The patches are already
being applied.

Denmark is also the EU's largest pork producer — a population of 5.8 million alongside roughly 15 million pigs. It solved the question of what to do with that manure as a national-level energy and fertilizer problem.

Livestock manure and food residue undergo methane fermentation to produce biogas. The refined biomethane is injected directly into the existing municipal gas pipeline network. Factories, households, and power plants can use it as-is — needing no additional infrastructure is the key to its spread. The digestate left after fermentation returns to farmland as high-quality liquid fertilizer, cutting chemical-fertilizer use and turning waste-disposal cost into liquid-fertilizer sales revenue.

Denmark is also developing a stable, 24/7 baseload source. Copenhagen Atomics' 40-foot-container-format thorium molten-salt reactor, 100MWt per unit, is targeting critical experiments at PSI (Switzerland) in 2026–27 → a 1MW demonstration reactor in 2028 → commercial reactors in the 2030s. Seaborg Technologies is pursuing a barge-mounted format aimed at deployment to developing countries. Biomethane (variability backup) plus molten-salt reactors (baseload) is the blueprint for long-term energy independence.

Brazil began large-scale production of sugarcane-derived ethanol in response to the 1970s oil shocks. Half a century of accumulated technology and scale is now the foundation for today's commercial bioplastic production.

Petrochemical major Braskem converts sugarcane-derived bioethanol into ethylene through a dehydration reaction, commercially producing roughly 200,000 tonnes a year of bio-polyethylene (bio-PE). It supplies the world market under the "I'm Green™" brand. The decisive point is that it's molecularly identical to fossil-derived PE — downstream molding and packaging lines can use it exactly as-is.

In Japan too, Asahi Kasei's Revolefin™ technology, under development, references this same route. Domestic implementation of the bioethanol → ethylene → bio-PE route is progressing.

R&D is also progressing on cellulosic ethanol (second-generation), made from sugarcane bagasse (the fiber left after juicing) and other agricultural residue. This lines up exactly with the direction LFS's Path B is aiming for — producing bioethanol from feedstock that doesn't compete with food.

Norway is an oil-exporting nation, yet domestically it has achieved electricity self-sufficiency centered on hydropower. It's proving, at national scale, the proposition that "change the upstream of energy, and everything downstream changes with it."

Roughly 90% of Norway's electricity comes from hydropower. Coal, oil, and natural gas combined account for just 0.6% of thermal generation. As a result of this power mix, the environmental footprint of every activity that runs on electricity — heating, cooking, industry, transport — changes at the root. Once the power source is clean, running anything on electricity moves toward decarbonization. This is the same logic behind why LFS chooses an "electricity-based design" for green-ammonia production, LiB recycling, and regional district heating.

Norway's hydropower carries a significance beyond just its own domestic power source, because of its connection with Nord Pool (the Nordic international electricity market). When Denmark has a surplus of wind power, Norway's pumped storage pumps water uphill and stores it. When the wind stops, that stored potential energy is released to generate power all at once, supplying the whole Nordic region.

Norway's reservoirs constantly carry roughly half of total Nordic hydropower generation, functioning as a "power buffer" for the entire region. This system — leveling out renewable variability through cross-border interconnection — shares the same design philosophy as the microgrid interconnection structure LFS aims for in its Regional Cycle Integration Model, where a region's surplus power fills a neighboring region's demand. The scale differs — an international electricity market versus a regional microgrid — but the underlying principle is the same: an interconnected system is more stable than an isolated one.

As electricity gets cleaner and electricity use expands, spent lithium-ion batteries (LiBs) pile up as a result — and Norway is ahead of the curve in building a collection and recycling system compliant with the EU Battery Regulation (in force since 2023). Hydro (the hydropower and aluminum major) has entered LiB recycling, building a closed loop where recovered metal goes back into battery material.

Norway, where data centers cluster to take advantage of cheap, abundant hydropower, is advancing efforts to put that waste heat to use in district heating. The idea of "don't throw away waste heat" is another expression of the same thinking behind LFS's waste-heat use within the conversion function — agricultural greenhouses and hot-water facilities.

Leading cases have started moving in Japan too. That said, both are currently aimed at "turning it into fuel." Nobody is yet pursuing bioplastic feedstock production — the top-priority route of holding carbon long-term as a solid.

A three-way joint study began in January 2026 to build a "local-production, local-consumption supply chain," refining biogas from livestock manure — generated at a biogas plant in Shikaoi Town, Tokachi region, Hokkaido — into biomethane and injecting it into Obihiro Gas's municipal gas pipeline. Injecting livestock-manure-derived biomethane into a municipal gas pipeline is a first for Japan, targeting the start of use within fiscal 2026.

The Tokachi region has a thriving livestock and dairy industry, with abundant unused biomass such as livestock manure and food residue. Hokkaido as a whole has an estimated biomethane production potential of roughly 300,000 tonnes a year — equivalent to about 50% of Hokkaido's annual industrial LNG consumption. The same logic as Denmark's is finally getting underway in Japan's livestock regions.

Nippon Paper, Sumitomo Corporation, and Green Earth Institute (GEI) agreed in February 2025 to establish a joint venture, "Mori-Sora Biorefinery LLC." It's a project aiming at Japan's first commercial-scale cellulosic bioethanol production from woody biomass. It has received support from NEDO's "Bio-Manufacturing Revolution Promotion Program," and the ethanol produced is planned mainly for SAF (Sustainable Aviation Fuel).

Separately, raBit — a project run by Toyota and six other companies in Okuma Town, Fukushima Prefecture (sorghum → cellulosic ethanol → E20 fuel) — is another existing leading case likewise aimed at turning biomass into fuel.

Three of Japan's petrochemical majors are moving toward commercializing "Revolefin™," a technology that produces green basic chemicals such as ethylene and propylene from bioethanol. It was selected for Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry "FY2025 Support Program for Energy and Manufacturing-Process Transition in Hard-to-Abate Industries (HtA)," and signed a basic agreement in January 2026. Of the ¥21.2 billion investment, up to ¥10.4 billion will be covered by a government subsidy.

By around FY2030, Asahi Kasei and Mitsubishi Chemical plan to shut down their jointly operated AMEC ethylene facility at the Mizushima Complex (Kurashiki, Okayama) and consolidate into Mitsui Chemicals' Osaka/Sennan (OPC) facility. Initial Revolefin™ production equipment will be installed at the Mizushima plant, and following equipment-performance and operational verification, the three companies aim to begin joint commercial production of green basic chemicals in FY2034.

Because the design uses bioethanol as feedstock, having multiple stable suppliers strengthens the supply chain's resilience. Establishing a domestic supply system for cellulosic ethanol is the next challenge. This design also means stable feedstock procurement is a precondition — and the impact of warming on agricultural production, particularly the risk of declining corn and sugarcane yields, could threaten that precondition starting sometime in the 2030s.

Daihatsu Motor brought a "biogas demonstration plant" — fermenting manure from Omi beef cattle — into full operation in December 2024 at the No. 1 district of its Shiga (Ryuo) plant. Ryuo Town was certified in January 2023 as the first "Biomass Industrial City" among Shiga Prefecture's municipalities, realizing a model that links crop farming, livestock (Omi beef), and industry (car manufacturing). It's the result of basic research and technology development that had been underway with NEDO support since 2021.

Processing capacity is roughly 2 tonnes a day (about a 2-week fermentation cycle). The refined biogas is used as carbon-neutral electricity for the factory, and compost and liquid fertilizer made from the fermentation residue return to crop farmers in the town. Eventually, roughly 20 tonnes a day of cattle manure is planned to cover about 10% of the fuel gas needed to melt aluminum at the casting plant. At Sawai Ranch, which raises 2,750 head of Omi beef cattle, the effect has already shown up concretely — no longer having to compost the manure themselves has cut costs by roughly ¥10 million.

Where the Shikaoi and Ryuo cases are biogasification of livestock manure, J&T Kankyo — JFE Group's comprehensive recycling company — runs a food-recycling business targeting urban food residue, at six sites: Sapporo, Sendai, Chiba, Yokohama, Komaki (Aichi), and Fukuoka. Through a "double recycling loop" — turning organic matter into biogas power via methane fermentation, and composting the fermentation residue into fertilizer — it pulls food waste that used to be routed to incineration, due to sorting and processing difficulty, back into the carbon cycle. The Sendai-area site has been in full operation since May 2022 as a three-way joint venture with the JR East Group and Tokyo Gas, called "Tohoku Bio Food Recycle."

That said, contaminating packaging plastic and the like is currently limited to "thermal recycling" (energy recovery through combustion), not recycled as material. The company separately runs horizontal recycling of used PET bottles and advanced-sorting re-commercialization as its own business line, and in March 2025 expanded into plastic recycling further through a business alliance with Vestella — but that's a separate effort from its food-recycling line.