7^th International Congress on Biofuels and Bioenergy October 2-4, 2017 Toronto, Canada

Lee Lynd is an expert on the production of energy from plant biomass and conducts leading research on microbial cellulose utilization. His H-Index of 59 (Google scholar) is among the highest of researchers with primary activity in the bioenergy field. He has authored over 200 papers, book chapters, and reviews spanning both laboratory research and visionary analysis. In addition to leading his research group, his activities at Thayer School include teaching the undergraduate systemscourse as well as graduate courses in metabolic engineering and energy systems, and curriculum development and strategic planning in the energy area.

Estimation of the climate impacts of biofuels and bioenergy has in general been approached by asking what would be the consequences of deployment assuming land use and other decisions were made without regard to climate. Drawing on recent analysis, the author will demonstrate that different answers result if instead we ask how bioenergy should be produced in order to achieve climate benefits. Notwithstanding important advances, the cellulosic biofuels field has fallen far short of expectations over the last decade and it is clear that technological readiness was widely overestimated. In response to this circumstance, advancing the cellulosic biofuels field needs to be more open to stepwise deployment taking advantage of niche opportunities, and to direct research and development effort to both established processing paradigms and new processing paradigms. Consolidated bioprocessing with treatment will be considered as an example of the latter.

Marc A Rosen is a Professor in the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, Canada. He served as Founding Dean of the Faculty from 2002-08. He was President of the Engineering Institute of Canada for 2008-10. He served as President of the Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering from 2002 to 2004, and is a registered Professional Engineer in Ontario. He is also Editor-in-Chief of several journals, including Biofuels.

Sustainability is a critically important goal for human activity and development. Energy sustainability is of great importance to any plans for overall sustainability given the pervasiveness of energy use, its importance in economic development and living standards, and the significant impacts that energy processes and systems have on the environment. Many factors that need to be considered and appropriately addressed in moving towards energy sustainability are examined in this presentation. These include appropriate selection of energy resources bearing in mind sustainability criteria, facilitation of the use of sustainable energy resources, enhancement of the efficiency of energy-related processes, and a holistic adoption of environmental stewardship in energy activities. In addition, other key sustainability measures are addressed, such as economics, equity, land use, lifestyle, sociopolitical factors and population. The specific role that bioenergy has in the broader context of energy sustainability is described throughout. Conclusions are provided related both to options and pathways for energy sustainability and to the broader ultimate objective of sustainability.

Donald L Smith (James McGill Professor) has conducted research in the production and physiology of crop plants, with an emphasis on plant-microbe interactions, most recently, within the context of biofuel feedstock production. Specific areas of research have been: nitrogen metabolism, nitrogen fixation, low temperature stress and nodulation, methods for injection of metabolites into plants, cereal production, plant growth regulators, intercropping, inter-plant competition, plant-microbe signaling, plants and climate change, biofuel crops, crop stress responses and biochar as a soil amendment. He has trained 66 graduate students, 38 PhD and 28 MSc, published >310 papers, generated 11 patents, started a spin-off company (Bios Agriculture Inc.), and commercialized technologies that are now applied to >100 million ha of crop land per year. He has been principal investigator on research grants totaling >$55 million. He currently leads the BioFuelNet Canada.

Canada has considerable capacity for production of advanced biofuels; feedstock is the major constraint to production. On the agricultural side, feedstocks can be purpose grown biomass crops and/or residues from food crops. Climate change will increase the frequency of conditions stressful to crop growth, and cause greater extremes of crop stress. Purpose grown crops will often be produced on more marginal lands, where stressful conditions are generally more frequent. A plant growing under field conditions is not an individual; it is a community. It has a set of regulated microbes associated with it; the microbes also exert effects over the plants. The microbial community is the phytomicrobiome and, it plus the plants are referred to as the holobiont. Microbial inoculants can improve the growth and productivity of crop plants and reduce overall costs associated with traditional inputs of fertilizers, pesticides, etc. Microbial inoculants can improve the growth and productivity of crops by helping the plants access water and nutrients, fight off diseases, and activate growth responses with signalling compounds. Microbe-to-plant signal compounds (lipo-chitooligosaccharides and thuricin 17) have been shown to increase plant growth when applied at very low concentrations, particularly when plants are growing under stressful conditions. The interaction with stress was demonstrated during the recent 5-year funding period associated with BioFuelNet Canada. They are the hormones of the holobiont. Exploiting the phytomicrobiome constitutes a new opportunity for development of low-input, sustainable practices to improve crop biomass productivity and yield, delivering more biomass from crops and crop residue, leading to greater food production from food crops, a feedstock for fuel production. Meaningful progress has already been made: the lipo-chitooligosaccharide technology is already being applied to millions of hectares of agricultural land each year. However, it is clear that enormous untapped potential remains.