The 38th annual International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo welcomed producers, suppliers, innovators and policy experts to Minneapolis, Minnesota, in mid-June for three days of presentations, networking and speeches. The FEW’s general session, the show’s big-stage event, featured an impressive lineup of industry leaders including Emily Skor, CEO of Growth Energy; Todd Becker, CEO of Green Plains Inc.; and Bruce Rastetter, CEO of Summit Agricultural Group, parent company of the planned Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline. Together, this trio of big-name executives—with Skor headlining and Becker and Rastetter speaking back-to-back after the FEW’s policy roundtable (see page 19)—relayed an array of topics ranging from the industry’s current policy and market priorities to carbon intensity reduction, coproducts evolution and the future of biorefining. Policy, Messaging Vigilance Skor’s keynote speech followed a special message from SAFFiRE Renewables and Southwest Airlines, which have partnered to develop sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from cellulosic ethanol, with the low-carbon alcohol biointermediate being developed first and the jet fuel second. While touching on the importance of SAF and other near-term opportunities for ethanol, Skor’s speech focused primarily on the now. She discussed Growth Energy’s involvement in policy victories for the biofuels industry in Washington and emphasized the importance of communicating the industry’s role in both decarbonization and fuel cost reduction in the midst of high gas prices. Skor highlighted how the Biden administration’s emergency waiver allowing E15 to be sold this summer, while temporary, has drawn attention to ethanol’s affordability. In the wake of the publicity and high gas prices, nine states have petitioned the EPA to make E15 available year-round, and Iowa went a step further and passed a 2022 Biofuels Access Bill, which guarantees statewide access to E15 by 2026. Skor made it clear that Growth Energy wants to ensure that E15 is not just a fleeting solution during the crisis in Ukraine, but a long-term U.S. component of climate change mitigation. “To build our momentum, we need to remind policymakers that we are more than just an affordable alternative to Russian oil,” she said. “Savings at the pump got us this summer of E15, but it is our role in a low-carbon future that will open markets in 2023 and beyond.” Along with the media attention on E15, Skor said there was misinformation circulating (including controversial claims within an early-2022 paper released by University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher Tyler Lark) that question biofuels’ lifecycle environmental and air quality benefits. Growth Energy aggressively confronted those claims, and Skor highlighted the importance of educating policymakers and the public on the facts, backed by data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and favorable scrutiny from the nation’s top modelers, including the Department of Energy’s Argonne National Lab. “Oil disciples and EV evangelists have loyal followers,” she said. “But where ideology confronts reality, that is where biofuels emerge as the clear solution for clean and affordable liquid fuel available right now for today’s vehicles.” Skor touched on current industry developments such as CO2 sequestration and utilization and rising interest in SAF production, saying biofuels are a here-and-now solution for difficult-to-electrify industries like aviation. In addition to early-stage SAF projects like SAFFiRE, U.S. ethanol producers ADM and Marquis Energy have committed to producing 20 percent of the current administration’s goal for sustainable aviation fuels. Skor emphasized how ethanol plants use $30 billion worth of corn to produce a variety of renewable products including distillers’ corn oil, renewable chemicals and animal feed alongside ethanol, while constantly pushing the carbon intensity down through efficiency, science and investments. “With today’s technology, this industry can reach net zero and even negative carbon emissions,” Skor said. “Every plant is calibrating and optimizing, whether that’s tapping into pipelines, test wells for sequestration or seeking renewable energy sources like solar or biomass to power their biorefinery. Our commitment to continuous progress is even opening a new world of opportunity for climate friendly agriculture.” She mentioned the EPA recently finalized renewable volume obligation (RVO) numbers through 2022 and discussed policies that Growth Energy is prioritizing on Capitol Hill. These policies include clean fuel and carbon capture tax credits as well as infrastructure investments ensuring availability of higher ethanol blends in the U.S. market. “We helped insert these items into the White House’s original Build Back Better legislation, and while the bill has stalled in Congress, it remains a key starting point for all subsequent negotiations,” Skor said. “No matter what happens in the next several months, energy will remain firmly at the top of the congressional agenda, and Growth Energy remains committed to ensuring that biofuels are recognized as a cost-effective solution that can deliver an immediate impact.” Skor also mentioned the advances Growth Energy seeks to make for ethanol on the world stage, explaining how ethanol can play a key role in climate and energy issues. The organization wants to see increased awareness of ethanol’s benefits at home and abroad, she explained, outlining a pilot campaign the organization launched to encourage climate-conscious consumers to consider what fuel they use at the pump. “We saw with our campaign a sharp increase in awareness and consideration at the pump, especially among a new generation of motorists who are motivated by the promise of cleaner, healthier air, and will change their fuel consumption to support this value,” Skor said. “All they need is a nudge and unrestricted access to better fuel options.” Reinventing Ethanol Green Plains CEO Todd Becker discussed the importance of remolding ethanol plants into “modern day biorefineries” by looking for ways to invest and adapt, creating higher value products. “Historically, the industry has [been] relegated, based on the technology that we had, to produce low-value ingredients that we sell at a low price,” Becker said. “Why should we accept that? We never believed we should accept that. And today, if you’re producing low-carbon, plant-based fuel … [which] I still believe is deeply misunderstood, we have a chance to—unlike any other time in our industry’s history—redefine our stories.” Becker emphasized the importance of adapting to the moment and investing in new technologies to diversify product portfolios. He encouraged the audience to remember that they need to attract new talent to run those new technologies, and he reminded them that it takes time and effort to break into new markets for novel products. Ultimately, Becker said, dry mill ethanol plants need to become more like diversified corn wet mills. Expanding the number of low-carbon products produced in dry mill operations is key to the reinventing the ethanol industry, he explained. Although wet mills have the ability to produce an even wider range of products and ingredients, their products generally have higher carbon intensities than dry mill products. “We’re very different from what a wet mill does in that we can make similar and superior products more efficiently with a lower carbon footprint than those types of assets,” he said. Clean sugar is one of the new products Green Plains is investing in, and Becker believes that production of dextrose and glucose is a great opportunity for the ethanol industry, providing decarbonization opportunities and a new stream of revenue. “I believe our clean sugar technology, for us at least, is our single best solution that exists to reduce our carbon emissions out of our plants,” he said, explaining that clean sugar production doesn’t require fermentation and therefore is a low-energy process. Another major investment Green Plains has pursued is high-protein feed and technology. Green Plains has put millions into backing Fluid Quip Technology’s development of Maximized Stillage Co-Products (MSC) platform, which gives producers the ability to not only make ultra-high protein feed (50%-60%) but also increase corn oil production, Becker explained. Green Plains has been breaking into the aquaculture market, announcing partnerships to sell its “60 percent corn-fermented protein product” as an ingredient to Riverence, the largest trout producer in North and South America, as well as Japanese company Hayashikane, one of the oldest aquaculture companies in the world. “Remember, we are not just selling protein, we’re selling a product with 25 percent yeast, with the availability to tailor solutions specifically to the end user needs, that’s how we’re thinking about it at Green Plains for this product,” Becker said. Oversupplying the market is something producers need to be wary of as they start experimenting with new products, Becker explained. He advised industry members to avoid “making something for the sake of making something” and to be thoughtful in the investments they make. He touched on that subject in the context of niche product opportunities like bio-glycol, a component of antifreeze. With 1.5 billion internal combustion engines on the road today, and less than 20 million electric vehicles, Becker doesn’t think the demand for low-carbon fuels is going away. “I believe we can redefine ourselves and together redefine this industry,” he said. “The opportunity we have in front of us to reinvent our industry to supply low-carbon, renewable, plant-based biofuels and ingredients to the world is here.” Project, Industry Alignment One of the most talked about developments of the past year has been the active effort to develop interstate pipelines for ethanol plant carbon capture and sequestration. Summit Agricultural Group CEO Bruce Rastetter, closing out the 2022 FEW general session, described the importance of carbon capture to the industry. He outlined the improved efficiency in agriculture throughout the years and talked about how the ethanol industry has benefited agriculture by providing a local market for farmers’ crops. “As I think back on my career, and part of that career being in ethanol, and building a plant in Iowa Falls, Iowa—in 2004, in the early stages of ethanol—I can’t help but remember a farmer that was in his mid-70s at the time who said in 50-some years of farming that was only his second year of profitability without government subsidies,” Rastetter said. “It was because suddenly, instead of an export market, he had a domestic market for his corn nearby to, not be loaded on a shuttle train and shipped overseas to the vacancies of those markets, but add value [right here], as biofuels has done.” As ethanol has grown as an industry, it has become the consumer of 45 percent of the U.S. corn crop, Rastetter explained. Summit Carbon Solutions’ CCS pipeline is heading toward construction by gaining right-of-way throughout a five-state footprint. To date, the project has signed voluntary easements with more than 2,000 landowners representing over 600 miles across the system. When complete, the pipeline will serve 32 ethanol producers across North Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. Rastetter talked about Summit’s ongoing efforts to gain easements from property owners, and how the company is honoring the heritage of agriculture in its negotiations with farmers. They plan to inject CO2 into the ground starting in the summer of 2024, halving the carbon intensity scores of the ethanol plants on the CCS pipeline. “In today’s world, that’s not a simple process, but if you pay fair value and you treat people right, you can have good outcomes. And so, we are,” Rastetter said. Rastetter also talked about his excitement for changing the politics of biofuels as oil and gas company Continental Resources is an investor in Summit Carbon Solutions’ pipeline. “As I’ve mentioned, Continental Resources, founded and led by Harold Hamm, who has significant experience in the Bakken on directional drilling, believes that it is really important for the combustion engine that oil and gas work with biofuels, so we all have a future,” he said. Rastetter added, “In this instance of lowering carbon scores, we can win the battles of the future because we’re aligned with sustainability, like all of us have always believed we’ve been, but also taking it to the next level to compete very directly with electric vehicles.” Looking Forward The 2022 FEW, from the general session and opening seminars on the basics of ethanol production and carbon capture to the event’s three dozen technical breakout sessions and Innovation Stage talks on the expo floor, ultimately gave attendees the opportunity to learn and explore what ethanol production’s reinvention looks like. Although the year ahead has unknowns, the policy wins and exciting new technologies introduced in 2022 are a step forward for ethanol. Becker perhaps said it best when he expressed his hopes for ethanol’s future. “I truly believe there’s a renaissance that’s coming for our industry and our companies,” he told his colleagues at the FEW. “We stand ready to provide the feedstock for the bio-revolution that is coming, and for the bio-revolution that is here.” Author: Katie Schroeder Contact: [email protected]