New Energy Blue forms New Energy Farmers to aggregate biomass with farmers

In Pennsylvania, New Energy Blue announced the formation of New Energy Farmers LLC, which will be headquartered in Mason City, Iowa. New Energy Farmers is a biomass aggregation company jointly owned by Iowa farmers and New Energy Blue. Its purpose is to supply clean, sustainable feedstock to the New Energy Freedom Biomass Refinery, also in Mason City, and support the build-out of other New Energy Blue biomass refineries throughout Iowa and the American Midwest.

New Energy Blue has just completed the engineering of New Energy Freedom, scheduled to break ground early 2024 and begin operation late 2025. Because top-quality biomass is critical to efficient refinery operation and delivery of climate-healing products, over the past decade the New Energy Aggregation System was developed to assure a continuous supply of clean, dry stover in tight, compact bales.

During the Iowa corn harvest this past fall, the New Energy Aggregation System was again rigorously tested by chopping, baling, and stacking excess stalks across extensive acreage. New Energy Blue conducted the field trials using the latest methods and machinery from New Holland, Case, John Deere, Fendt, Massey Ferguson, and Mil-Stak.

From the fall harvests of 2024 and 2025, New Energy Farmers will provide a total of 275,000 dry tons of feedstock to the Freedom refinery—enough to produce a year’s worth of next-generation ethanol (made from the corn plant’s sugars) and clean lignin (taken from the stiff structure of the plant). Stalks from about 50 farmers with 110,000 acres are sufficient due to the exceptional productivity of North Iowa corn growers, who typically have three tons of excess stalks that need to be removed. Using the latest aggregation advances, bale weights increase from about 900 pounds to as much as 1500 pounds, cutting transportation and storage costs.