Joule Unlimited Technologies has received the 2011 Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award in the Energy category and was also named the Silver award winner across all of the competition’s 16 categories, from more than 600 entries around the globe.
“We are honored to be the Wall Street Journal’s choice for the most innovative energy company, and to be recognized even beyond our industry as one of the world’s top innovators overall,” said Bill Sims, President and CEO of Joule.
“We started with a big idea – the direct conversion of sunlight to fuel without raw material feedstocks – and four years later we’ve proven the process, optimized the technology, built a strong patent portfolio and laid the groundwork for commercial production to begin in 2013. We will bring much-needed scalability and infrastructure-readiness to the renewable fuels space, with a platform that can yield multiple products, including valuable, fungible diesel fuel vs. a blendstock like biodiesel. We appreciate this recognition of our company’s efforts to successfully innovate outside of today’s common ‘biofuel’ definition,” said Sims.
As stated in the Journal’s report by Kenny Tang, one of the independent judges and founder & CEO of Oxbridge Weather Capital, “In bypassing the limitations of expensive processes in conventional biofuel production, Joule’s technology has the exciting potential to significantly transform the economics of the biofuel industry. If translated into wider use, it is a potential game changer—it could become a cost-effective replacement to petroleum on a much wider scale than previously possible, especially with its non-reliance on biomass.”
Using sunlight and waste CO2 from industrial emitters or pipelines, Joule anticipates commercial production of up to 15,000 gallons of diesel and 25,000 gallons of ethanol per acre annually, at stable costs as low as $20/bble and $0.60/gallon respectively, including subsidies. The company has been conducting pilot operations and expects to begin construction of its first demonstration-scale plant this quarter.