21st Century Regenerative Technology

1. 11 Companies Racing to Build U.S. Cellulosic Ethanol Plants
2. SF Solar Incentives to Get Final Vote

11 Companies Racing to Build U.S. Cellulosic Ethanol Plants

2008-06-03 15:36

Katie Fehrenbacher - Startups

There are almost a dozen companies racing to build the first next-generation cellulosic ethanol plants in the United States over the next few years. The plants will be built all over the U.S. and will churn out biofuels made from waste, plant byproducts and woody energy crops. It’s no easy task. Not only do these companies have to build pilot and demo plants, but ultimately large-scale, commercialized refineries that can take years to construct and require hundreds of millions of investment dollars.

While biofuels have been getting a bad rap lately, President Bush's Twenty in Ten Initiative aims to increase the use of renewable and alternative fuels in the transportation sector to the equivalent of 35 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2017. These 11 companies are focusing on finding the right recipe to make the production of cellulosic ethanol economically feasible. Good luck to them:

Verenium: The company is in the final stages of testing and evaluating its demo facility, which can produce 1.4 million-gallons-per-year. Construction on the pilot plant began in February 2007. Japanese companies Marubeni and Tsukishima Kikai used Verenium’s technology to build a demo project that can produce 1.3 million liters per year in January 2007 in Osaka, Japan, with plans to scale that up to 4 million liters per year in 2008. The company is currently on track to start construction of a 30 million-gallon-per-year commercial plant in the U.S. in the middle of 2009.

Coskata: The company is currently producing cellulosic ethanol in its labs and plans to scale up a pilot project in Madison, Penn., to a 40,000-gallon demonstration facility that will start delivering ethanol by early 2009 and is projected to cost $25 million to build. Coskata says it’s working on a 100 million-gallon-per-year facility in an undisclosed U.S. location that it hopes will go online by early 2011. The startup has raised almost $30 million from Globespan Capital Partners, GM, Khosla Ventures, GreatPoint Ventures and Advanced Technology Ventures. Coskata’s technology first gasifies biomass into syngas and then adds proprietary microbes that turn the syngas into ethanol.

Range Fuels: Range Fuels has been testing its technology in pilot-scale units for the last 7 years. The company began construction in November of its first 20 million-gallon-per-year phase of a commercial plant ethanol plant in Soperton, Ga., with plans to finish sometime in 2009. The plant is supposed to scale up to 100 million gallons per year. The startup has raised over $130 million from Passport Capital, BlueMountain, Khosla Ventures, Leaf Clean Energy Company and Pacific Capital Group (with participation by the California Employee Retirement System.) Range Fuel’s technology uses a thermochemical process to turn biomass into synthetic gas and then fuel.

POET: POET is expanding its 50 million-gallon-per-year corn-based ethanol facility in Emmetsburg, Iowa, to include a cellulosic plant. The entire plant will produce 125 million gallons per year, 25 million of those for cellulosic ethanol. Construction on the cellulosic ethanol plant is scheduled to start in 2009 and be done in 2011. The DOE selected POET to receive up to $80 million in funds for its cellulosic ethanol plant. The plant will convert corn cobs and fiber from the kernel into cellulosic ethanol.

DuPont Danisco Cellulosic Ethanol LLC: The joint venture plans to have its first pilot plant online by 2009 and its first full-scale commercial demonstration plant operational by 2012. A 50-50 JV between DuPont and Genencor, each company plans to invest $70 million each into it over the next three years. The technology will use DuPont's proprietary pretreatment and ethanologen technologies and Genencor's enzymatic hydrolysis methods. The JV will initially target corn stover and sugar cane bagasse as feedstocks.

Mascoma: Mascoma and the University of Tennessee are jointly building a switchgrass-fed demo refinery in Monroe County, Tenn., that will produce five million gallons per year, and will be operational in 2009. The company also started construction on a pilot plant in Rome, N.Y in 2006. In addition Mascoma is looking to build a commercial-scale biorefinery using wood as a feedstock, to be located in Michigan, and is working with Michigan State University and Michigan Technological University.

Mascoma has raised almost $90 million to date from a number of investors including: GM, Khosla Ventures, Flagship Ventures, General Catalyst Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Vantage Point Venture Partners, Atlas Venture and Pinnacle Ventures. The company’s technology relies on microbes to convert cellulosic feedstocks into ethanol and Coskata claims it will establish the country's first plant to produce cellulosic ethanol using switchgrass.

ZeaChem: The company has a test facility at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. where it says it has successfully brewed its first liter of ethanol from poplar trees. ZeaChem is working with forest manager GreenWood Resources to build a 1.5 million gallons a year test facility near Portland, Ore. The startup received $4 million in funding last summer from Mohr Davidow Ventures. Firelake Capital is also an investor. The company’s technology converts fermentable sugars into acetate and then gasifies the remainder, tough lignin and all, into hydrogen before mixing the two streams in a reaction called hydrogenolysis to produce ethanol.

SunEthanol: The company says it is targeting a pilot plant to be in operation in 2009, and is reportedly also building a 2.5 million gallon per year demonstration facility. Investors include VeraSun, Battery Ventures, Camros Capital LLC and LongRiver Ventures. The U.S. Department of Energy recently awarded SunEthanol a $100,000 research grant. The company uses the “Q Microbe” for its “C3 process,” which does the ethanol conversion of hydrolysis and fermentation in one step.

BlueFire Ethanol: The company is working on a 3.1 million gallon per year cellulosic ethanol facility that will be delivered in a joint effort with contractors MECS and Brinderson, and located in Lancaster, CA at a landfill. BlueFire is also working with the DOE on a second facility that will convert waste from landfills into roughly 17 million gallons of fuel-grade ethanol per year. The startup was awarded funding from the Department of Energy to construct its ethanol production facilities. BlueFire trades on the over-the-counter Bulletin Board market. The company converts the cellulose to sugars, ferments it and purifies the fermentation liquids into products.

Abengoa Bioenergy: The company opened a pilot plant in York, Neb., in October 2007, which cost some $35 million to build. Abengoa plans to spend $300 million to build a cellulosic ethanol production plant in Hugoton, Kan., which will produce 11.4 million gallons of ethanol per year. Owned by Spanish engineering company Abengoa, the company got a $76 million grant from the DOE to help fund the project.

Iogen: The Canadian company is planning on building a cellulosic ethanol refinery in Saskatchewan, which has now entered the due diligence process. Iogen is one of six companies that will receive money from the DOE to build biorefinery plants in the U.S. Iogen has proposed a plant in Shelley, Idaho, near Idaho Falls, that will produce 18 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol annually.

Founded in the 70’s, the company has received public and private investment of over $130 million over the past 25 years, including investors Royal Dutch/Shell Group, Petro-Canada and Goldman Sachs. Iogen is working with Shell and Goldman Sachs on using specialized enzymes to convert biomass into sugars that are then fermented and distilled to make cellulosic ethanol.

—- Any more? Contact us and we’ll add ‘em in.

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SF Solar Incentives to Get Final Vote

2008-06-03 07:00

Craig Rubens - Policy

San Francisco is poised to greatly boost its number of solar rooftops pending one final full meeting of the Board of Supervisors this afternoon (full schedule available here). We’ve been following the city’s proposed solar incentive rebate program for some time now (catch up here, here and here) and it has been an uphill battle for solar advocates. After seven committee hearings, replete with commenting solar startup entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, green collar workers and concerned citizens, today might provide some finality and, hopefully, vindication.

The full board will vote on three separate proposals that have evolved along the way. Here’s the breakdown:

Advocates’ Solar Rebate Proposal: Supported by the Mayor and Assessor offices, this is the original incarnation of the program. The proposed program would provide $2-5 million per year for solar installations in the city. Individual residents could receive $3,000-$6,000, commercial businesses could get $10,000 and non-profit affordable housing projects could receive $30,000. Supervisor Bevan Dufty is the key sponsor of this proposal.
Supervisor Jake McGoldrick’s Solar Ordinance: McGoldrick’s proposed ordinance would set priorities for how the Public Utility Commission funds projects, where the solar incentive’s money is coming from, and where the funds could be spent. His proposal would reserve all money for public solar projects and installations for non-profit housing. McGoldrick doesn’t like public funds being used to finance solar installations on private citizens’ homes.
Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi’s Solar Proposal: Mirkarimi has put forward a compromise. His proposal would create a 1-year, $1.5 million solar rebate program. A $325,000 portion would be reserved for affordable housing developers, a $325,000 portion would be for limited-income households, and a $750,000 portion would be used for multi-unit and single family residential buildings.

If you want solar in San Francisco, contact your supervisor. Today’s meeting is scheduled for 2 pm today in the legislative chambers and is open to the public, although there is no public comment session as the public (in the form of the aforementioned VCs, startups, etc.) has already commented in committee meetings.