Heard on the Floor at ABLC 2021 – October 28

ABLC 2021 continues today with its theme of ““building a bridge to Net Zero” after a flurry of announcements buzzed around the floor yesterday, as the 560 delegates grappled with the immense opportunities and supply chain challenges posed by the world’s rapid turn towards charting a path toward a post-fossil society. 

1. The BDOZone CONNECT webinar series.

First of all, an announcement from Ecostrat and the Digest itself. Fans of the Digest CONNECT weekly webinar series — and of the Bioeconomy Development Zone movement — will be delighted to hear the Ecostrat and The Digest are launching the BDOZone CONNECT webinar series.

BDO ZoneConnect is a market-making platform that connects developers and investors to ‘A’ and ‘AA’ rated BDO Zone communities.  It helps pave the way to more rapid bio-based development, accelerates deployment of capital, and points biobased manufacturing plants to the areas where they are most likely to succeed and where they will have the greatest social impact.

BDO Zones have been subject to rigorous due diligence and pre-vetted for biomass availability, supply chain resilience, infrastructure, and community appetite for new plant development. Ratings are credible because they are issued within the framework of the Standards for Biomass Supply Chain Risk,  the state-of-the-science for investor assessment of feedstock risk– developed by Idaho and Los Alamos National Labs, Ecostrat, a 150-member industry stakeholder group, and 65 member, $60B capital market ratings review committee developed under US Department of Energy (BETO). And plants located in BDO Zones are eligible for billions of powerful federal tax incentives.

BDO Zone Connect solves a big problem for distressed communities:  many of them have tremendous surpluses of biomass, reliable suppliers, and good operating infrastructure to support an operating plant—but they don’t have the credibility or platform to communicate this to biobased investors and developers around the world. BDO Zone designations provide the credibility.  By leveraging the 5 million readers of The Digest, BDO ZoneConnect provides the platform.

At BDO Zone webinars you will meet: BDO Zone Communities: community who have recently obtained BDO Zone Ratings  and want to attract a bio-based plant. BDO Zone Developers Coalition: Developers looking for their next plant site. BDO Zone Coalition Investors: Capital markets and  investors want to invest in projects located in BDO Zones. The BDO Zone Coalition recently announced $1B for investment in projects located in BDO Zones.

2..Breaking news on the main stage, first thing on Thursday as ABLC opened, a first commercial SAF project for Japan. Honeywell announced that JGC Holdings Corporation and Cosmo Oil Company will use Honeywell Ecofining technology for the first commercial scale sustainable aviation fuel project in Japan.  The project will convert used cooking oil locally collected in Japan into renewable jet fuel meeting ASTM D7566 standards with start-up scheduled in 2025.  More on the story here.

3. Congress is working through a hugely consequential budget and legislative session right now.  Realistic assessment of a US federal role in supporting industry’s net zero’s goals is going to wait on decisions being made in Washington over the next weeks. 

4. A 10 year extension of biodiesel and renewable diesel tax credits through 2031 is not pie-in-the-sky thinking, it has a realistic chance though is not a lock by any means, particularly the 2026-2031 period might transition toward a more technology-neutral approach rather than picking out individual energy types.

5. LanzaTech CTO and c-founder Sean Simpson used the metaphor of judo to describe the challenge ahead for the shift from fossil fuels. He noted that the art if judo lay in using the opponents apparent advantages in weight and strength in combat. “:We need a sort of climate judo” he said. 

6. We were intrigued by the amount of discussion of marine sectors in discussions on the floor as opposed to the main stage. Companies like Maersk working through technology assessment at a pretty fundamental level , for example whether to look at methanol or even ethanol as alternative, reliable, available platforms in addition to the on-going interest in marine diesel.

7. A more fundamental discussion of feedstock and technology was apparent this year than perhaps at any time since the late 2000s — back then, discussions centered around “2G” cellulosic fuels. Today, a broad agreement that the industry must transition beyond grains, oilseeds and waste FOG in order to realize ambitions such as “3 billion gallons by 2030” for SAF and ambitious targets in heavy-duty trucking, marine. So, we’re back to discussions about harvesting and aggregating large amounts of agricultural residue, but discussion on technology focused more on thermochemical approaches, as opposed to fermentation when it came to large-scale sectors such as fuels — fermentation continues to be a path of choice for materials. That’s not to say that solutions from companies such as LanzaTech, Clariant do not retain their popularity – they do. But we hear more and more about using anaerobic digestion as a first step, as an example, to develop technologies that can make furls from volatile fatty acids. Also, a new generation of pyrolytic technologies that address the oxygen content and catalyst life challenges that are usually cited when the question is asked “where are pyrolysis-based fuels?” We were suitably intrigued by Bryan Sherbacow’s new Alder Fuels, and also we were intrigued by POET’s continuing interest in biomass as a platform for long-term growth to complement its large capacity in grain-based fuels.

8. Jigar Shah’s keynote on the DOE Loan Programs Office is well worth a review, we’ll have that on the BioChannel.TV on-demand feed next week if you missed it. “Not your Dad’s DOE Loan Programs Office” is the takeaway. An example of the new thinking, Shah’s note that the LPO understands fully that the 20-year offtake agreements made with major utilities that are typical of power purchase agreements are not realistically possible in the far more combative and complex fuels space — the emphasis now is on working realistically with industry to de-risk technology commercialization without being rigid in approach, creativity is the rule not the exception. Creative finance was the entire theme of the Finance & Investment Summit and the buzz on the floor, come to think of it. Goldman, Starwood Energy, JP Morgan, Citi, New Energy Risk, on the main stage and on the floor, no two deals exactly alike, with a focus on flexibility and novel structures.

9. The shift in discussion from “Don’t mess with the RFS” to “Low-Carbon Fuel Standards, Everywhere” was readily apparent. There was heavy discussion of the future of the LCFS in California — Eric McAfee at Aemetis in particular sounding a big warning for industry to get engaged to ensure that there is a strong place for biofuels in the future structure in California, warning that there is a lot of “electrify everything” sentiment amongst Golden State officialdom. On a more positive note, there was a lot of analysis of what went right int he successful battle over the past year to enact a clean fuels standard in Washington state and discussion of active efforts in the Midwest and New Mexico in particular, as next points for expansion, We didn’t hear as much clarity about Canada’s Clean Fuels Standard timeline as would have liked. It was apparent also that the Low Carbon Fuels Coalition is becoming a national organization even while expanding its team on the ground in California. To that end, we heard that SCS Global Services joined the Low Carbon Fuels Coalition — the company is a leader in third-party certification and verification for environmental sustainability, and recently became approved as an independent verification body for the Oregon Clean Fuels Program. 

10. Innovative technology always buzzing at ABLC, this year is no exception. We were particularly intrigued by a discussion of the role of liquid renewable fuels as an onboard liquid source for electricity generation — a different approach to a hybrid, which generally has a combination of electric drive based on on-board battery and combustion drive based on liquid fuels. For heavy-duty fleet use, why not use the liquids as the battery? Intriguing premise, be interested to see more on the efficiencies of such an approach — clearly, there would be widespread interest in such a technology that offered advantages of liquid energy storage and electric motor drive, if it proved feasible. There’s been some testing of on-board electric generation — a partnership between Wrightspeed and Fedex explored the concept some seven years ago, more on that here, but most analysis has focused on using fossil fuels as the energy source. So, what about using 100 percent renewable fuel?

11. On the subject of engines, ClearFlame Engine Technologies, a startup dedicated to the development of net-zero engine technology, has secured $17 million in Series A financing, which will enable commercialization of the company’s innovative engine technology for the long-haul trucking, agriculture and power generation sectors. The financing was led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures with participation from Mercuria, John Deere and Clean Energy Ventures.  More on the story here.

12. On the subject of fuels, we were pretty intrigued by discussions on the floor about volatile fatty acids. Here’s something on that from NREL-led researchers:

To meet the growing demand for sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), conversion pathways are needed that leverage wet waste carbon and meet jet fuel property specifications. Here, we demonstrate SAF production from food waste–derived volatile fatty acids (VFA) by targeting normal paraffins for a near-term path to market and branched isoparaffins to increase the renewable content long term. Combining these distinct paraffin structures was shown to synergistically improve VFA-SAF flash point and viscosity to increase the renewable blend limit to 70%. Life cycle analysis shows the dramatic impact on the carbon footprint if food waste is diverted from landfills to produce VFA-SAF, highlighting the potential to meet jet fuel safety, operability, and environmental goals.

13: On the subject on SAF, SkyNRG and CHOOOSE are launching a new carbon emission reduction solution called “Fly on SAF” with partners such as Heathrow Airport, Rotterdam The Hague Airport and Stuttgart Airport already on board. The solution enables airlines and travel companies to seamlessly integrate the offering of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and Carbon Offsets into their customer experience. Here’s the takeaway: ”Fly on SAF provides everything airlines, airports, online travel agents, travel management companies and event organizers need to integrate trusted SAF solutions into the customer experience. Enterprise-grade APIs are used to power carbon calculations and climate compensation options at any digital checkout. It also includes a logged-in experience to track, report on, and analyze solution performance across all integrated channels.”

14. Our theme of “building a bridge to net zero” was not lost on Aemetis, which announced a major milestone for its Carbon Zero 1 plant. Aemetis, which bills itself as a a renewable natural gas as well as a renewable fuels company these days, has entered into an agreement with engineering and construction firm CTCI America to conduct permitting and engineering work for the Carbon Zero renewable jet/diesel plant to be built in Riverbank, California.  

The Aemetis Carbon Zero plant is being developed at a former U.S. Army ammunition production facility. The process design uses waste wood to produce cellulosic hydrogen with a below zero carbon intensity, which is combined with renewable oils and zero carbon intensity hydroelectric electricity to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel. The plant will have an initial capacity of 45 million gallons per year, with engineering and other development work underway for expansion to 90 million gallons per year. More on the story here.