NEC 2027

Novozymes: Strong Outlook for 2010

Joanna Schroeder

This morning Novozymes held is annual 2009 4th quarter sales call and earning report and overall it was favorable. While 2009 began with a rocky start for Novozymes and the majority of the ethanol industry, with effective management the company was able to finish off the year on a positive note.

nzlogoSteen Riisgaard, President and CEO, noted, “After a shaky start to 2009, I’m very pleased with the way we managed our business throughout the year. We were able to deliver on our earnings guidance communicated at the beginning of the year by responding rapidly to the challenging market conditions. Looking at 2010, we expect a positive development but with continued low visibility. And even with the current market conditions, we see very favorable long-term trends for Novozymes and remain confident of our ability to deliver on our long-term targets.”

Overall, in 2009 the company’s sales were up by 4 percent with an increase in 7 percent just during the 4th quarter as compared to 2008. Some of this can be attributed the company’s commitment to developing more effective enzymes for biofuels production, with enzyme sales to the biofuel industry up 7 percent and Novozymes maintained a market share of more than 60 percent throughout 2009. In addition, its partnership with leading technology companies who are currently producing first generation biofuels and are developing second and third generation biofuels have had a positive impact.

For 2010, Novozymes expects both of its enzyme business and biobusiness to grow between 2-6 percent.

To access the full earnings report, click here.

biofuels, Company Announcement, International

Book Review – Climate Cover-Up

Joanna Schroeder

This week we’re back to climate change, and the author James Hoggan, lays out the “crusade to deny global warming in “Climate Cover-Up.” For those of you familiar with the online green space, you may have come across the blog DeSmogBlog, which is co-founded by Hoggan. This site is dedicated to “out” those companies, experts and scientists who are (or were) trying to deny global climate change and manipulate the public. It also calls out the supporting characters to the deceit – the mainstream media.

ClimateCover-UpLike companies who have been outed in their campaigns against ethanol, Hoggan outs companies like ExxonMobil who had campaigns against the existence of global climate change. Climate changed seemed to gain worldwide consensus in 2006/07 in part due to the success of Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth“. (For Gore fans, he just released his follow-up “Our Choice” last winter.)

Hoggan writes, “…no one seemed to be confused about climate change in 1988. The great scientific bodies of the world were concerned, and the foremost political leaders were engaged. So what happened then and now?” Well, that’s exactly what Hoggan lays out for the reader:  a big fat smear campaign against the earth. Read More

book reviews, Environment

Cellulosic Ethanol Could Produce Sugar Substitute

Cindy Zimmerman

Instead of making ethanol from sugar, SunOpta of Canada is working on making a sugar substitute from ethanol.

sunoptaSunOpta subsidiary SunOpta BioProcess Inc. (SBI) has been awarded $5.5 million (Canadian) in funding from Sustainable Development Technology Canada to develop an integrated cellulosic ethanol plant and co-located xylitol production facility in the Greater Toronto area.

The fabrication of valuable co-products is expected to allow biofuel producers to increase their profitability and competitiveness. SBI and its partners have developed an integrated process that will produce both food grade xylitol — a healthy sugar substitute — and fuel grade cellulosic ethanol, therefore increasing the economic and environmental sustainability of cellulosic ethanol production. Using wood chips as feedstock, the technology is projected to decrease process water consumption by up to 75% compared to producing corn ethanol while retaining all of the life-cycle carbon benefits inherent to cellulosic ethanol.

Cellulosic, Ethanol, Ethanol News

POET Cuts Ethanol Water Use

Cindy Zimmerman

POET Biorefining – Preston has cut its water use by 13 percent thanks to a recently installed water recovery system.

The new system allows the plant to recycle an additional 19 million gallons of waste water per year from the filtering system at the plant, bringing its total water use per gallon of ethanol down to 2.6 gallons. POET plants on average use about 3 gallons of water for each gallon of ethanol.

“Water is a precious natural resource and must be managed responsibly,” POET CEO Jeff Broin said. “Despite the fact that our water use has declined more than 80 percent since we started producing ethanol, POET is constantly looking for ways to use even less water in our production process. The Preston plant is the latest example of that.”

Ethanol

ICM to Retrofit Sunoco Ethanol Plant

Cindy Zimmerman

sunocoEthanol plant engineering firm ICM, Inc. of Colwich, Kansas will be bringing Sunoco’s new ethanol plant in upstate New York up to new standards.

ICMSunoco bought the idled plant near Syracuse last summer with plans to supply ethanol for blending in the company’s retail gasoline network.

ICM president Dave Vander Griend is excited about the challenge. “ICM got its start by taking struggling plants designed by other companies and retrofitting them for efficient and profitable operation,” said Vander Griend. ICM has served as designer and process engineering firm for more than 100 dry-mill ethanol plants nationwide.

Ethanol

Promoting Freedom at AG CONNECT Expo

Chuck Zimmerman

Sunbelt BiofuelsIn the growing field of biomass conversion to fuel there’s a plant that Mississippi State University thinks will help farmers and all Americans. It’s Giant Miscanthus and you can follow it on Twitter @GiantMiscanthus. They’ve actually licensed the product which is Freedom Giant Miscanthus that’s being marketed by Sunbelt Biofuels LLC. On the show floor at AG CONNECT Expo last week to talk about it were John Holmes (l) and Sunbelt’s Chairman Phil Jennings (r).

Phil says they’re taking the product commercial for MSU. He says they’ve been in the turf grass business for years and this new product caught their attention. He says they’re off to a great start and expect to see a lot of acres signed up in the next couple years as the demand for cellulosic ethanol production increases. John says Freedom is a play on words to denote the ability to become independent of foreign produced oil. Phil says “We know of no other plant that is a perennial, that is renewable as fast as it is that can give us the masses of biomass that we’re looking for.” He says Freedom provides four times the yield per acre of switchgrass.

You can listen to my interview with Phil and John below:

AG CONNECT Expo Photo Album

Audio, biofuels, biomass, Cellulosic

Corn Growers Focus on Ethanol Future

Cindy Zimmerman

NCGAWith a record corn crop under their belts despite challenging weather conditions in 2009, corn growers are continuing to develop the production and use of ethanol for America’s energy future.

National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) Ethanol Committee chairman Jon Holzfaster, a grower from Nebraska, says they are focused on increasing the domestic market and overcoming the blend wall in 2010.

“We will increase the market for ethanol and overcome the blend wall if we achieve a blend up to E-15,” said Holzfaster. “The EPA made some favorable moves last year. They are taking a closer look at E-15 right now, but I am excited about what we might see in the future in terms of a move from an E-10 to a higher blend.”

Holzfaster is also excited about moving ethanol into other racing venues. “NASCAR is excited about a future partnership with the ethanol industry to not only help promote the fact that they are becoming more environmentally friendly, but also to help the ethanol industry promote their product,” said Holzfaster.

With the nation’s corn growers producing record and near-record crops, Holzfaster says growing the domestic ethanol market will remain a top priority for NCGA.

corn, Ethanol, Ethanol News

Joule Biotechnologies Secures Solar Fuel Site

Joanna Schroeder

Joule Biotechnologies announced today that they have signed a lease agreement to build its first pilot plant to be located in Leander, Texas. The plant will be the testing ground to further develop and test its transformative system for the production of renewable solar fuels and is expected to be online within the first half of 2010. The site was selected due to its high solar insolation and logistically convenient location.

JOULE_logoThe first test product will be ethanol which will be produced, in part with its SolarConverter™ system. This system incorporates product-specific organisms to produce solar fuels and chemicals via the same process. So far, the company has successfully achieved the production of both ethanol and diesel at lab scale, with the former already reaching productivity rates exceeding 6,000 gallons/acre/year. At full-scale production, via future commercial sites, the company estimates the potential to deliver 25,000 gallons/acre/year of ethanol and 15,000 gallons/acre/year of diesel at highly competitive market pricing.

Bill Sims, President and CEO of Joule Biotechnolgoies stated in a news release, “We are excited to take the next step with pilot-scale development of our renewable solar fuels, following our progress in the lab and also in outdoor testing. Our combined advances in genome engineering, bioprocessing and systems engineering have enabled a first-of-its-kind platform for the production of direct solar fuels, including ethanol and diesel. Now we have the opportunity to test and optimize our processes on a larger scale, driving towards our productivity targets while also demonstrating the ease with which our system can scale up.”

According to the company, their process will achieve high net energy balance without the use of fresh water, crops or the depletion of arable land. The company’s secret is their Helioculture™ technology, which leverages abundant solar energy and genome-engineered organisms to convert waste CO2 directly into multiple solar fuels and chemicals. The continuous production process requires no biomass intermediates, removing resource limitations and costly processing from the equation.

Biodiesel, biofuels, Ethanol, Ethanol News

Cellulosic Ethanol Power Plant for Kansas

Cindy Zimmerman

mid kansas electricAbengoa Bioenergy and Mid-Kansas Electric Company are planning to develop the nation’s first commercial-scale hybrid cellulosic ethanol and power plant in Kansas.

Announced this week, Abengoa Bioenergy Hybrid of Kansas will be “a sustainable solution that will diversify electric generation in Kansas and help power the state’s growing demand for energy using Abengoa Bioenergy’s state-of-the-art, integrated bio-refinery technology and Mid-Kansas’ service capabilities.”

“As an international energy company, we believe this project is an important part of our continual growth in bioenergy,” said Javier Salgado Leirado, president and CEO of Abengoa Bioenergy. “Advancing this project required the perfect match of agricultural resources, technology, and a utility partner—all present in our partnership with Mid-Kansas. The agreement terms allow us to move forward with the project and bring significant investment to Kansas.”

The facility will be constructed at a cost of $550 million and have the capability to generate electricity and produce cellulosic ethanol. The cellulosic ethanol facility will produce 15 million gallons of ethanol per year and use corn stover, wheat straw and switchgrass as fuel inputs. The plant will use 2,500 tons of biomass daily to produce ethanol and electricity. Start-up operations are expected in 2012.

Cellulosic, Ethanol, Ethanol News

Iogen Makes Cellulosic Ethanol Gains

Cindy Zimmerman

Iogen Corporation is moving cellulosic ethanol closer to commercial reality.

IogenThe Canadian company produced over 581,000 liters (153,484 gallons) of cellulosic ethanol in 2009, more than double its 2008 production. That brings the company’s total cumulative production to more than one million liters since 2004, heading cellulosic ethanol into the realm of viable commercial production.

“Advanced renewable fuels such as cellulosic ethanol will play a critical role in meeting future energy demands, and Iogen is playing a vitally important role in the commercialization of this technology,” says Gordon Quaiattini, President of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association.

Cellulosic, Ethanol, Ethanol News, International