Why Waste? 10 Hot waste-to-fuels projects

8. Coskata

Yep, you may have heard they have abandoned biomass for natgas. Not exactly. They’ve always been feedstock flexible, and now they have prioritized natural gas owing to the low prices for gas and the attractive funding options.

“In North America there’s a golden opportunity,” Coskata CEO Bill Roe told the Digest. “The sea of natural gas is almost a problem, leading to historic price dislocation, and a level of availability that has not been seen for a long time. With our technology, it will give us a lower ethanol cost on a per gallon basis, and a remarkably lower capital cost because the kit that one needs to aggregate and gasify biomass, and then condition the syngas, is appreciably more than reforming natural gas.”

Accordingly, the company now plans to utilize natural gas as its exclusive feedstock for its first several commercial-scale projects. Now – keep in mind, Coskata was already utilizing natural gas for around one-third of its feedstock needs in its previously planned first commercial project in Alabama. What is notable here is the switch to an all-gas strategy.

“What we are not saying is that we are breaking ranks and abandoning feedstock flexibility,” reflected Coskata CEO Bill Roe, in discussing the directional shift with the Digest. Rich Troyer, Coskata’s chief business officer, echoes that “Coskata is not losing focus on biomass; it is still in our future.”

“What we are saying, Roe continues, “is that natural gas has moved to the front, as the first and most obvious feedstock that we can utilize for our commercialization strategy.”

“With our Alabama project being always 1/3 natural gas,” he added, “we began to get a schooling on natural gas availability. At the same time, across the board, that conventional wisdom that low gas prices would kill exploration and drilling began to change. The lifting cost in these formations began to be understood from the impact of horizontal drilling and fracking. Now, we understand it better, that there will be exploration opportunities that make sense even at $3 gas or just above that.”

More on the company.

In today’s Digest, we preview the projects and prospects for BioenNW and Greenwood Fuels – by following the page links below.