Verenium Appoints John F. Dee to Board of Directors

Verenium Appoints John F. Dee to Board of Directors
PR Newswire
May 12, 2008: 04:01 PM EST

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., May 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -. Verenium Corporation (Nasdaq: VRNM), a pioneer in the development of next-generation cellulosic ethanol and high-performance specialty enzymes, today announced the appointment of John F. Dee to its Board of Directors. The Company also announced that Geoffrey Hazlewood, Ph.D., Senior Vice President of Research, has resigned for personal reasons effective May 31, 2008 and will be returning to his native England. Dr. Hazlewood will remain as an exclusive consultant to the Company and will also join its scientific advisory board, enabling him to play an ongoing role in bringing many of Verenium’s important research projects to a successful conclusion.

“We are very pleased that John has joined the Verenium Board, as his extensive executive-level experience working with emerging-growth companies in strategic, financial and operational development will contribute valuable perspective while the Company rapidly accelerates into a commercial-scale producer of next-generation biofuels,” said Carlos A. Riva, President and Chief Executive Officer at Verenium. “I’d also like to thank Geoff Hazlewood for his many years of significant service and contributions to Verenium and look forward to his continuing involvement.”

Mr. Dee served as President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director of Hypnion, Inc., a privately-held neurosciences drug discovery company, from its founding in July 2000 through its $315 million acquisition by Eli Lilly and Company in April 2007. Before Hypnion, Mr. Dee spent three years as a “turn- around” CEO, specializing in reviving under-performing biotechnology companies including Genta, Inc. Prior to his move into biotechnology, Mr. Dee spent several years as a senior management consultant at McKinsey & Co., Inc., an international management consulting firm, where he led teams of senior executives in the development and implementation of new strategic directives and performance improvements.

Mr. Dee currently sits on the Board of Directors for NeuroPhage Inc., a pioneering neuroscience company focused on Alzheimer’s, and BioProcessors Corporation, a privately-held company that develops innovative biomanufacturing workflow methods and technologies for biopharmaceutical companies around the world. Mr. Dee holds an M.S. in Engineering from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Harvard University.

About Verenium

Verenium Corporation is a leader in the development and commercialization of next-generation cellulosic ethanol, an environmentally-friendly and renewable transportation fuel, as well as high-performance specialty enzymes for applications within the alternative fuels, specialty industrial processes, and animal nutrition and health markets. The Company possesses integrated, end-to-end capabilities in pre-treatment, novel enzyme development, fermentation, engineering, and project development and is moving rapidly to commercialize its proprietary technology for the production of ethanol from a wide array of cellulosic feedstocks, including sugarcane bagasse, dedicated energy crops, agricultural waste, and wood products. In addition to the vast potential for biofuels, a multitude of large-scale industrial opportunities exist for the Company for products derived from the production of low-cost, biomass-derived sugars. Verenium’s Specialty Enzyme business harnesses the power of enzymes to create a broad range of specialty products to meet high-value commercial needs. Verenium’s world class R&D organization is renowned for its capabilities in the rapid screening, identification, and expression of enzymes-proteins that act as the catalysts of biochemical reactions.

Verenium operates one of the nation’s first cellulosic ethanol pilot plants, an R&D facility, in Jennings, Louisiana and has entered the start-up phase at its 1.4 million gallon-per-year demonstration-scale facility. In addition, the Company’s process technology has been licensed by Tokyo-based Marubeni Corp. and Tsukishima Kikai Co., Ltd. and has been incorporated into BioEthanol Japan’s 1.4 million liter-per-year cellulosic ethanol plant in Osaka, Japan — the world’s first commercial-scale plant to produce cellulosic ethanol from wood construction waste. For more information, visit http://www.verenium.com.

BlueFire to Break Ground

The company plans to begin construction on its first commercial plant, next to a Southern California landfill, by the third quarter and to deliver cellulosic ethanol from it next year.
by: Jennifer Kho
May 08, 2008
Arnie Klann, CEO of BlueFire Ethanol

BlueFire Ethanol plans to break ground on its first commercial cellulosic-ethanol plant in the next few months.

The Irvine, Calif.-based company is in the final stages of obtaining building permits and expects to begin construction this quarter or the beginning of the third quarter, CEO Arnie Klann told Greentech Media. In April, the company announced it had selected Brinderson as its contractor for the project.

The facility, which will be adjacent to a county landfill in Lancaster, Calif., will have the capacity to produce 3.1 million gallons of ethanol from garden and wood waste and nonrecyclable paper, he said.

BlueFire expects to begin operations at the plant next year and to sell ethanol from the facility starting around June, he said. It also hopes to double the plant’s capacity in a few years as the amount of biomass coming to the new landfill grows, he said.

“We’re excited about the ability to take the materials that we as a society value the least and convert them into a value-added product,” Klann said. “It helps us as a country reduce our imports from foreign oil and become more self-sufficient, and it benefits the communities that we’re in, not only in terms of job creation, but because we’re creating a cleaner-burning fuel that lowers the greenhouse gases.”

Last year, BlueFire, which is traded over the counter under the ticker “BFRE,” won a $40 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a 19-million-gallon-per-year plant at another landfill in Corona, Calif. The company expects that second commercial facility to be up and running by 2010 (it previously had announced an expected start-up date of 2009).

The company expects that facility to convert about 700 tons of biomass into ethanol each day, while the Lancaster plant will consume about 175 tons per day.

Ethanol companies have faced some financial difficulty, as prices for corn has increased, and controversy as scientists have questioned biofuels’ environmental impact, energy use and effect on land use and food.

Advocates hope that cellulosic ethanol — which is made out of nonfood materials such as switchgrass, wood chips and corn cobs — could help temper those concerns, reduce costs and make ethanol mainstream.

But the technologies haven’t yet lived up to their promise.

So far, cellulosic ethanol remains more costly to produce and manufacturing plants haven’t reached mass production. The difficulty of economically harvesting and collecting enough cellulosic material to continuously run a large plant is another challenge, as most of the material is spread around instead of gathered into one place (see Q&A: Harvesting Cellulosic Ethanol).

BlueFire plans to circumvent that difficulty by locating its plants at landfills that already separate out green waste such as tree and bush trimmings.

The company uses a “concentrated acid hydrolysis” process based on technology licensed from Arkenol, and says it has developed a number of its own improvements.

The technology has been tested in three pilot plants: one in Orange County that BlueFire operated for five years to develop its intellectual property, and two that the Japan Gas Co. built in Japan four years ago as part of a licensing agreement.

According to Klann, the company begins by grinding the waste down to a certain particle size.

BlueFire then combines the particles with sulfuric acid, which breaks down the biomass and releases the lignin structures, he said. The lignin is screened out, using a sugar press, and burned to provide electricity back to the facility. The acid is separated from the sugar (and reused), and the sugar is converted into ethanol using a standard yeast-fermentation process.

The process delivers about 70 gallons of ethanol per ton of green waste, Klann said.

The company has designed modular plants so they can be produced in a factory and put together “like an erector set,” he said. “It’s like doing a pre-fab home, only for a process plant.”

The Lancaster design represents the smallest module that BlueFire expects to sell.

“It’s the smallest [BlueFire] plant you can build that’s actually economically viable,” Klann said. “We designed it that size because that’s the amount of feedstock that’s available, and we see it as a standard design that we’re going to deploy around the world in areas that are limited in terms of how much [feedstock they can collect].”

The company also plans to sell a 19-million-gallon-per-year module, such as the one it is building in Corona, and has designed a 55-million-gallon-per-year plant, he said. And BlueFire expects even its smaller first plant to make money, he said.

Aside from selling ethanol, BlueFire plans to bring it revenue by selling carbon credits. It expects even its smaller project to make money, Klann said.

The company plans to develop, own and operate its facilities – not a small goal in a market where financing can be hard to get – and plans to build about 50 plants in the next 10 years, he said. It also aims to grow its revenue to between $4 billion and $5 billion by then, he said.

And BlueFire later hopes to expand into other feedstocks, including forest thinnings and crop residues, such as rice straw, corn stover and sugarcane bagasse, he said.

Nobody can accuse the company of aiming low.

But James McMillan, a manager at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s National Bioenergy Center, said it does face some risks and potential challenges in reaching its lofty goals.

Because green waste is so diverse, BlueFire could find itself dealing with many different types of sugars, some of which might not get broken down as part of standard fermentation, he said. The risk is that other organisms that eat those sugars could enter and contaminate the process, he said.

“Not only will you decrease yield, but you may have another operational issue to deal with,” he said.

The process also requires the fuel to be reconcentrated, in which water is evaporated out of the mixture, and that can use up a lot of energy, he said. Wastewater treatment also could prove challenging, he said.

Finally, even though BlueFire expects the green waste to be separated out in advance, it could run into some logistical issues, McMillan said.

“There would be some issues with construction debris – how do they deal with nails, metals and things like that?” he said. “The same thing with yard waste – what about rocks and dirt that might come along with it? There’s a question about how much source separation is going on and how they screen, if they only can take a portion of [the waste they get].”

Still, he said, the news is good for BlueFire and for cellulosic ethanol.

“It is a very robust approach and it’s good to see it moving,” McMillan said. “Los Angeles certainly has a lot of waste and with [this approach], instead of just burying it all, you’re tapping into it.

Range Fuels expands funding to speed cellulosic-ethanol production

Posted by Martin LaMonica, May 5, 2008 8:15 AM PDT

Source: GreenTech Blog, Cnet

When it comes to next-generation biofuels, it’s a competition for both technology and capital.

Range Fuels expanded its previously announced series B funding from $100 million to $166 million, according to reports. Private Equity Hub on Monday cited a regulatory filing, saying Morgan Stanley Capital Group joined the round. VentureBeat reported the expansion last week.

The money will be used to build the first phase of its ethanol plant in Soperton, Ga., which will use forestry waste as a feedstock. The plan is to complete a 20 million gallon-per-year plant next year that uses a gasification process.

There’s growing awareness of the problems associated with corn-based ethanol, which research shows does not significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions compared to gasoline. The high demand for ethanol, driven by government mandates, is also being blamed as one reason for higher food prices.

Cellulosic ethanol from wood chips, grasses, or agriculture waste is considered a better alternative than corn, but production has not yet been done on a commercial scale.

With a planned plant for 2009, Range Fuels will be one of the first providers in operation.

Other companies on the hunt to make cellulosic ethanol on a large scale include Coskata, which signed a deal with General Motors and intends to have a pilot plant running next year. Coskata uses a combination of gasification and microbe processing to convert a range of carbon sources to ethanol.

GM last week said it has also invested in Mascoma, a company using a third approach: genetic manipulation of bacteria optimized for breaking down sugars and fermentation.