Bioroot Energy works with concerned, committed individuals, businesses and communities large and small to scope, plan, design and construct clean and profitable, sustainable gasification to liquid fuel facilities.
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Don’t look to Washington’s finest for credible energy and climate solutions. Legislation, perhaps. Our politicians spend a lot of their time appearing in dignified settings courtesy of the US taxpayer, meeting important (and not so important) people, shaking lots of hands, listening and talking, smiling and chatting amiably with one another like lovable, peaceable Smurfs.
So our politicos are good at face time. But they’re terrible at addressing our biggest problems. Like balancing the federal budget, reducing trade deficits, or curbing the runaway growth of the national debt (Good luck with that). Or winding up our military affairs in the Middle East. Securing our borders. Stopping the BP oil spill. Pulling out all stops for a cleaner environment and a greener energy economy. You get the point.
When you consider that the energy, economic and environmental problems we face are in many ways caused by buying, burning and spilling dirty energy sources (oil and coal), while being utterly [addicted] dependent on consuming both energy sources, it easy to see we’ve got a long way to go to renewable energy independence and a healthier natural world. And a short time to get there.
How far on the road to energy independence is the USA when it comes to next-generation biofuels? We’ve only just begun.
Consider the paltry 88 million gallons of biodiesel produced this year from animal fat mentioned in the quote below, and add the 10 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol, then be generous and round it up to get 100 million gallons of “next-generation” biofuel capacity in 2010. This drop in the bucket represents an entire year of biofuel production beyond corn ethanol, which is currently about 12 billion gallons per year, and which is capped at 15 billion gallons per year.
100 million gallons of next-generation biofuels produced this year? Big whoop. Americans burn 378 million gallons of gasoline a day, according to EIA. That’s 138 billion gallons a year.
“Next-generation U.S. biofuel capacity should reach about 88 million gallons in 2010, thanks in large measure to one plant becoming commercially operational in 2010, using non-cellulosic animal fat to produce green diesel. U.S. production capacity for cellulosic biofuels is estimated to be 10 million gallons for 2010, much less than the 100 million gallons originally mandated for use by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act. In early 2010, the Environmental Protection Agency lowered the cellulosic biofuel mandate to 6.5 million gallons, more in line with production prospects.”
“Developing the capacity to use multiple feedstocks and to produce biobased fuels that are equivalent to fossil fuels that can be used in current vehicles without limit and distributed seamlessly in the existing transportation sector may become the least risky business model to pursue.”
Who’s making plans for renewable fuel production in hometown America? Who’s laying the business and technology foundation to develop advanced biofuels near you? Look around and you’ll see plenty of waste and biomass resources that could make water soluble, biodegradable fuel for a global marketplace. Look a bit further and you’ll see an opportunity to make an energy product the entire world needs and almost nobody makes yet: Cleaner fuel from stuff nobody wants.
Your trash, along with your neighbor’s trash, and non-crop biomass, is a constantly replenishing stream of renewable energy resources that can be converted into valuable mixed alcohol fuels. Think big here, there’s plenty of trash and biomass, and plenty of coal, coal fines, petroleum coke, or flare gas and methane.
Right now it’s just more municipal solid waste headed to the landfill or incinerator to make marginal amounts of electricity at best. Just another day in a status quo that no longer quite serves.
America doesn’t just need national legislation to support clean energy investment and promote a cleaner environment, it needs committed people in America’s cities and economic regions, armed with cleaner fuels technologies to convert what’s currently viewed as waste into dollars and sense. Waste, like politics, is local. And so is green energy.
Enough excuses. Let’s make cleaner fuels the world can use. What’s beyond dirty petroleum? Clean mixed alcohols.
Why act now to develop clean, renewable liquid fuels made from carbon wastes and biomass at a community or regional level? It’s simple. Your kids’ and grandchildrens’ gas tanks (and wallets, if they still exist) could be empty in twenty years if we don’t.
Look at the graph and be afraid. It did not come from Earth First! It did not come from the Sierra Club. It was not drawn by Socialists or Nazis or Osama Bin Laden or anyone from Goldman-Sachs. If you are a Republican Tea-Partier, rest assured it didn’t come from a progressive Democrat. Or vice versa. It was drawn by the United States Department of Energy (DOE), and the United States military’s Joint Forces Command concurs with the overall picture.
What does it imply?
The supply of the world’s most essential energy source, liquid fuels, is about to go off a cliff. Production of all current liquid fuels, including oil, will drop within 20 years to half what it is today, according to reputable sources. The difference needs to be made up with “unidentified projects,” which one of the world’s leading petroleum geologists says is just a “euphemism for rank shortage,” and the world’s foremost oil industry banker says is “faith based.”
How to solve the problem?
Stop waiting for the renewable liquid fuel solution to come from somewhere else. This isn’t going to happen. The answer is, like all politics, local. The key to the sustainable energy solution is where you live in the wastes and biomass resources that surround you. But you have to want it for it to happen.
Wake up and smell the trash can and go out and rake your yard and think about what’s at stake here.
A common comment at events where Bioroot Energy has presented is that our business vision to turn municipal waste and biomass into clean, green transportation fuel sounds too good to be true.
Fact is, the core technologies Bioroot Energy seeks to deploy are already proven. It’s a plasma gasifier, connected to a gas to liquid (methanol) plant. Making a proprietary alcohol fuel formula that is already EPA approved but has not yet been commercialized. Making a cleaner, stronger fuel which will not only compete directly with corn ethanol, but ultimately prove vastly superior as an oxygenate fuel.
The technology is ready to turn on nationally. What isn’t ready? The American people. We’ve been throwing away trash and burning biomass since the day our forebears stepped off the boat onto Plymouth Rock. And burning coal and oil without much awareness of what it does to the environment.
How much longer is this dirty, wasteful and unhealthy practice going to serve us? Today America sits on its heels, dug in, refusing to invest locally in better technologies even as the nation’s energy, economic and environmental indicators glow red. The government can’t build these technologies, it’s up to the private sector.
photo: Johan Spanner for The New York Times
There’s a reason Europe leads the USA in converting its waste and biomass to energy. Given the never-ending quest for efficiencies which pervades European life due to the higher costs of energy and greater population densities, it’s easy to understand why Europe leads the USA in this case. They simply have to!
America can do “waste to energy” better. For example, Bioroot Energy is not seeking to build high-tech incinerators like those being brought online in western Europe. While these new incinerators are much cleaner than any incinerator in the United States, they’re not clean enough.
What’s more, the single product they produce, electricity, isn’t the product we will be making because it isn’t the primary type of product the current transportation fuels market needs, which is better and dramatically cleaner liquid fuels.
We seek to build non-polluting energy creation and waste processing infrastructure based on gasification, not incineration.
There is a big difference in the two technologies.
Of course it’s a great idea to convert society’s wastes and sustainable non-crop biomass into clean fuels that blend directly into today’s transportation fuels.
Think of the hard and soft benefits to be gained from converting almost everything no longer wanted (trash, waste biomass) by people into a renewable energy product that is always going to be valuable in hard terms: liquid transportation fuel. Through clean, responsible waste to energy methods and infrastructure, a new, sustainable industry can form the hometown foundation of the American way of life in the 21st century, localized and vibrant. Spawning jobs. New businesses and revitalized local economies making a clean product with global market demand. Fostering a new balance of energy, economic and environmental factors. A balance that is, at long last, right for the times. (The soft benefits.)
Just think. One day the trash you toss and the abundant excess biomass around you will become the next-generation transportation fuel that gets your vehicle down the road. Cleaner. Further. Faster.
What’s not to like?
Some think that producing clean (water-soluble, biodegradable) fuel from trash and other carbon-based feedstocks at a profit sounds too good to be true. But it is both good and true.
It’s not only a great idea, it’s an energy industry sector in the making. We believe it is sustainable at commercial scale to manufacture a proprietary mixed alcohol fuel formula from localized waste resources that is in every sense superior to other biofuels, including grain ethanol, “cellulosic” ethanol, di-methyl ether (DME), Fischer-Tropsch biodiesel, etc.
Got a better idea?
Consider the current methods of waste and biomass disposal: landfilling or incineration and open burning. Consider the country’s dependence on dirty hydrocarbon fuels, gasoline, diesel, oil, and coal, whose inefficient combustion and emissions threaten our health and the global environment.
Surely there exists a better way to get rid of the mountains of used-up stuff nobody wants. And there is a better way to create energy values from that refuse; value that everybody wants and needs. The challenge, however, is to do it responsibly, with complete regard for the air, water, and land, and people too. And, oh yes, make a profit.
So what about practical considerations such as not enough trash and/or biomass? Or financing difficulties? Or lack of public support? Or technical hurdles and regulatory issues? Will the venture be profitable?
All of these questions are precisely why Bioroot Energy believes it’s much more than a good idea. We’ve been working for three years to understand and answer each of them in order to identify a clear, sustainable way forward to operational success within a reasonable time frame.
The feedstocks are available. The technology is ready. The marketplace is ready. The public support thus far has been overwhelming. Technical and regulatory issues are significant but addressable. Yet funding is in short supply because everybody wants to be first in line to invest in the second facility. Only the most visionary people will commit resources to an unproven business, even when it holds such obvious promise.
Bioroot Energy will be successful because of visionary people. Are you one of them?
So amid the chaos of market upheaval due to declining demand, spurred on by the new “less is more” mantra of increasing consumption efficiencies, at least one industry guy is pointing where fuels in general are headed, in my opinion. Fuels, like the rapidly changing vehicles we all drive, need to be better in every respect, not just price, but sourced from feedstock diversity, cleaner, produce local area benefits, and ultimately be more profitable to local business.
Refiners raked in big profits from 2003 to 2006, but “by 2007, it was largely over,” said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, an energy information firm in Wall, N.J.
“Now, along with very weak demand numbers for gasoline, everything points to biofuels getting a larger and larger share in the future.”
“One of the most contested parts of Sen. Jon Tester’s Forest Jobs and Recreation Act is the plan to log 10,000 acres a year for 10 years. On Feb. 24, Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell told Congress he wanted “approximately 20 10-year stewardship contracts offered in targeted areas around the country that could provide a steady supply of forest products.”
In a paper published online on Feb. 3 by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers described how they used a climate model to estimate the impact of 13 sectors of the economy from 2000 to 2100. They based their calculations on real-world inventories of emissions collected by scientists around the world, and they assumed that those emissions would stay relatively constant in the future.
In their analysis, motor vehicles emerged as the greatest contributor to atmospheric warming now and in the near term. Cars, buses, and trucks release pollutants and greenhouse gases that promote warming, while emitting few aerosols that counteract it.
There’s never been a more opportune time to develop an alternative energy company from the ground up to meet the needs of a dramatically changing world.
Or, one could easily understand, it might well be the worst time to start an alternative energy company, especially considering today’s horrible economy. Good thing we’re not looking for a loan yet. Nobody’s lending money, especially to punk startups like Bioroot Energy. Yet, here we are being “contrary” to conventional wisdom: Launching our startup in the midst of a severe downturn, and in the great state of Montana, with under 1 million residents no less.
Smurfit-Stone Missoula facility to cease operations on 12/31/09. What will become of this facility?
photo: Linda Thompson, The Missoulian
The entire industrialized world needs sustainable green energy, all it can make, and from wherever and whatever sources it can be made from. As long as those energy sources are truly sustainable and environmentally responsible.
We think there’s no better place to prove ourselves and deliver the right technology to convert our trash and non-crop biomass into clean, green, sustainable and renewable biofuel. If you’re a Bitterroot valley resident, think about what this choice of locations means for a moment. If we can prove our business model here, we can prove our methods, technology and know how anywhere on the planet that it makes good financial and environmental sense.
Towns. Cities. Coal fired power plants. Methane Fields. Landfills. That’s a whole lot of places!
Thank you for visiting Bioroot Energy and taking time to learn more about our mission and goals.
We believe this project could rapidly become one of the most important alternative energy projects in the world, and one of the first of hundreds or even thousands of similar projects to come. Ours could be the first community in America to turn its trash to green energy, without using incineration, or we could be one of the very last. The choice is ultimately ours.
If we continue to assume that garbage, trash and excess non-crop biomass can only go to a landfill or be incinerated or burned, that garbage will always be a waste product and that resources are limited, then it’s easy to conclude we will eventually run out of space to store our garbage. This seeming contradiction will only be solved when we understand that humans are constantly discovering new ways to adapt to challenges and overcome them by the use of their reasoning minds.
We know this is a bold claim and that such talk is generally suspect from the get go. Rightly so. However, our bottom line is and will continue to be focused squarely on the bottom line: Are we creating enough value to support current our way of life here in the Bitterroot? Or are we going backward simply by not adapting to our changing world and delivering new and innovate energy products the whole world really needs?
Ethanol from corn is old news, and long-term unsustainable. We simply can’t grow our way to energy independence, and we can’t afford to throw away 50 percent of the energy value in feedstocks creating a fractionalized biofuel that does not truly serve our long term interests. Higher mixed alcohol fuels such as ENVIROLENE from Standard Alcohol Company, our core technology parter, are what’s next in bioenergy. Make it from anything carbon-based. Convert it in large enough volumes to be profitable and sustainable. Put it in your gas tank and reap the benefits. Not just somewhere. Everywhere that it makes sense, and beginning in the Bitterroot valley!
Our solution “stack” will be powered solely by trash and non-crop biomass. Even sewer sludge and CO2 has value as feedstocks in this new paradigm of energy creation. Yours, mine, ours. Don’t worry, there’s plenty of it and we aren’t ever going to run out because we’re always making more! And so is the natural environment. Better still, our solution will clean up the environment, create jobs and businesses, and put money in everybody’s pockets if we are successful.
Bitterroot valley residents have an unprecedented opportunity to come together and make history building a next-generation waste to energy solution that has so many clear and measurable economic and environmental benefits, and so few credible downsides, that it would seem a no-brainer.
And it’s coming at a crucial time when real opportunities are as rare as grizzlies in the Bitterroot-Selway.
Is it possible to create a substantial economic opportunity where every stakeholder wins, including the environment and all God’s critters?
We think this is it. We hope you agree, and get behind what we’re doing.
We welcome your support and we look forward to hearing from you. But if your natural inclination is to first be skeptical about what we’re proposing, we urge you to share what’s on your mind so we can do our best to address your concerns. We think you too will be convinced we’re on to something very valuable here if you take time to understand what’s at stake and what is possible!
Other than raising money in today’s brutal business environment, there are very few real reasons to not be successful in the long term with a closed-loop gasification to liquid fuels facility. But we need to begin, and soon. Because Montana, like the rest of America, desperately needs to create new industries focused on making something of real value in our rapidly changing world.
We can’t afford to do nothing, nor should we, when an abundance of raw materials surrounds us all!
In this case, we can make a substantial amount of clean, green, and sustainable biofuel from non-crop biomass and trash right here in the Bitterroot.
The technologies we are proposing to use are proven, and ready for prime time. The time is clearly right. The reasons to proceed are many. And reasons to do nothing with our area’s biomass abundance are fewer with each layoff in our beautiful valley.
Our theme (okay, fight song) here at Bioroot Energy?
“A Trickle Becomes A River”
We know there are dangerous rapids just ahead that, honestly, have never been run. Alternative energy is an awesome, exciting, yet still largely undeveloped, landscape of opportunities. We’ve scouted up ahead and believe we have the right “gear” and the proper line to get through what’s ahead and have a great time every step along the way to a clean energy future! So we need all the dedicated rowers we can get!
The idea of turning solid waste and biomass into energy isn’t new. Look at any coal-fired power plant, for example. Look at waste management companies in league with cities all over the world incinerating solid waste to create electricity, spewing tons of contaminants ’round the clock into the atmosphere at a massive global scale.
Don’t kid yourself that all these emissions don’t already impact your life. They most certainly do, and it will only grow worse unless we change how we get rid of unwanted stuff. In fact, the long-term quality of the planet’s soil and water, and the air we breathe will all be determined by how we create energy to power the planet going forward. Even so will the levels of our oceans!
No matter how clean incinerators or current coal-fired power plants are claimed to be, the byproducts of incineration and coal burning at worldwide scale are toxic particles and greenhouse gases emitted to the sky through giant smokestacks. And, forgive us for this literary transgression, you are the human guinea pig breathing it every day of your life!
Is there a better way? You betcha. Bioroot Energy seeks to deploy community-scale plasma gasification to higher mixed alcohol fuel generation technologies to address these burning issues and fundamentally change how America’s cities and towns treat and view municipal solid waste and non-crop biomass.
Our “nothing into something” solution is a closed-loop, ultra low emissions process that efficiently converts all types of MSW, coal fines, petroleum coke, sewer sludge, black liquor, methane, excess non-crop biomass, and even CO2, into higher mixed alcohol fuels that can be blended and run neat in both gasoline and diesel engines or power a turbine, or even be slurried with coal and gasified. Without forcing you to breathe our emissions because we haven’t yet figured out how to it more cleanly.
“ENVIROLENE” from Standard Alcohol Company of America, Inc., is a a higher mixed alcohol fuel that can be refined from almost anything we dispose of without polluting. Or going broke!
We have the technology to transform what’s in your trash can (something nobody really wants) into something everybody needs (sustainable green energy). We’re sure you’ll definitely grow to appreciate our effort in more ways than one, and so will your kids and their kids.
We’re ready to go. Are you? Don’t mull it over too long, we have a planet to protect!
Is there really market-ready technology to transform carbon-based feedstocks like trash into abundant clean liquid alcohol fuels? Yes there is, but it takes more than technology to make it work in the real world. Making biofuel of any type requires significant capital investment to achieve sufficient scale. It requires a vast amount of business intelligence. Guts. Vision. Persistence. Commitment. Public and political support. And, last but not least, good old fashioned luck.
So far, the 21st century has seen public and private money pour into renewable energy research and methods of mitigating the use of non-renewable power. But as yet, we are no closer to knowing how the future will be fueled.
Barriers to entry are extraordinarily high in the biofuel business. As is the bankruptcy rate. If it’s such a great idea to create alternative energy, why are so many businesses crashing and burning in the biofuel sector?
We think it’s because the biofuel industry in general has not yet hit on the magic formula. A complete solution that does what it’s supposed to do at a profit for investors.
Consider the myriad variables:
To be long-term successful, a commercial waste to energy (green biofuels) facility must seamlessly integrate a wide array of W2E technology, such as gasifiers, reactors, converters, feedstock and output processing equipment, short-term feedstock and fuel storage on site, as well as product distribution and marketing, into a viable solution stack and a solid business. And then the company must prove it’s process works as advertised to the world by making money making green fuel in more than enough quantity to keep the lights on and satisfy investors.
It’s yet to be done and we would really like to be the first.
There is a little known Gas-to-Liquid (GTL) fuel technology with real potential to help our little company accomplish great things in short order. Indeed, this particular technology could be the missing link in a carbon bridge that has thus far eluded the biggest of companies and the brightest of minds.
At this point, to disclose exactly what the target fuel is called or its composition wouldn’t be fair to our potential partner. But here’s what this fuel isn’t.
First off, this fuel isn’t created by growing and harvesting a crop, like corn or switchgrass, or even algae. Secondly, it’s not a mere single alcohol, like ethanol, and no it’s not methanol or Fischer-Tropsch float on water bio-diesel. It’s better than any of those, and even a simple test drive with a few gallons of this next-gen fuel mixed in the gasoline tank of your car, diesel truck, snowmobile or lawnmower will prove it beyond any doubt.
What we can tell you today is that this alcohol fuel we are preparing to bring to market can be made from virtually any and all carbon-based feedstocks. It is EPA approved (since 2001) for use in gas and diesel engines either neat or diluted. This next-gen fuel has a documented, provenoctane rating of 120. and perhaps best of all for the environment, it’s water soluble and biodegradable.
Did we mention this next-gen clean fuel can be refined in abundant quantity from almost anything you’d find in a coal field’s tailing pile, a coal fired power plant, a landfill, or your trash can, without polluting the environment?
Bioroot Energy is aggressively pursuing its vision to help cities, counties, states, citizens, and private investors, profitably convert America’s trash and other carbon-based feedstocks into clean, green, sustainable biofuel.
Welcome to our discussion section. It’s not much of a discussion yet because next to nobody has anything to say. We take this silence to mean that everybody who visits knows or feels it’s a great idea to convert mankind’s waste to energy without incineration, at least in theory.
One could then reasonably infer that site visitors don’t believe it’s possible to do what we are attempting to do, right here in Montana’s Bitterroot valley.
So perhaps we have a credibility gap.
We’re closer to the solution than you might think: Converting our trash, garbage, sludge, coal waste, and non-crop biomass to clean green energy without polluting the environment or going broke. Not someday. Soon.
It’s in everyone’s interest to convert most of what’s in our trash to energy, jobs and a cleaner natural environment. Resources are all around us in the form of essentially free carbon-based feedstocks in myriad form: your trash, your human waste, your yard trimmings, your garbage times 306 million people. Our non-crop biomass: dead lodgepole trees, barks, branches: literally millions of tons of the stuff in our western forests just waiting to go up in smoke! (That’s just the short list of what can be converted to clean green bioenergy.)
Tis a noble idea indeed. And we believe we can succeed or we wouldn’t be here in the first place.
Stranger things have happened in America that a “nobody” became “somebody” because they had a burning desire to be successful and changed the world for the better. But not many. Think of young Bill Gates, who singlehandedly changed the world by putting two and two together and getting 5 with the help of a dozen or so “geeks” to build Microsoft into the behemoth global company it is today.
How important is Microsoft to the online world? In fact, there’s a 94 percent chance that you’re staring at this browser page from a Microsoft operating system.
There are many different biofuels. Explore how each biofuel is made, what each is made from, and importantly, what happens when each is spilled in water or on land.
"To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth—all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances."
Consider the paltry 88 million gallons of biodiesel produced this year from animal fat mentioned in the quote below, and add the 10 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol, then be generous and round it up to get 100 million gallons of “next-generation” biofuel capacity in 2010. This drop in the bucket represents an entire year of biofuel production beyond corn ethanol, which is currently about 12 billion gallons per year, and which is capped at 15 billion gallons per year.
