Comstock Inc. is marketing its cellulosic ethanol production technology for construction of commercial scale facilities, with a focus on upgrading pre-existing first generation corn ethanol facilities to convert forestry residuals and other forms of lignocellulosic biomass into cellulosic ethanol at dramatically improved yield, efficiency, and cost when compared to corn.
Comstock’s technology efficiently fractionates wood into purified biointermediates that are uniquely isolated and free of the inhibitors and contaminants that have frustrated prior attempts at broadly commercializing cellulosic fuels technologies. Comstock’s first biointermediate is a purified form of cellulosic sugar that can be used as a chemically identical “drop-in” feedstock in corn ethanol facilities to produce about 80 gallons of advanced cellulosic ethanol per dry ton of woody biomass.
“Using cellulosic sugar as a feedstock will have extraordinary impacts for corn ethanol producers,” said Corrado De Gasperis, Comstock’s executive chairman and chief executive officer. “Woody biomass is a dramatically less expensive and available feedstock and delivers substantial higher revenue from significantly higher lifecycle carbon gains, when compared to corn.”
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) requires and incentivizes compliance with its renewable fuel standards (“RFS”) by assigning renewable identification numbers (“RINs”) to each gallon of renewable fuel produced or imported into the U.S. Different fuel types are assigned different classes of RINs with different market values based on the degree to which each fuel type reduces greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emissions over fossil petroleum sources. California and various other states have now also enacted low carbon fuels standards which provide significant additional incentives. In short, the greater the GHG reduction, the lower the carbon intensity (“CI”) score, the higher the selling price of the resulting fuel.
Under current market conditions, our cellulosic ethanol would have a market value in California of approximately $6.30 per gallon, as compared to just over $3.00 per gallon for corn ethanol. Under current market conditions and prices, a typical 100 million gallon corn ethanol producer that upgrades its facility to produce an additional 20 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol would increase revenue by more than 30%, or over $125 million per year.
“Our goal is to accelerate the commercialization of decarbonizing technologies,” concluded De Gasperis. “We are ready to enable dramatic improvements in GHG reductions and ethanol profitability today, with existing corn-based producers.”
Comstock is evaluating a number of existing first generation corn ethanol facilities for upgrades to and construction of co-located commercial scale cellulosic ethanol production.
