Bioenergy PROFITS Principals: Obtaining Vital Information, and Verenium, Dyadic, Coskata

INFORMATION OVERLOAD – What’s the Solution to my Problem?

Obtaining Vital Information – Part III

How do you sift all the available information to find only what you need to help you make sound decisions?  It is worthwhile to know the best sources of information for your business.  Many industries have websites, research reports or other sources that already mined through the more mainstream data.  They have experts that take this data and transform it into trends and patterns.  In fact, once transformed, this data is sometimes called ‘intelligence.’  Though costly, these sources can save hours of time.  These are particularly beneficial if your company does not have a research department or if transforming data is not one of your core capabilities.

Search data to your purpose

As you begin to obtain vital information, one of the Bioenergy PROFITS Principles, highlighted in Dr. Rosalie Lober’s, newly released book, Run Your Business like a Fortune 100: 7 Principles for Boosting PROFITS, you can apply some of the best practices and proven principles of successful biofuels companies for running your business most effectively in this current world of climate change and renewable energy.

A good start is to ask yourself:

• What do I want to accomplish?
• What is the current state of my business
• What is required for my company to become more profitable?

If you are an ethanol producer, or want to learn about ethanol companies you may know that there are six principal advantages to using cellulosic biomass to produce biofuels:

1. use of dedicated energy crops

2. it is comparatively low-cost

3. it uses marginal lands for feedstock growth

4. it has a beneficial net energy balance

5. it uses less fertilizer and water relative to other crops

6. it reduces emissions of greenhouse gases.

The following are examples of some of ethanol companies that will help you search data to your purpose and sort through many of the categories you may be looking for.

• POET

The largest dry mill ethanol producers in the US, Poet is collaborating with Novozymes in the research and development of cellulose ethanol technology. The technology utilizes enzymatic hydrolysis and uses agriculture and biomass feedstock.  Poet will expand their Emmetsburg, Iowa facility to include cellulosic ethanol production from corn hulls and cobs. Completion is expected in 2009.

• Mascoma

Mascoma is developing bio and process technology for cost-effective conversion of cellulosic biomass. Similar to POET, the technology utilizes enzymatic hydrolysis and uses agriculture and biomass feedstock.

• Coskata

Coskata is a biology-based renewable energy company with technology that enables the low-cost production of ethanol from a variety of input material including biomass, agricultural and municipal wastes, and other carbonaceous material.  The company utilizes a gasification technology.

Using proprietary microorganisms and patented bioreactor designs, the company  produces FlexEthanol™, or feedstock flexible ethanol, to fuel energy security, economic growth, and environmental sustainability.

• Verbio

The VERBIO group is one of the leading producers and suppliers of biofuels and also the only industrial-scale producer of biodiesel and bioethanol in Europe. Nominal capacity currently amounts to around 450,000 tons of biodiesel and 300,000 tons of bioethanol per year. The company has developed its own processes and innovative technologies for the production of biodiesel and bioethanol. It supplies its products directly to European mineral oil corporations, mineral oil traders, independent gas stations and haulage companies.

As a biofuel producer with proven CO₂ savings of more than 80%, VERBIO sees itself as the link between agriculture, energy provision and mobility.

• ZeaChem

ZeaChem Inc. has developed a cellulose-based biorefinery platform producing ethanol. Their approach addresses carbon dioxide (CO₂) problems associated with traditional and cellulosic based processes.  ZeaChem’s patented process offers the highest yield ethanol, at the lowest cost, with the lowest fossil carbon footprint of any known biorefining method.

• BlueFire Ethanol

BlueFire Ethanol Fuels, Inc. was established to deploy a patented Concentrated Acid Hydrolysis Technology Process for the conversion of waste materials to ethanol, and other viable alternatives to petroleum derived fuels. BlueFire’s technology has demonstrated production of ethanol and other petroleum displacing fuels from urban trash (post-sorted MSW), rice and wheat straws, wood waste and other agricultural residues. BlueFire uses the Arkenol Technology Process (which has been used in Izumi, Japan since 2002) for creating cellulosic ethanol.

BlueFire is one of four ethanol companies awarded funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to construct a commercial scale cellulosic ethanol production facility. Its biorefineries will be located in markets with the highest demand for renewable transportation fuels thereby dramatically reducing delivery costs while simultaneously increasing the areas biofuel supply and reducing the waste streams sent to landfills.

• Iogen

Iogen operates a demonstration scale facility to convert biomass to cellulose ethanol using enzymatic hydrolysis technology. Full scale commercial facilities are being planned. It is very likely they will announce plans for an Idaho plant that will make ethanol from wheat straw.

• Abengoa

Abengoa constructed the world’s first commercial scale cellulosic ethanol biorefinery in Babilafuente (Salamanca), Spain using some components from SunOpta. In 2006, Abengoa formed a partnership with Dyadic and, Abengoa started conversion of a corn-based ethanol plant in York, Nebraska into a bio-mass ethanol facility, which would initially use small grain straw and corn stover as the bio-mass feedstock

They quantify emissions by means of conducting an inventory of greenhouse gases, with internal regulations established for this purpose, and validate this inventory through an external auditing process. Based on this inventory, plans are drawn up for reducing, compensating and neutralizing emissions.

Abengoa also defined a system of indicators of the sustainability for the company’s use of energy consumption; water consumption; biodiversity; emission of atmospheric contaminants; odor emissions; contaminated water dumping; soil and aquifers; noise; recycling potential of materials and products, undertake improvement actions.

• Verenium

Verenium produces next-generation cellulosic ethanol using advanced enzyme science to reduce the cost of ethanol production that enables the use of a wide variety of biomass. Unlike traditional ethanol manufactured using natural gas or coal, cellulosic ethanol from biomass can be broken down into fermentable sugars using a mild acid or enzymatic hydrolysis. The biomass is hydrolyzed using steam and mildly acidic conditions. This portion of the process creates five carbon sugar (pentose) syrup from the hemicellulose found in the biomass, and prepares the remaining cellulose fiber for further enzymatic conversion into glucose. This is then turned into ethanol. The principal feedstock now being used in Verenium’s pilot facility is agricultural waste from sugar cane production, bagasse.

• Algenol

Algenol Biofuels is an innovative algae to ethanol company, using DIRECT TO ETHANOL™ technology a process powered by the sun.
Algenol’s technology produces industrial-scale, low-cost ethanol using algae, sunlight, CO2, and seawater, producing ethanol at a rate of over 6,000 gallons per acre per year.

The Direct to EthanolTM process links photosynthesis with the natural enzymes to produce ethanol inside each tiny algae cell.  The Direct to EthanolTM technology is the only end-to-end commercial process that stabilizes and reduces CO2 levels and puts CO2 to work.

• Dyadic

Dyadic International, Inc. is a global biotechnology company with the groundbreaking technology that brings nature to the marketplace. Dyadic focuses on the discovery, development, and manufacturing of novel products derived from the DNA of complex living organisms – including humans – found in the earth’s biodiversity.

For over a decade, Dyadic’s designed and developed enzymes for the increasingly efficient extraction of sugars from biomass. Using its integrated technology platform, Dyadic develops biological products such as proteins, enzymes, polypeptides and small molecules for applications in large segments of the agricultural, industrial, bioenergy, chemical and biopharmaceutical industries. Dyadic’s unique technology virtually ensures that each time a useful gene is discovered, it can also be expressed and then mass-produced.

In Summary

It’s easy to veer from seeking solutions to specific issues when faced with the multitude of data available.  Asking yourself three key questions will keep you focused.

• What do I want to accomplish?
• What is the current state of my business
• What is required for my company to become more profitable?

Over the next few weeks we will be exploring the Profits Principles: position for growth, reality, flexibility, integration, test and revise and steering the company, as we continue to explore ethanol companies – looking at their feedstocks and technologies.

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