19 Jun Telluride Science Town Talks: “The Good, The Bad, & The Possible,” 6/24!
This coming week the 2025 Telluride Science Town Talks series continues with “The Good, The Bad, and The Possible: Generating Products from Above-Ground Carbon.” The event features Dr. Josh Schaidle and takes place at the Telluride Conference Center in Mountain Village on Tuesday, June 24, 6:30 pm; doors, 6 p.m.
Town Talks are FREE and open to the public.
Visit telluridescience.org to learn more about Telluride Science and the capital campaign to transform the historic Telluride Depot into the Telluride Science & Innovation Center. The venue is the permanent home for Telluride Science and a global hub of inspired knowledge exchange and development where great minds get to solve great challenges.
The 2025 Telluride Science Town Talks series is presented by Alpine Bank with additional support from the Telluride Mountain Village Owner’s Association.
Go here for more about Telluride Science.
Go here for more on Town Talks.
2011: James Gaspard founded Biochar Now, a company that produces a carbon-rich material called biochar out of dead wood, otherwise destined for the landfill. The idea is to give dead wood and similar debris a second, useful life.
2012: The Elk Creek Mine launched in Somerset Colorado, where captured methane
leaking from mining equipment is now being used to generate electricity.
2014: Enerkem opened the world’s first full-scale, waste-to-biofuels and chemicals facility.
Rather than use fossil fuels, this biorefinery converts municipal solid waste into useful
products.
And now it’s Dr. Josh Schaidle’s turn to weigh in with a focused, positive initiative to diversify our domestic supply chains and create economic value from waste.
Schaidle and his team at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory are working to develop innovative technologies for converting above-ground carbon into valuable fuels, chemicals, and materials we can and will use in our everyday lives.
Above-ground carbon? That phenom is found in biomass such as plants and trees, but also in carbon dioxide emissions from factories. According to Schaidle, those sources represent an untapped opportunity which could be used to make products, such as the fuels and materials we use in our everyday lives.
Untapped until now.
On June 17, Dr. Josh Schaidle is speaking at Telluride Science’s upcoming Town Talk titled “The Good, The Bad, and The Possible: Generating Products from Above-Ground Carbon.”
During his presentation, Schaidle plans to describe the value proposition, key barriers, and technological advancements for generating products from above-ground carbon sources. These advancements could improve affordability and have a lasting, positive impact on the world, such as:
• Biomass and carbon dioxide can be converted into conventional liquid fuels such as gasoline and jet fuel.
• Biomass can also be used to generate electricity and provide heat.
• Carbon dioxide and biomass can serve as precursors for materials in our built environment.
Botton line: by converting above-ground carbon into useful fuels and products, we can expand our domestic, carbon-based economy.
Josh Schaidle, more:
September 13, 2019- Josh Schaidle, Researcher V-Chemical Engineering. (Photo by Dennis Schroeder / NREL)
Dr. Josh Schaidle is the Laboratory Program Manager for Carbon Management at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Schaidle also serves as Chief of Staff for NREL’s Bioenergy Science and Technology Directorate. He is also director of the Chemical Catalysis for Bioenergy Consortium.
Schaidle earned his doctorate in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2011, after completing his bachelor’s degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2006.
Schaidle and his team develop and scale technologies for carbon capture, carbon utilization, and carbon removal. His dream is to create a future in which the quality of life for each and every person is no longer a compromise between sustainability and affordability.
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