BioSolar’s Eco-Friendlier Protective Solar Module Component Rids Solar Energy of Petroleum and Removes Fossil Fuels from Solar Energy Equation

BioSolar, Inc. (BSRC), developer of a breakthrough technology to produce bio-based materials from renewable plant sources that reduce the cost of photovoltaic solar modules, “has developed a ‘biobacksheet’ that may change the solar industry,” according to a July 22, 2009 article on Energy Boom.

“BioSolar is currently making steady strides in the commercialization process, and we are always pleased when members of the solar industry share our excitement. We received great feedback following our recent announcement of the successful prototype run of the new BioBacksheetTM-A,” said BioSolar’s CEO Dr. David Lee.

News of the development was also featured in New Energy World Network and Solar Industry Magazine.

Conventional polymer backsheets, the bottom-most layer of nearly all photovoltaic solar cell modules, are designed to protect the solar cell from environmental hazards like moisture and UV rays. One of the reasons solar power has remained expensive is because of the cost of its components such as backsheets. BioSolar’s BioBacksheet™ is a protective covering made from renewable plant sources, rather than the expensive petroleum-based film currently in use, and is expected to cost substantially less than traditional petroleum-based backsheets.

A Renewable Energy World article says that according to Lee, the fastest growing segment of the photovoltaic (PV) market is thin film, particularly copper-indium-gallium-selenide (CIGS) and cadmium telluride (CdTe) thin-film photovoltaic panels that require backsheets to have a water vapor transmission rate of nearly zero.

“BioSolar has developed the BioBacksheetTM-A with an absolute moisture barrier from renewable materials. The three layer laminate film consisting of 100 percent recyclable aluminum foil is the center core sandwiched between outer layers of bio-based polymer films, making our product unique in the industry,” said Lee.

BioSolar recently announced that the BioBacksheetTM-C, designed for the traditional c-Si PV modules, will be the company’s first product to be commercially available during the second half of 2009. Two more versions of BioBacksheetTM are currently in the pre-production stage moving towards qualification for full production.

For more information about BioSolar, please visit http://www.BioSolar.com

Green Investor and/or its affiliates hold shares of BioSolar.

Dropping Evergreen Solar (ESLR)

Due to uneven market performance, Green Investor is dropping Evergreen Solar from the Stock Tracker.

OriginOil Announces Breakthrough Process for Live Algae Oil Extraction

OriginOil, Inc. (OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform algae, a promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum, recently announced that it has succeeded in extracting algae oil on a continuous basis without cell sacrifice. This new “milking” process will join the company’s Cascading Production™ technique to create a combined cycle promising new efficiencies.

Live Extraction™, or milking, is inherently efficient because it achieves continuous production of algae oil without destroying the algae cell. Therefore a single algae cell can produce more oil during its lifetime using lower amounts of energy. Unlike other approaches to live extraction, OriginOil’s process does not employ expensive consumables such as reverse osmosis membranes; furthermore, it is not limited to oil-bearing algae strains, such as Botryococcus braunii, that are known to excrete algae oil naturally.

Algae typically protect their oil behind a tough cell wall. The challenge of live extraction is to harvest the oil without causing permanent damage to the cell. This goal has been achieved in the laboratory at bench scale and is now being scaled up to OriginOil’s intermediate 200-gallon tank size. A diagram illustrates the process at http://www.originoil.com/technology/live-extraction.html

The company recently filed for patent protection of the new Live Extraction process, its ninth patent application, entitled “Procedure for Extraction of Lipids from Algae without Cell Sacrifice.” “Live Extraction works by stimulating the algae cells through specific electrical modulations,” Riggs Eckelberry, OriginOil’s CEO, said. “The challenge is how to keep the cells alive while continuously extracting the oil, and we have achieved this.”

“We are pleased with the results we are getting from conventional harvesting,” said Vikram Pattarkine, PhD, OriginOil’s CTO. “We expect the new Live Extraction process to coexist with our daily ‘destructive’ process to create an even more efficient combined cycle.”

Aside from any production gains, combining the two processes is desirable because algae cultures must be refreshed regularly to remove waste toxins. Cascading Production supports Live Extraction by removing a percentage of the culture every day, refreshing the environment and giving the algae culture space to grow.

Following Exxon Mobil’s recent announcement of a $600 million investment in San Diego-based Synthetic Genomics, Paul Reep, senior technical adviser and one of the inventors, noted: “Live lipid extraction is especially beneficial when used with algae that have been genetically engineered for faster growth rate or higher lipid yields. By integrating Live Extraction into our process, we are providing a technology platform for companies like Synthetic Genomics that are experimenting with genetic improvements.”

For more information about OriginOil, please visit http://www.OriginOil.com

Green Investor and/or its affiliates hold shares of OOIL.

Turning Living Algae into Mini Oil Wells

The oil giant Exxon Mobil, whose chief executive once mocked alternative energy by referring to ethanol as “moonshine,” is about to venture into biofuels.

On July 21, Exxon announced an investment of $600 million in producing liquid transportation fuels from algae — organisms in water that range from pond scum to seaweed. The biofuel effort involves a partnership with Synthetic Genomics, a biotechnology company founded by the genomics pioneer J. Craig Venter.

New Scientist recently published the following interview with Mr. Venter about turning living algae into mini oil wells:

Algae that can turn carbon dioxide back into fossil fuel – it sounds too good to be true. How is this going to work?

Algae use carbon dioxide to generate a number of oil molecules, via photosynthesis, as a way of storing energy. People have been trying to make them overproduce the oil and store it. We’re changing the algae’s gene structure to get them to produce hydrocarbons similar to those that come out of the ground and to trick them into pumping these hydrocarbons out instead of accumulating them. As other groups get CO2 sequestration techniques going, we’d like to take that CO2 and get the algae to convert it back into oil. The aim is to prevent it from further increasing carbon in the atmosphere.

How do you get from algae oil to oil you can put in a car or jet engine?

The next stage is to take the algae’s biocrude, put it into Exxon Mobil’s existing refineries, and try to make the same products that you get from oil that comes out of the ground. So the goal is to make gasoline, diesel fuel and jet fuel out of the same hydrocarbons we use now – just from a different source. Instead of pulling the carbon out of the ground we’re pulling it out of the atmosphere.

How soon do you think that can happen?

There have been a lot of announcements from small demonstration projects claiming they’re going to have major new fuels in one or two years. Our aim is to have a real and significant impact on the billions of gallons that are consumed worldwide. Materials used to make a vast range of products – clothing, carpets, medicines, plastics – come from oil. The goal is to try and replace as many of these as possible. The expectation is that doing it on this scale will take five to 10 years.

So will Exxon be producing nothing but algal power in 10 years’ time?

I think that’s highly unlikely. The real test is going to be how simply this can be produced so it can compete with oil prices. The challenge is not just doing it but doing it in a cost-effective fashion.

What makes you think that you, unlike anyone else, can do this?

Well, we’ve had some breakthroughs in terms of getting the algae to secrete pure lipids [oils] but I think the real trick is the partnership that we have – the financial resources we now have available to us and the engineering and oil-processing skills of Exxon.

Exxon has a poor reputation on climate-change issues. Won’t partnering with them damage the project’s green credentials?

Quite the opposite. I think the fact that the largest company in the world has gone in this direction after several years of study is good for all of us. I’ve said many times this change can’t happen without the oil industry. They have a reputation for studying things for quite a while and acting in a large fashion once they become convinced of an approach. I don’t see how it can be bad news if somebody makes a major change in direction for the benefit of the planet.

[Craig Venter made his name sequencing the human genome. He is founder/CEO of Synthetic Genomics, which has begun a $600 million project with Exxon to transform the oil industry.]

OriginOil (OOIL)

How do play the algae investment game?  As a green investor, it doesn’t make much sense to invest in Exxon. Synthetic Genomics is aprivately held company, so you can’t play that.  Green Investor’s choice is OriginOil (OOIL).   

OriginOil, Inc. is developing a breakthrough technology that will transform algae, the most promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum. Much of the world’s oil and gas is made up of ancient algae deposits. The Company’s technology promises to produce “new oil” from algae, through a cost-effective, high-speed manufacturing process. This endless supply of new oil can be used for many products such as diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, plastics and solvents without the global warming effects of petroleum. Other oil-producing feedstock such as corn and sugarcane often destroy vital farmlands and rainforests, disrupt global food supplies and create new environmental problems. The Company’s unique technology, based on algae, is targeted at fundamentally changing our source of oil without disrupting the environment or food supplies. Instead of drilling for old oil, we can now manufacture clean, new oil, anytime and anywhere, delivering a revolutionary breakthrough to the world.

For more information about OriginOil, please visit http://www.OriginOil.com

Green Investor and/or its affiliates hold shares of OOIL.

Mass Production Technology to Bridge Gap Between Inexpensive Thin-Film and Higher Efficiency Silicon Wafer Technologies

The Recent Market Correction Provides a Great Opportunity to Buy Green Stocks

Stock markets have just have finished a particularly strong quarter – with the S&P 500 Index gaining 15.2% for its best quarter since 1998, the MSCI World Index rising by 19.7% and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index adding 33.6% – but started to lag last month and are trading down in early July.

Volume has been declining on rally days and expanding on declining days, which can be construed as bearish action. As doubts persist over the strength of the global economic recovery, the S&P 500 Index, MSCI World Index and MSCI Emerging Markets Index have dropped by 5.0%, 5.9% and 6.3% respectively from their June highs.

While many investors may be waiting for a resumption of an upward trend, a cautious approach cannot be faulted. However, Green Investor thinks that green stocks are cheap and urges investors to take advantage of this current market correction.

By Reducing Reaction Time From Hours to Minutes, Carbon Sciences Makes CO2-to-Fuel Process Highly Scalable and Commercially Viable

Carbon Sciences (CABN), the developer of a breakthrough technology to recycle carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions into gasoline and other fuels, recently announced a significant technical development in reducing the reaction time of its CO2-to-Fuel process from hours to minutes. This achievement dramatically increases the scalability and decreases the costs of building and operating an industrial scale CO2-to-Fuel plant.

Reaction time is the time required to convert a unit amount of raw material to products in a fixed biochemical reactor and is a very important parameter for scalability and process economics. In the case of CO2 to fuel, a slow reaction time translates to a very large reactor size for holding and processing a continuous stream of CO2 from a large emitter, such as a coal-fired power plant. For example, if a 1 cubic meter reactor can process 1 ton of CO2 per day, then 5,000 reactors are required to process 5,000 tons/day of CO2 emissions from a medium sized coal-fired power plant. However, if a 1 cubic meter reactor can process 10 tons of CO2 per day, then only 500 reactors are required.

In previous designs of the Company’s biocatalytic process, CO2 was transformed into fuel in approximately 10 hours. Due to advanced breakthroughs in enzyme encapsulation and a new and novel micro-sized biocatalytic structure, the Company has achieved a major milestone by transforming CO2 into fuel within 10 to 30 minutes.

Dr. Naveed Aslam, the company’s CTO, commented on this breakthrough, “We are very excited about this milestone. Due to our proprietary process and reaction design, we believe we can lower the reaction time even more. We are not aware of any other renewable fuel technology that can come close to our reaction time. For example, corn requires an effective reaction time of 3-4 months as it absorbs CO2 from the air into kernels that are then fermented into ethanol fuel. As a result of this long ‘reaction time’, an enormous amount of farmland is required by corn to (a) absorb CO2, and (b) produce meaningful amounts of fuel.”

Byron Elton, the company’s CEO, said, “With our recent technical breakthroughs, we strongly believe that we are developing the most efficient and viable renewable fuel technology in the world. We estimate that with less than half of the CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants alone, we can produce 30% of the world’s liquid fuel supply. I am delighted with our progress and we are on schedule with our development plan.”

For more information about Carbon Sciences, please see www.CarbonSciences.com

Green Investor and/or its affiliates hold shares of CABN.

First Solar (FSLR) Gets the Axe

Green Investor has axed First Solar (FSLR) from the recommended list of green investments and will no longer track this stock. While First Solar has been an industry leader in reducing the cost per watt of solar generated electricity, its high price per share makes it less attractive to most investors and less likely to achieve the investment results Green Investor seeks.  

OriginOil CEO Outlines Plan to Overtake Petroleum in Renewable Energy Conference at UN Headquarters

OriginOil (OOIL), the developer of a breakthrough technology to transform algae, a promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum, recently reported that CEO Riggs Eckelberry outlined a plan to overtake petroleum during a panel session at the inaugural Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organization (IREO) Conference, held at the United Nations on June 11, 2009. He warned that without a new approach, petroleum could remain strong until 2060. Eckelberry’s presentation may be read on the OriginOil website at  http://www.originoil.com/OriginOil_IREO_20090611.pdf

“In our planning for renewable energy, we have tended to follow old-school energy thinking which focuses on large, centralized facilities,” Eckelberry commented. “We believe the solution is networked and distributed and based on large-scale information sharing.” He continued, “We know that entrepreneurs worldwide want to start making biofuels now for their local communities and industries. That’s the model of the future – we call it ‘mushrooms after the rain’.”

IREO Secretary-General Robson Mello applauded OriginOil’s contribution to both the conference and biofuels industry at large. “We found Riggs Eckelberry’s comprehensive approach to solving our petroleum dependency to be realistic and powerful,” said Mello. “We know we have OriginOil’s full support in rolling out renewable energy solutions throughout the world and we look forward to a long and productive collaboration.”

Intergovernmental Renewable Energy Organization (IREO)

As the foremost international voice on renewable energy worldwide, IREO has established this annual conference to bring together leaders from political, private and academic sectors to discuss the state of renewable energy needs and plausible solutions in response to the growth of developing nations around the world.

IREO is a proponent of clean and efficient energy sources combined with sustainable development and social awareness. The organization started as a partnership initiative launched in response to the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, the Kyoto Protocol, the Johannesburg Declaration and the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in New York. For more information, please visit www.ireoigo.org.

Green Investor and/or its affiliates hold shares of OOIL.  

Carbon Sciences Achieves Breakthrough in Biocatalytic Design

You may recall that Green Investor recently reported on Carbon Sciences’ breakthrough technology to recycle CO2 into fuel. Innovating at the intersection of chemical engineering and bio-engineering disciplines, the company is developing a highly scalable biocatalytic process to meet the fuel needs of the world. Carbon Sciences’ solution to energy and climate challenges is to enable a sustainable world of fuel consumption and climate stability by recycling CO2 into fuel. For example, Carbon Sciences’ breakthrough technology can be used to recycle CO2 emitted from fossil fuel power plants into gasoline to run cars and jet fuel to fly aircraft. Now, the company has achieved a breakthrough in its biocatalytic design

Novel Enzyme Encapsulation Technology Significantly Increases Functional Life of Key Enzymes and Speeds Commercialization of CO2 to Fuel Process

Last week, Carbon Sciences announced a significant technical development in increasing the functional life of key enzymes used in the company’s biocatalytic CO2 to fuel process. This development not only accelerates the pace of commercialization, but also will result in lower cost fuel.

In most biocatalytic processes, the key component is the active organic enzymes that catalyze specific reactions. Enzymes are very expensive, and the commercial viability of any biocatalytic process is dependent on the number of cycles the enzymes can perform before they must be replaced. This phenomenon is known in the industry as the Total Turnover Number (TTN) of a biocatalytic process. A higher process TTN means that more products can be produced with the same fixed cost of enzymes – thereby lowering the cost per unit of product. For Carbon Sciences, a higher TTN in its biocatalytic CO2 to fuel process directly translates to a lower cost per gallon of gasoline and other fuels.

Carbon Sciences’ chief technology officer, Dr. Naveed Aslam, commented on this breakthrough, “We continue to increase the TTN of our CO2 to fuel process through a proprietary technology that encapsulates the enzymes in a protective shell. This protective shell significantly increases the activity and functional life of the enzymes. Our enzyme encapsulation technology gives us great confidence in the cost effectiveness of our CO2 to fuel process and moves us closer to commercial viability. The implication of a significantly higher TTN is profound.”

Dr. Aslam was recently featured in a cover page story entitled, “Catalyst – Seeking the Next Big Thing,” in the Chemical Week magazine, the world’s leading source of news and analysis for key professionals concerned with the chemical, petrochemical, specialty chemicals and related industries.

For more information about Carbon Sciences, see http://www.carbonsciences.com

Green Investor believes that Carbon Sciences has the potential become one of the most important new green technologies of our generation and can provide investors with extraordinary gains. Green Investor and/or its affiliates hold shares in CABN.

Imagine a plastic that is environmentally neutral, doesn’t require fossil fuels to produce and returns to nature without a trace. Such a material would surely be earth friendly.

Before the chemical revolution, our society was based on materials made from plants, such as corn, soy and sugar beets? Plants, not oil, used to be the primary raw material used to produce chemicals, paints, construction materials, clothing, and other household materials. In fact, the first plastic ever developed was a “plant-based plastic,” a cotton-derived product designed to replace ivory. According to a recent CHEJ article, Henry Ford was a proponent of plant-based plastics and he developed a demonstration vehicle in 1941 whose seat covers, dashboard, wheel, and tires were made from plant-based materials. Unfortunately, this all changed when the chemical industry captured the plastics market with the introduced low-cost plastics made from oil.

A Changing Market 

In recent years, the market has changed dramatically, driven by both the rising price of oil and growing concerns about the health and environmental impacts of plastics. Today, numerous manufacturers are beginning to use or develop plastics made out of renewable materials, such as corn, sugar beets, sugar cane, wheat, rice and sweet potatoes. Plant-based plastics (also called bioplastics or bio-based plastics) can be produced using several different processes including starch conversion, microbial conversion and genetic modification of plants.

In the U.S., the primary company manufacturing bioplastics is NatureWorks, owned by Cargill.  They can produce 300 million pounds a year of a plastic called PLA, or poly lactic acid, that is made from corn grown in Nebraska and Iowa. Starch from the corn is extracted and converted into dextrose (sugar) and then into lactic acid by fermentation. The lactic acid is further refined into pellets that can be made into different end products.  Other companies manufacturing plant-based plastics include Dupont, BASF, Eastman, Proctor & Gamble, and Cereplast.

Sales of NatureWorks’ plastics have taken off in the past year, with large manufacturers and retailers increasingly using them in their packaging and products. Companies like Newman’s Own and Wal-Mart are using bioplastics in their packaging and products. The end plastic products, indistinguishable from those derived from petrochemicals, are used to create food packaging, disposable cups and forks, water bottles, auto parts, carpeting, compact discs, bedding materials, and other consumer products.

In Europe, bioplastics are even more popular. Consumption has increased dramatically over the last five years. Novamont, an Italian company, manufactures a plant-based plastic called Mater-Bi that is used in many similar applications to PLA, including food packaging and disposable food service items.  Production is expanding across the globe where capacity for bio-based plastics topped 1.3 billion pounds in 2009. 

Cereplast (CERP)

One very interesting company to consider is Cereplast, Inc. (OTCBB: CERP). The company designs and manufactures proprietary bio-based, renewable plastics which are used as substitutes for petroleum-based plastics in all major converting processes – such as injection molding, thermoforming, blow molding and extrusions – at a pricing structure that is competitive with petroleum-based plastics.

Cereplast recently made a series of important announcements, including the signing of major customers. The company will soon supply its Compostables^® resin to Georgia-Pacific Professional Food Services Solutions for the manufacture of its recently introduced line of Dixie EcoSmart beverage solutions. The Dorel Juvenile Group has selected the company’s Hybrid Resins^® for its juvenile products that are found in hundreds of stores around the country and distributed by major retail chains. Cereplast just announced a foamable bio-based resin that will compete with Styrofoam and other foamable petroleum-based resins.

Cereplast is pursuing a new strategic plan that will leverage its proprietary product development capabilities and marketing strengths. The company has announced that it will enter into manufacturing supply agreements with large plastics compounders that will dramatically reduce the cost to produce plastic resins and provide sufficient capacity to service substantial new contracts with its major customers such as Georgia-Pacific and Dorel. Cereplast is now on course to follow a business model popularized by the semiconductor industry. Most computer chip companies focus on product development and marketing and contract for production. This approach allows for a high degree of flexibility and innovation in order to constantly adjust to the rapid pace of change in the market.

For more information about Cereplast, see http://www.cereplast.com

Green Investor believes that Cereplast has the potential become a dominate player in the green materials sector and can provide investors with extraordinary gains. Green Investor and/or its affiliates hold shares in CERP.

What if we could take CO2, an earth destroying gas, and recycle it into fuel?  If we could do such a thing, it would not only help address the problem of climate change, but would also provide us with a substantial supply of renewable fuel. For several years, that is exactly what researchers have proposed to do. The idea of recycling carbon dioxide is not new, but has generally been considered too difficult and expensive to be worth the effort. Unfortunately, the approaches taken in the past required substantial amounts of energy to perform this transformation. As a result, commercialization of this tantalizing process has appeared to be out of reach.

Sandia – Sunlight to Petrol

Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have found a way of using the power of the sun to recycle carbon dioxide (CO2) and produce fuels like methanol or gasoline. The Sunlight to Petrol, or S2P, project essentially reverses the combustion process, recovering the building blocks of hydrocarbons. They can then be used to synthesize liquid fuels like methanol or gasoline. Researchers claim the technology already works and could help reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, although large-scale implementation could be a decade or more away.

Carbon Sciences (CABN) – A Breakthrough Technology to Recycle CO2 into Fuel

Carbon Sciences, Inc. (CABN) is developing a breakthrough technology to recycle CO2 emissions into the basic fuel building blocks required to produce gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel and other fuels. Innovating at the intersection of chemical engineering and bio-engineering disciplines, the company is developing a highly scalable biocatalytic process to meet the fuel needs of the world. Carbon Sciences’ solution to energy and climate challenges is to enable a sustainable world of fuel consumption and climate stability by recycling CO2 into fuel. For example, Carbon Sciences’ breakthrough technology can be used to recycle CO2 emitted from fossil fuel power plants into gasoline to run cars and jet fuel to fly aircraft.

With over 43 billion tons of CO2 emitted each year by 2030, there is an abundant supply of raw material available to produce renewable and sustainable fuels for global consumption and reduce our dependence on petroleum.

Using the Existing Infrastructure to Speed Adoption

One challenge faced by new technologies is the painfully slow rate of adoption, due to the need to establish new infrastructure. The world is highly dependent on the existing transportation and fuel delivery infrastructure. Automobiles, trucks, trains and planes powered by portable fuels are crucial to our way of life. Other alternative fuel technologies, such as fuel cells and hydrogen, require substantial infrastructure changes in order to meet the energy and climate challenge. Carbon Sciences’ solution is to enable a sustainable world of fuel consumption and climate stability by recycling CO2 into fuel and using the existing infrastructure.

Breakthrough Biocatalytic Process

By innovating at the intersection of chemical engineering and bio-engineering, Carbon Sciences has discovered a low energy and highly scalable process to recycle large quantities of CO2 into gaseous and liquid fuels using organic biocatalysts. The key to the company’s CO2-to-Fuel approach lies in a proprietary multi-step biocatalytic process. Instead of using expensive inorganic catalysts, such as zinc, gold or zeolite, with traditional high energy catalytic chemical processes, this breakthrough process uses inexpensive, renewable biomolecules to catalyze certain chemical reactions required to transform CO2 and water (H2O) into fuel molecules. Of greatest significance, the Carbon Sciences process occurs at low temperature and low pressure, thereby requiring far less energy than other approaches.

The energy efficient biocatalytic processes Carbon Sciences is exploiting in its technology actually occur in certain micro-organisms where carbon atoms, extracted from CO2, and hydrogen atoms, extracted from H2O, are combined to create hydrocarbon molecules. This breakthrough technology allows these processes to operate on a very large industrial scale through advance nano-engineering of the biocatalysts and highly efficient process design.

Commercialization

Carbon Sciences recently announced significant technology development breakthroughs that shorten the path to commercializing its CO2-to-Fuel technology. Previously, the company had planned on developing a mini-pilot plant as the next scale up of its CO2-to-Fuel technology, where additional performance data would be obtained in order to design a full scale commercial pilot plant. However, recent breakthroughs in the nano-engineering of the biocatalyst, encouraging prototype performance results and molecular based computer modeling of the biocatalytic process have provided the development team with a direct path to full-scale pilot design.

For more information about Carbon Sciences, see http://www.carbonsciences.com

Green Investor believes that Carbon Sciences has the potential to become one of the most important new green technologies of our generation and can provide investors with extraordinary gains. Green Investor and/or its affiliates hold shares in CABN.