The US state of Maine has launched a new initiative called the Maine Born Global Challenge to help support and finance bio-based projects.<\/p>\n
The initiative covers a wide range of sectors including biomass handling and biofuels.<\/p>\n
Under the scheme, companies of complementary technologies will be grouped into project teams, assigned to specific power plant locations, given funding for business\/implementation plans and provided with investment\/project financing for project execution.<\/p>\n
The Maine Born Global Challenge aims to source proven technologies and forward-thinking strategic partners that are brought to create a sustainable, closed-loop circular economy to rejuvenate the rural areas with the shuttered paper and pulp plants as well as existing biomass to energy plants.<\/p>\n
The State of Maine has committed resources from the Department of Economic & Community Development, the Department of Agriculture and Forestry and the Department of Environmental Protection to support the full implementation of these projects in a timely and efficient manner.<\/p>\n
The initiative is broken down into four distinct phases, which include the following:<\/p>\n
Phase One: Pre-qualification (ends mid-January 2017)
\nPhase Two: Team organisation (March 2017)
\nPhase Three: Project planning (May 2017)
\nPhase Four: Project execution (2017-2019)<\/p>\n
According to Maine Born Global Challenge organisers, the challenge is the first of its kind, as it \u201ctruly\u201d focuses on the commercialisation of innovation.<\/p>\n
In a statement, its organisers said: \u201cThe portfolio of project sites can be considered \u2018living labs\u2019, allowing applicants to expedite the process of pilot to demonstration to full commercialisation. True commercialisation requires established markets obtaining long-term offtake agreements for productions, and the ability to scale resources, transportation logistics and qualified labour.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe state of Maine has a unique combination of factors such as sustainable biomass supply, existing sites with operating biomass-to-energy plants, operating woodyards and transportation on major interstates and rail. These factors combined with the fact that sponsor owners already have revenue-producing energy plants in place is a major incentive to investors sensitive to market risk.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe federal loan programmes that buffer innovation risk levers unbankable projects to become financially feasible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Synthesis Venture Fund Partners will be directing the Maine Born Global Challenge by establishing long-term partnerships with corporations and entrepreneurs who share their vision for innovation and value creation.<\/p>\n
The company represents a group of developers in renewable energy developing a portfolio of projects with the state of Maine. Synthesis will be matching technologies to specific projects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The US state of Maine has launched a new initiative called the Maine Born Global Challenge to help support and finance bio-based projects. The initiative covers a wide range of sectors including biomass handling and biofuels. Under the scheme, companies of complementary technologies will be grouped into project teams, assigned to specific power plant locations, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","nova_meta_subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5572],"tags":[5838],"supplier":[12955],"class_list":["post-39670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bio-based","tag-bioeconomy","supplier-us-state-of-maine"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39670"},{"taxonomy":"supplier","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/renewable-carbon.eu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/supplier?post=39670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}