Another representative of Fagan Incorporated has joined the ranks in the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council. Matt Sederstrom of Platinum Ethanol is a new board member, elected at EPIC’s first annual meeting earlier this month.
Matt says he hopes to drive a solid cohesiveness in the ethanol industry, bringing more members and industry partners together for a common cause.
“Now more than ever you’re probably seeing a need for us to step up and be more of a cohesive industry,” Matt said. He echoed LifeLine Foods‘ Dave Vander Griend saying “everyone has to shoulder the load.”
Chuck spoke with Matt at EPIC’s first annual meeting. You can listen to Chuck’s interview here:
On the subject of locating a biorefinery we had another presentation on the subject here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference. This one was by David Perkis, Purdue University.
He says the purpose of his work is to answer questions that local decision makers have such as, Where to locate plants?, What do we have to prepare for?, What can we do to entice a plant to our area? and Do we have a chance? He says that factors in having an optimal location for an ethanol plant is access to sufficient corn stover and transportation distances.
Besides those out working in the industry we also heard from some university students today at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference. Lance Andrew Stewart is a grad student at the University of Tennessee. He did a very technical presentation on locating ethanol plants.
His work focused on the location determinants that attract potential plants in certain areas. He says that factors include, access to feedstocks like corn and locating away from an existing plant. He also made a point of saying that although plants can be very helpful to a rural community they must have enough infrastructure to support one.
We had USDA Rural Development represented here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference by Tony Crooks. He works with their rural business cooperatives program and has done a lot of work with communities in the area of ethanol and biodiesel.
The challenge he says we have today in rural communities is the large capital outlay to get a biorefinery started so USDA is looking at creative ways to help them. He highly suggests that a community have a community development plan so they can better decide if a plant would be in their best interest. Ways that USDA Rural Development can help is with grants and guaranteed loans. He says they’re looking for communities who need financial assistance, especially in the second generation cellulosic area.
The luncheon speaker at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference focused on managing risk. Paul Willems works for BP Energy Biosciences Institute. He says it’s a collaboration between the University of California, Berkely, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of Illinois and BP.
Paul says that their mission is to apply modern biology towards energy problems. The Institute was started in November of 2007 and is currently almost 70 percent staffed. They’ve already committed funding to about 50 projects and programs. Some examples of these programs include feedstock research and the discovery of new enzymes.
One of Paul’s key messages was not to get carried away with problems since solutions will take a while to achieve.
Two key words in a presentation at the Transition To A Bio Economy Conference were flexibility and diversification. These are important to managing risk, especially in R&D for renewable fuels.
Our presenter was Gordon Rausser, University of California, Berkeley, who was here with his assistant Maya Papineau. I interviewed them both together after the presentation. Gordon says that we should be looking at R&D risk as a portfolio of opportunities. He says we should be managing the overall risk by recognizing the inter-relationships among the technologies and their ultimate commercialization. He also says that stand alone analysis will miss much of the opportunities that will arise.
When it comes to flexibility he suggests giving yourself options so that you can take advantage of new opportunities as they arise. He says that current ethanol plants are vulnerable going forward since they don’t have the flexibility to move to different feedstocks.
Maya talked about probably breakthroughs in renewable energy technology. She says that it’s important for how you use public and private R&D resources to maximize the investment.
You can listen to my interview with Gordon and Maya here:
The second session here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference was on risk and uncertainty.
Jim Larson, University of Tennessee, talked about farmers risk in growing switchgrass as a biomass feedstock for fuel production. He says that this is a commodity that will come into play looking forward. His research shows that it’s risky for farmers because it’s difficult to establish and takes several years to get to full yield. He thinks that farmers will need incentives from biomass processors to get started.
Harvesting this crop is also risky since you have to deal with large amounts of material that’s subject to weather and storage concerns. Some ways to help with risk would be contracting and price guarantees.
Like the first speaker on our program today here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference, our second speaker, David Zilberman, University of California, Berkeley, says we need to increase agricultural productivity.
His talk was on the distributional effects of biofeuls and he had two conclusions. The first one is that biofuels make some people better off and some people worse off. Drivers are better off since they’re getting their fuel for about 15 cents less than if it didn’t have biofuels in it but consumers of food are worse off since the price of food is higher. He says that’s worse in developing countries where they’re seeing food prices 20 to 40 percent higher. This situation he says is causing political instability which will become an obstacle to the development of biofuels.
His second conclusion is that we have to increase productivity. He says that if we don’t we’re in real trouble. In order to increase agricultural productivity he says we must use biotechnology in all crops.
Well, money oversight at least. NexGen Biofuels has announced plans to replace its current CFO with a more local representative.
NexGen Biofuels Ltd. has announced that Eran Rotem, its Chief Financial Officer, who currently lives in Israel, will be leaving NexGen, effective June 2008. The Company has initiated search for a suitable candidate in the United States to fill this position.
Ram Ajjarapu commented: “We appreciate the contributions that Eran has made to NexGen in the transition from Healthcare Technologies Ltd. His leadership and professionalism have been recognized by everyone throughout the organization. We sincerely wish him every success in the future.”
“The industry is at a point where the next evolution is here. You know it’s at the next phase.” Toni Nuernberg, the new Executive Director of the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council says the ethanol industry is facing significant changes and challenges. That’s why, she says, both EPIC members and non-members attended the organization’s first annual meeting in Omaha, Nebraska earlier this month. Toni says leaders in the ethanol industry are facing challenges and conflicts never before seen in the industry. At the same time, she says the industry is poised to make an unprecedented impact on fueling the nation.
About 100 industry leaders attended the meeting. Chuck was also there covering the event. You can listen to Chuck’s one-on-one interview Toni here:
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Another representative of Fagan Incorporated has joined the ranks in the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council. Matt Sederstrom of Platinum Ethanol is a new board member, elected at EPIC’s first annual meeting earlier this month.
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On the subject of locating a biorefinery we had another presentation on the subject here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference. This one was by David Perkis, Purdue University.
Besides those out working in the industry we also heard from some university students today at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference. Lance Andrew Stewart is a grad student at the University of Tennessee. He did a very technical presentation on locating ethanol plants.
We had USDA Rural Development represented here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference by Tony Crooks. He works with their rural business cooperatives program and has done a lot of work with communities in the area of ethanol and biodiesel.
The luncheon speaker at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference focused on managing risk. Paul Willems works for 
Two key words in a presentation at the Transition To A Bio Economy Conference were flexibility and diversification. These are important to managing risk, especially in R&D for renewable fuels.
The second session here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference was on risk and uncertainty.
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Like the first speaker on our program today here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference, our second speaker, David Zilberman, University of California, Berkeley, says we need to increase agricultural productivity.
“The industry is at a point where the next evolution is here. You know it’s at the next phase.” Toni Nuernberg, the new Executive Director of the 