The Heat We Can Afford – The Technology You Can’t Afford to Miss

Warsaw Monday June 2, 2025

Poland’s district heating (DHN) infrastructure is both a legacy achievement and a growing liability. Half the country depends on centralised heat, yet the economic foundation of that system is in crisis. The cost to sustainably generate clean heat in Europe is around EUR 0.50 per kilowatt-hour. In Poland, the market pays only about EUR 0.25/kWh. This is not a viable business model. It is a slow failure in plain sight – a structural mismatch between what heat costs to produce and what consumers can afford to pay.

But what if there were a way to produce heat sustainably, affordably – and without relying on it as your main income stream? That’s the proposition of TITAN and ASMARA. These are not conventional power plants. They are modular, carbon-negative industrial platforms that happen to produce a lot of clean, surplus heat – and that changes everything.

Heat as a By-Product, Not a Revenue Anchor

TITAN’s Island One is a biomass-fuelled Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plant, running on forest residues converted into hydrogen producer gas. It produces stable, 24/7 electricity – and in doing so, generates significant volumes of usable heat. But this heat is not the commercial driver of the system. It is a process by-product.

Because TITAN’s business model does not depend on selling heat for profit, it can afford to export heat into Poland’s existing DHN pricing environment without financial strain. In fact, it thrives there – simply because heat is not our bottom line. That distinction makes TITAN a structural fit for the Polish context, where heat prices are capped and economic pressure is high.

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TITAN next generation ethanol and the decarbonisation of our skies

Revised: Steve Walker 20.04.2025

TITAN: Next-Generation Ethanol and the Decarbonisation of Our Skies

As aviation and transport fuel regulations tighten across Europe, second-generation ethanol (2G EtOH) has emerged as a cornerstone in the EU’s clean fuel strategy. At the heart of this transition is TITAN, a bio-engineering platform that transforms forest waste into renewable fuel, replacing petroleum-based inputs with high-value, low-emission alternatives.

TITAN is not just a plant — it is a statement of intent. It reflects a deep commitment to energy sovereignty, local feedstock utilisation, and a truly circular economy. It also represents a strategic leap forward for Poland’s aviation sector, offering a domestic solution to one of Europe’s most urgent climate compliance challenges.

2G Ethanol: The Core of TITAN’s Mission

TITAN’s primary objective is the production of advanced, non-food-based 2G EtOH, sourced entirely from waste forest biomass. This includes residues left on the forest floor, non-virgin woody biomass, and materials historically destined for landfilling or low-grade combustion.

Using a proprietary Hydrogen Producer Gas (HPG) to Targeted Microbial Fermentation (TMF) process, TITAN extracts renewable carbon and hydrogen from biomass, converting it into 2G EtOH with near-zero refinery emissions and no fossil fuel input. The platform’s dual HPG island architecture ensures continuous and decentralised gas supply for both electricity/heat and fermentation feedstock.

This modular structure allows TITAN to function as a standalone, grid-independent, smoke-free, zero-coal facility, setting a new benchmark for carbon-negative industrial energy systems.

SAF Rollout and the Alcohol-to-Jet Pathway

The second phase of TITAN’s rollout will focus on producing Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) through the Alcohol-to-Jet (AtJ) pathway. The AtJ process refines TITAN’s 2G ethanol into Jet-A1 compliant, drop-in aviation fuel, ready to blend at refuelling depots across Europe. The first ten TITAN installations produce enough 2G EtOH to supply an AtJ refinery producing Jet-A1 and Biodeisel

This development is perfectly aligned with the ReFuelEU Aviation Regulation, which mandates all EU airports begin blending sustainable aviation fuels starting at 2% in 2025, rising to 6% in 2030, 20% by 2035, and 28% by 2050. Airlines that do not comply must pay penalties.

TITAN’s SAF production will therefore not only enable Polish airlines to comply — it will allow them to lead. By producing SAF locally, Poland can secure its own fuel supply, reduce its carbon intensity per flight, and offer intercontinental connections from a net-zero baseline.

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How the First Ten TITAN Platforms Will Unlock More Wind and Solar for the Polish Grid

Erik Wilde from Berkeley, CA, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0

Warsaw 20 May 2025

The future of Poland’s Green Energy Transition

Poland’s energy transition depends not only on building more solar and wind farms, but on ensuring these resources can be safely and reliably connected to the national grid. The TITAN platform, developed by Syngas Project offers a breakthrough solution: modular, rural-based energy infrastructure that enables the grid to absorb more intermittent renewables while delivering jobs, resilience, and fuel sovereignty.

The first ten TITANs are now entering deployment, each with a rated electrical output of 10 MWe, supported by 10 MW of reserve dispatchable capacity. These systems are specifically located in rural areas, where Poland’s grid is weakest and decentralised energy is most urgently needed. TITAN acts as a local grid stabiliser, absorbing local intermittency and enabling nearby wind and solar systems to feed clean power into the grid safely.

Each TITAN site creates more than 50 direct jobs, plus a wider network of local supply chain opportunities—from biomass harvesting and transport to equipment servicing and biochar sales. These installations form the backbone of a new rural energy economy, anchored in forest and agricultural waste streams.

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How HPG+TMF Invented Lifestacking

Warsaw, 12 May, 2024

Lifestacking: A Value Proposition for Carbon Sovereignty

In the post-carbon era, success will not be defined by how much we extract from the Earth, but by how intelligently we reuse what we already have. That’s the principle behind “Lifestacking”, a new industrial model enabled by the integration of Hydrogen Producer Gas (HPG) and Targeted Microbial Fermentation (TMF). Developed and deployed by the Syngas Project, this approach doesn’t just recycle energy or materials; it recycles carbon, intelligently and endlessly.

The Problem with Linear Carbon Use

In traditional energy and industrial systems, carbon is a one-way ticket: extracted, combusted, emitted. Even so-called “green” solutions often fail to close the loop. They burn biomass and call it renewable, or capture CO2 only to inject it underground, removing it from the cycle entirely. These models fail to recognise the value of carbon as a feedstock, especially in a world where biology is ready to do the work.

How Lifestacking Works

Lifestacking is a process stack, a layered system where every step adds value, compounds efficiency, and deepens impact. The synergy between HPG and TMF unlocks a cascading value chain that transforms waste carbon into Fuel, Chemicals, Materials, and Nutrients (FCMN). But unlike traditional processes, nothing is burned or discarded. Instead, carbon is passed along, reprocessed, and transformed.

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Warmth is Wealth: Rebuilding Poland’s Forgotten Towns through Renewable Heat and a New Rural Economy

Fix the Heat, and We Fix Economic Growth

Poland’s 400+ licensed district heating systems are not just engineering relics of a bygone era—they are also anchors for future prosperity. Many still run on coal or imported gas. Others are underfunded, deteriorating, and disconnected from the sweeping energy transition taking place in Warsaw or Berlin. But behind each rusting pipeline and coal-fired chimney is an opportunity: to decarbonise, regenerate, and redistribute.

Replacing district heating doesn’t just cut emissions. It lights the fire of a new economy—one rooted in local biomass, in new forms of clean hydrogen-rich gas, in circular carbon chemistry, and in the industrial capabilities of Poland’s people. This is not just about technology. It is about dignity, sovereignty, and equitable growth.

TITAN and ASMARA: Platforms for Change

The TITAN and ASMARA platforms, developed by Syngas Project and backed by strategic international partners, are not just cleaner energy systems. They are instruments of regeneration. Together, they deliver:

Smokeless, dispatchable heat and electricity through advanced gasification (HPG),
Second-generation ethanol and other fuels via targeted microbial fermentation (TMF),
Bio-based alternatives to imported chemicals, materials, and proteins,
Local employment across harvesting, logistics, engineering, and fermentation sciences,
And critically: a stable platform for economic development in places that globalisation left behind.

Each TITAN is modular and self-contained. It runs on regional forest residue, agricultural waste, or sorted urban waste streams. Each ASMARA complements TITAN by valorising complex municipal solid waste in urban zones. Together, they replace dependency with resilience—foreign fuel with local ingenuity.

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Warsaw’s First Electrification Was Renewable — and It Lit the Path for a Cleaner Future

“The all-renewable Hotel Bristol (1901) – Powered by linseed oil, it was Warsaw’s first smoke-free luxury landmark. Over the decades, it hosted dignitaries including John F. Kennedy, Margaret Thatcher, Richard Nixon, Queen Elizabeth II, Charles de Gaulle, and Pablo Picasso.”

March 8th 2025 Warsaw

The technology behind today’s TITAN Project owes much to a quiet lineage of innovators who came long before the era of climate targets and carbon markets. Inspired by these early industrialists, TITAN builds upon a legacy where electricity was local, independent, and renewable by necessity, not marketing. We inherit that history with humility and pride.

In the late 19th century, long before municipal power grids were laid, Warsaw quietly switched on — not from coal, but from wood gas, plant oils, and German-built engines. Electricity in Poland did not arrive with smoke and ceremony. It arrived with intention, resilience, and a clear grasp of available resources.

The first confirmed electric lights in Warsaw came on in 1888, inside the military fortress at Żoliborz. A Deutz gasifier engine, burning wood chips and coke, provided a smokeless, off-grid supply of electricity to illuminate tunnels, barracks, and secure magazines. This was Poland’s first renewable electrification, and it was powered by wood — not wires.

That same year, a second Deutz unit was installed at the Towarowa freight yard, where the Vienna–Warsaw Railway extended eastward via the Warsaw–Terespol line. Contrary to common retellings, the Warsaw–Terespol Railway was laid in standard European gauge, only transitioning to Russian broad gauge at the border town of Terespol. In Warsaw, Towarowa had become one of the busiest and most sensitive freight depots in the region — and its electric lights, powered by a local wood gas engine, served a strategic purpose. On dark winter nights, those lights allowed the military to deter undesirables, track movements, and maintain order amid the chaos of the city’s growing trade and customs corridor.

Then, in 1889, Austrian engineer Marschel & Co. delivered Warsaw’s first commercial electric lighting system to the woollen hand-finishing workshops of Praga, not far from where the vodka factory would soon be built. These workshops, connected to the rising Brühl textile estate, operated without chimneys, without soot — and without interruption. Their Deutz generator lit the benches of men and women who worked wool into fine garments for markets east and west. And they did so two full years before the first coal-fired generator ever arrived at the much-acclaimed vodka distillery.

This was decentralised electricity. It was locally fuelled. It was renewable.

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After AI – Warm Robots

The Machines That Heal—and the Circular Economy They’re Building

She looks almost human. Porcelain skin, careful eyes, anatomical symmetry—delicate, not threatening. A beautiful contradiction. The image evokes a future we’ve long imagined: robots that walk beside us, feel with us, care for us.

But this isn’t the warm robot we meant.

Because the real warm robots—ours—don’t smile or stand. They don’t blink, speak, or age.
They are microbes.
Alive, invisible, programmable.

They live in tanks. They breathe carbon. They manufacture the building blocks of the post-pollution world: fuels, chemicals, nutrients, and materials. And now, aided by generative AI, they are evolving—stacking complexity, mimicking natural processes, and operating with the efficiency of the human brain and the regenerative elegance of skin and bone.

We call this new capability Industrial Lifestacking.
It’s not robotics. It’s regeneration.
Not imitation—but biological infrastructure, scaled.

The Living Stack

Long before artificial intelligence could speak, microbes were building. While generative models were still learning language, fermentation vessels were already producing ethanol, biodegradable polymers, and essential proteins from nothing more than carbon waste and biological design.

What makes this possible is a structure we call the Living Stack—a three-layered system that turns industrial chaos into organic precision:

AI serves as the design layer, where biological systems are mapped, metabolic pathways are simulated, and yield efficiency is optimised.
Gene Editing functions as the software layer, rewriting microbial DNA to perform intentional functions—from synthesising alcohols to building amino acid chains.
Targeted Microbial Fermentation (TMF) forms the hardware layer, where gas-fed microbes in controlled environments transform design and code into physical product.

This stack doesn’t run on electricity alone. It runs on carbon. It doesn’t output noise or abstraction. It outputs life.

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Leveraging Direct Air Capture (DAC) for Targeted Microbial Fermentation

Harnessing PEGASUS: Direct Air Capture Meets HPG + TMF in the Race to Regenerate Carbon

How TITAN and ASMARA transform carbon from problem to product in line with EU priorities

As Europe confronts rising temperatures, tightening emissions targets, and increasing resource instability, a fundamental shift is underway: carbon is no longer seen only as waste, but as feedstock. This shift is visible in new industrial strategies, circular economy goals, and bioeconomy frameworks—but it needs infrastructure to deliver.

That’s where PEGASUS, a modular Direct Air Capture (DAC) system developed for integration with the TITAN and ASMARA platforms, enters the picture. It offers a breakthrough solution: capturing carbon from the air or industrial sources and transforming it into fuels, chemicals, materials, or even nutrients, via the microbial fermentation infrastructure already embedded within TITAN and ASMARA.

This is not speculative. It is already working in pilot, and it fits squarely within existing and forthcoming EU directives.

TITAN and ASMARA: Carbon-Circular by Design

TITAN, built for rural zones, converts forest and agricultural waste into hydrogen-rich gas (HPG) and uses microbial fermentation (TMF) to convert that gas into second-generation ethanol, biochemicals, and energy. ASMARA performs the same function in urban areas using sorted municipal solid waste (MSW). These platforms are modular, scalable, and already aligned with Europe’s Green Deal, REPowerEU, and Fit for 55 objectives.

Adding PEGASUS enhances these platforms by introducing a steady, high-purity stream of captured CO₂, which TMF microbes can metabolise directly. Rather than storing the carbon underground, as most current DAC-to-CCS models propose, PEGASUS routes the carbon into productive pathways—ensuring economic as well as ecological value.

This becomes especially powerful when blending CO₂ from multiple sources. For example:

Captured emissions from cement or steel plants (typically high in volume but lower in purity),
Ambient CO₂ captured via PEGASUS DAC (typically lower in volume but high in purity).

Blending both streams produces an optimised fermentation feedstock suitable for high-volume biofuels or specialised bio-based outputs. In fact, the purity of DAC opens entirely new metabolic pathways, allowing the production of advanced molecules such as bio-based solvents, high-purity organic acids, or even smart proteins like insulin analogues and bioactive lipids.

This is not just a carbon-negative process. It is biomanufacturing from thin air.

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From Waste to Sovereignty Alternatives – Chinese Hamster Ovary (CHO) Cells

From Waste to Sovereignty: How TITAN and ASMARA Build Europe’s New Biomanufacturing Landscape

TITAN and ASMARA are not just platforms for converting waste into energy. They are flexible, modular bio-manufacturing hubs designed to anchor a new industrial landscape—one built on sovereignty, sustainability, and regional regeneration.

At their core is a powerful integration of Hydrogen Producer Gas (HPG) and Targeted Microbial Fermentation (TMF)—a pairing that unlocks the ability to produce a vast spectrum of high-value outputs: fuels, bioplastics, chemicals, proteins, and even advanced medical bioproducts like CHO (Chinese Hamster Ovary) cells.

But more importantly, these platforms offer a way to reindustrialise rural Europe, create high-quality employment in overlooked regions, and reduce the continent’s dependence on imported fuels, chemicals, and biopharmaceutical precursors.

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Syngas Project Pioneering Solutions for a Healthier Future

Mr Hyde

Reclaiming Insulin Sovereignty: TITAN and ASMARA Platforms for Mass Biomanufacturing in Europe

Breaking the Cartel: Insulin, Inequality, and the Opportunity for European Leadership

At the heart of the global diabetes crisis lies a quiet but devastating monopoly: a life-saving medicine held hostage by a handful of manufacturers. Despite insulin being off-patent for decades, just three global pharmaceutical giants dominate the market—dictating pricing, supply, and access. This concentration of control has limited the availability of affordable insulin, especially in regions already under economic pressure.

In the United States, insulin prices have soared beyond reason. Europe, including Poland and other Central and Eastern European nations, now faces similar systemic risks: rising diabetes rates, increasing healthcare costs, and inadequate local production capacity. But amid this crisis lies a chance to rewrite the pharmaceutical supply chain—through a bold, sovereign European solution: the TITAN and ASMARA platforms.

The Insulin Crisis: A Manufactured Scarcity

Insulin is not a rare or exotic molecule. It has been biosynthesised for over 40 years using recombinant DNA technology. The science is well-understood. The demand is clear. And yet, millions of people globally still struggle to access it due to pricing structures, regulatory lock-ins, and lack of local production.

Patients ration insulin to make it last—resulting in amputations, blindness, kidney failure, and death.
Governments overspend on cartel-priced imports—diverting budgets from prevention and education.
Local biomanufacturing is nearly nonexistent—especially in rural or post-industrial regions where new health infrastructure is most needed.

Europe’s current strategy, relying on imports and foreign-owned production, offers no resilience, no price control, and no autonomy.

TITAN and ASMARA: A Platform for Pharmaceutical Sovereignty

The TITAN (rural) and ASMARA (urban) platforms are not pharma factories in the traditional sense. They are modular, circular, multi-output bio-industrial systems. Originally designed to transform biomass and waste into hydrogen producer gas (HPG) and ethanol, these platforms now represent the future of distributed biomanufacturing—including insulin.

Each platform features:

Renewable, 24-hour power and heat, generated from local waste streams
Targeted Microbial Fermentation (TMF) stations, already capable of industrial protein synthesis
CO₂-ready infrastructure for enhanced fermentation using waste or captured carbon
A scalable, cookie-cutter design that enables low-cost replication across the EU

By adding a dedicated pharmaceutical-grade fermentation unit, any TITAN or ASMARA site can pivot to produce biosynthetic insulin using engineered microbial strains like E. coli or yeast—in clean, stable, sovereign-controlled conditions.

This isn’t hypothetical. TITAN’s ethanol lines already handle 50,000 litres per day. The same bioreactors and feedstock management protocols can be adapted to pharmaceutical production with minimal redesign.

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