Top biofuels execs identify alliances, focus, finance, and scale as key bioenergy challenges
At the 2010 Advanced Biofuels Leadership Conference yesterday, delegates heard yesterday from C-level executives at numerous “50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy,” including Coskata, Cobat Technologies, TMO Renewables, Iogen, Sapphire Energy, PetroAlgae, LS9, SG Biofuels, and Solazyme, as well as Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan.
Merrigan noted in a keynote address that a partnership approach to commercializing biofuels was driving USDA’s activity within the US Interagency Working Group as well as the partnership in Hawaii with the Department of the Navy to develop solutions that would reduce Hawaii’s oil imports, which are the highest by percentage in the nation, as well as developing rural economies.
“I have been in Washington for a long time,” observed Merrigan, “and recently we started hearing about a new acronym, USG, and a number of us asked each other, what is that agency? But it actually stands for the United States Government – meaning government-wide projects,” crossing over traditional turf barriers to drive innovation. Merrigan also noted that a goal of the USDA was to create larger grants for scientific research that would power deeper innovation in rural-based technologies.
Among other highlights, PetroAlgae chairman John Scott, described the process of targeting the development of microcrop-based biomass that to address increasing shortages in petroleum residuals for cokers, by quoting President Dwight Eisenhower, who once said “if you’re going hunting, go where the ducks are.” Scott said that PetroAlgae is now in discussion with 300 companies in 41 companies regarding licensing its technology, and said that the development of a low cost, passive light exposure control had been crucial to the development of its system.
Sapphire president C.J Warner said, in offering “lessons from the field (or rather, pond)”, said that one of the most important drivers towards commercialization was training company-wide focus on strategic objectives, noting that “a classic failure mechanism for innovative companies is always moving on to the next big thing” before commercializing prior breakthroughs. Sapphire confirmed that it is on track to break ground on its 300-acre pre-commercial facility later this year.
Solazyme CEO Jonathan Wolfson said that a key to commercializing new bioenergy technology was to recognize “the need to leverage pre-existing infrastructure at every juncture”, and noted that oil majors, when reviewing potential collaboration opportunities with the company, said that the the single most important aspect in development was “the ability to demonstrate the ability to scale,” noting comments from potential partners such as “we have 100 years of experience at driving down the engineering costs of scalable technologies.” Wofson confirmed that the company is now doing multiple production runs per week in leased fermentation equipment.
SG Biofuels chief Kirk Haney, in highlighting “Jatropha 2.0″, said that in the 2006-09 perior that jatropha’s difficulties stemmed from the failure of jatropha business models, rather than the plant itself. He confirmed that the companies JMax 100 jatropha cultivar is capable of delivering $1.40 crude jatropha oil, and said that “Jatropha 3.0″ should set a target of $1.00 per gallon.
LS9 CEO Bill Haywood set five criteria for a successful bioenergy development company: “the fuel should be cost competitive without subsidies, compatible with existing distribution systems, base itself on abundant raw materials, be scalable to meet demand, and have no miracles required. Haywood said that the use of LS9′s fermenting technology to produce low-sulphur renewable diesel was materially less capital -intensive than systems in place at oil refineries to producer low sulphur diesel, and confirmed that the company is fast-tracking its conversion of an existing fermentation facility in Lake Okeechobee, Florida, which will support the company’s demonstration of its technology at scale, as well as being expandable to 12 Mgy.
INEOS Bio COO Mark Niederschulte, speaking late Tuesday, said that “a hot technology, innovation, is not the hard part. The hard part is actually delivering plant that is safe, reliable, and built at a scale that makes it economically viable By comparison, innovation is cheap and easy.” Niederschulte also noted what he termed “legislative weariness — legislators are asking ‘why are you back for more? Why didn’t you take advantage of the incentives offered?”
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