsche. IINAS is an inde­pen­dent trans­dis­ci­pli­nary research orga­ni­za­tion based in Darm­stadt (Ger­many) which started oper­at­ing in April 2012. We are cur­rently col­lab­o­rat­ing on a full green­house gas life­cy­cle analy­sis of hydrofrac­tur­ing for nat­ural gas extraction.

Hunt Family Wines Featured at the Green Inaugural Ball

May 13, 2013 |

I almost for­got to men­tion that two of my family’s Hunt Coun­try wines were fea­tured at the Green Inau­gural Ball this year! The farm has been in the fam­ily for seven gen­er­a­tions and my par­ents started the win­ery in 1981. My brother, Jonathan Hunt, is cur­rently the wine­maker and his Dry Ries­ling and Alchemy (a red blend) were fea­tured at the VIP bars at the gala. read more…

Suzanne & Other Industry Leaders Kick Off National Advanced Biofuels Conference & Expo

Nov 24, 2012 |

Advanced Bio­fu­els Con­fer­ence & Expo. Hous­ton. Novem­ber 2012. We dis­cussed a range of chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties for the advanced bio­fu­els indus­try includ­ing the need to shift the way the indus­try com­mu­ni­cates about itself. Cre­at­ing a new, cap­i­tal inten­sive, high tech indus­try in today’s eco­nomic cli­mate — while com­pet­ing against existing/entrenched indus­tries — is a mas­sive chal­lenge and the indus­try should be forth­right about that, and should set man­age­able expectations.

Suzanne Speaks at U.S. Military and Renewable Energy Industry Forum & the Clean Defense Summit

Feb 22, 2012 |

The US Navy has com­mit­ted to reduce its petro­leum use by 50% by 2020 and to sail a Great Green Fleet in 2016. The Air Force set a tar­get of acquir­ing “50% of domes­tic avi­a­tion fuel require­ments via alter­na­tive fuel blends by 2016.” The Air Force and the Army set the goal of increas­ing their “use of renew­able energy to 25% by 2025.” Col­leagues at the Army recently stood up an energy task force to facil­i­tate renew­able energy devel­op­ment on Army bases using third party finance, and the Marines are using solar pan­els and bat­tery packs at for­ward oper­at­ing bases in Afghanistan. It is an honor and a priv­i­lege to col­lab­o­rate with many of the fine peo­ple who are lead­ing this charge. read more…

Suzanne Speaks at the Gigaton Awards in South Africa, Launches RenewableJetFuels.org

Dec 20, 2011 |

I gave the crowd an overview of the renew­able fuels and avi­a­tion work that I am doing at the Car­bon War Room dur­ing the Giga­ton Awards Cer­e­mony in Dur­ban, South Africa in Decem­ber. I talked about the impor­tance of mov­ing away from fos­sil fuels despite the dif­fi­cul­ties in shift­ing sup­ply chains and pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures, and renew­able avi­a­tion fuels as a means to get the entire advanced renew­able fuels indus­try off the ground (no pun intended). This was a pre­view to the launch of our beta renewablejetfuels.org web­site and the Else­vier beta renew­able fuels data­base a few days later.

Bill Browning, co-founder of Terrapin Bright Green and HuntGreen LLC partner, is the 2011 Evergreen Awards Perspective Winner

Oct 22, 2011 |

We want to con­grat­u­late Bill Brown­ing on his recent recog­ni­tion as the 2011 Ever­green Awards Per­spec­tive Win­ner. You can read more about Bill in the fol­low­ing inter­view, pub­lished in this month’s Eco-Structure Mag­a­zine.  Bill Brown­ing is one of the green build­ing and real estate industry’s fore­most thinkers and strate­gists, and an advo­cate for sus­tain­able design solu­tions at all lev­els of busi­ness, gov­ern­ment, and civil soci­ety. His exper­tise has been sought out by orga­ni­za­tions as diverse as For­tune 500 com­pa­nies, lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, non-profit orga­ni­za­tions, the U.S. mil­i­tary, and for­eign governments.

Dave Muyres addresses PodCar City Conference in Stockholm

Sep 20, 2011 |

Dave Muyres pre­sented at the 5th annual Pod­Car City Con­fer­ence in Stock­holm Swe­den on Sep­tem­ber 7th, 2011.  The inter­na­tional audi­ence was con­vened to dis­cuss the world’s grow­ing inter­est in Pod­Cars as a new form of urban trans­porta­tion.  A high­light of the con­fer­ence was the recent announce­ment that the new Pod­Car sys­tem at Heathrow was fully up and run­ning.   read more…

Suzanne quoted in Forbes Magazine

Sep 9, 2011 |

Photo from Forbes article. Photo by Evan Kafka

Forbes Magazine’s Todd Woody quoted me and other col­leagues in his August 08, 2011 “Jet Green” arti­cle. Note to self, any­thing you say to a reporter could end up in print!

Algae is the great green hope for jet fuels. “The­o­ret­i­cally, algae has incred­i­ble pro­duc­tion capac­ity,” says Suzanne Hunt, senior advi­sor to the Car­bon War Room, a group cofounded by Virgin’s Richard Bran­son that is work­ing with air­lines and bio­fuel pro­duc­ers to jump-start the indus­try. “Camelina plants and all the other plants that grow on land have to put all this energy into fight­ing grav­ity and into roots and fruits and flow­ers. Algae just floats and grows.“

Dave Muyres Presents in Shanghai about the Future of the Auto Industry

Apr 25, 2011 |

On April 15th, Dave Muyres addressed the Amer­i­can Cham­ber of Com­merce regard­ing the role of inno­va­tion in the future of the car indus­try. While in Shang­hai he also pre­sented at the Inte­ri­or­mo­tives Con­fer­ence to a group of 400 global design lead­ers about Design and the Future of the Trans­porta­tion Indus­try on April 17th. On April 19 and 20 he attended the Shang­hai AutoShow press days, Asia’s largest autoshow and blog­ging about chang­ing con­sumer behav­ior. In Feb­ru­ary 2011, at the invi­ta­tion of IDSA, Dave addressed a group of 300 design enthu­si­asts about the Role of the Indus­trial Designer, Sus­tain­abil­ity and the Future of How We Move Around the Planet. This event was hosted by Design West Michi­gan and held at Kendall College.

Suzanne & Dave to Co-Chair key tracks at upcoming Creating Climate Wealth Summit in Washington, D.C.

Apr 25, 2011 |

Suzanne and David will be co-hosting two impor­tant work­ing tracks at the Car­bon War Room’s most sig­nif­i­cant annual event: the Cre­at­ing Cli­mate Wealth Sum­mit.  Suzanne will con­vene renew­able avi­a­tion fuel lead­ers to dis­cuss impor­tant next steps to the sus­tain­able com­mer­cial­iza­tion of renew­able avi­a­tion fuels.  David Muyres will be co-hosting a new track this year focused on Per­sonal Trans­porta­tion.  If we are to reach giga­ton car­bon reduc­tion lev­els we must look at this topic more broadly: beyond pol­icy and tech­nol­ogy alone.

Dave Muyres to Speak at IDSA Conference on Transportation Design

Sep 3, 2010 |

The IDSA Michi­gan con­fer­ence, titled Expand­ing the Fron­tiers, will focus on how to trans­form the car indus­try into a robust provider of trans­porta­tion sys­tem solu­tions.  Dave will dis­cuss the key role of design in guid­ing and ener­giz­ing this crit­i­cal trans­for­ma­tion.  The con­fer­ence will take place on Sep­tem­ber 17th, 2010 at Michi­gan State Uni­ver­sity in Troy, MI.  For more infor­ma­tion on the com­plete event, go to their web­site.

Suzanne Advising “Living City Block”

Jul 5, 2010 |

It is esti­mated that by the year 2050, eighty per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion will live in cities. In addi­tion, the Urban Land Insti­tute pre­dicts that eighty per­cent of cur­rent build­ing stock in the US will still be in use in the year 2050. A series of impres­sive efforts are under­way to mobi­lize the financ­ing and tech­nolo­gies to retro­fit large build­ings, but nearly half of the build­ing stock in Amer­ica is small-medium sized. read more…

Visit to DAK Renewables & Minwind

Jun 13, 2010 |

David Kol­srud at AgriEnergy Ethanol Mill in Luverne, Minnesota

Ear­lier this spring I vis­ited David Kol­srud and his team at DAK Renew­able Energy in South Dakota. DAK has a port­fo­lio of ethanol, biodeisel and wind invest­ments with the com­mon theme being com­mu­nity own­er­ship. We vis­ited Agri-Energy, an ethanol mill that is owned by 230 local farm­ers and pro­duces 22 mil­lion gal­lons of ethanol as well as dis­tillers grain (fed to live­stock) and bio­mass pel­lets that are burned in place of some of the coal at a power plant in the region. read more…