Bruce Nelson: We are the new kids on the block and somebody has to be the first.
Sara Volz: People think of algae as pond scum, but algae could potentially be part of the
solution to our energy crises.
Jonathan Wolfson: The world is addicted to oil.
I think we are really at that breaking point right now.
Bruce Nelson: My grandpa came here in 1942.
I'm the 4th generation.
I came back from playing ball, did not know exactly what I wanted to do.
I kind of came back here to figure it out.
When you get that dirt under your finger nails it's hard to get it
out.
It is true you know.
Right now it's a farmed with my dad and my uncle.
We farm about 2,800 acres.
Anne Marie Nelson: Anytime when you're in an industry like we are, you are always looking
for a way to make more money.
To have your cornstalks turn into a money market for you, that's always good.
Bruce Nelson: About six years ago the local ethanol plant was looking for farms to run
this whole project of corn stover, and harvesting it, and making
it into cellulosic ethanol.
So we were one of the lucky ones that had a chance to tryout.
Jonathan Male: As one looks at the supply chain for bringing biofuels to fruition, you
have at the beginning the growing of the crops, and then
the harvesting and preprocessing, and getting them ready
to go to a biorefinery such as Poet.
There is an enormous amount of logistics in gathering in the amount
of biomass that one needs to do a monthly consumption of a large biorefinery where you
have 20 million gallons per year capacity at that
plant when its fully on stream.
Daron Wilson: So inside here are the grinders that grind those bales that you see earlier.
They grind it into smaller pieces and then that conveyor
brings the ground biomass up to what we call the
pretreatment process.
That pretreatment process, through temperature, time, water and PH, starts to
break down the biomass.
These tanks you see here are called sacrification tanks.
We take the biomass that's been ground and pretreated and enzymes
added at that point.
That's where the sugars start to breakdown to a point where the yeast can start
converting it to ethanol.
Matt Merritt: The challenge has always been how do we crack cellulose so we can get access
to that sugar and make it into energy.
And through DOE we got a pretty significant grant to bring this
technology to commercial scale.
Once these first plants get going we really think that cellulosic ethanol
is something that is going to be able to expand to all part of the country and really all
parts of the world.
The opportunity is there, the market is there, we need to keep this momentum going.
Bruce Nelson: We have a massive amount of stover on our farms.
It's going to be here weather we are producing cellulosic ethanol or not.
We've been harvesting biostover in a renewable and a sustainable
way.
Now we have a second cash crop.
It's more jobs for the young farmers that are coming back to the
farm, and so I think there is going to be even more people getting on board.
And that's what has to happen with this whole process.
Sara Volz: I grew up in Colorado Springs.
I've lived here my whole life.
Most of my friends, they were into sports which I was not very good at.
But in high school I was able to join the science Olympiad team
and the science bowl team, and I got really involved in my research.
I was basically looking for an idea that had to do with chemistry or biology.
And I also wanted an idea that addressed a major global issue.
I actually heard about people who were making biodiesel that could go straight into diesel
engine and they were doing that all in their garage.
And that idea fascinated me.
A big problem with biofuels is where are we actually getting this oil from.
That's why I started looking at algae as an alternative oil
source.
This is actually, we are under my bed right now.
This set up, this lab was something that I made
the summer after my sophomore year of high school with some supplies I borrowed from
a local school.
I would spend all night doing some experiments on algae with a flashlight and a book if my
parents would let me.
Sometimes they caught me.
There is a lot of really interesting new research into how we
can possibly increase algae's oil production and make it a more feasible source of these
oils to be converted into fuel.
That's really where my interest was.
I wanted to see if there was a way that I could
impact the metabolism of the algae to try to make them over produce oil.
Dr. Donald Veverka: There she is.
How you doing?
Welcome back.
It's good to see you.
She came to us as a STEM student.
There was very little ramp up or spin up time for Sara.
She had done her reading.
Sara Volz: Here I work with some stress experiments.
The idea being that if you can stress these cells out
they can actually start produce more oil as a response to this environmental stimulus.
So I was looking at that effect so that I could compare it with
some of the research that I was doing at the lab setup I have
at home.
Sara Volz: My senior year of high school I won the top award at the Intel Science Talent
Search for my work using artificial selection to improve
the oil content of algae for applications in biofuels.
Jonathan Male: She had a 200 percent increase in productivity for algae species by doing
selection through the different species.
It's very exciting to see new scientists and engineers who care
passionately about the area of bioenergy.
I'm sure there are hundreds, thousands of other Sara Volz out
there, and are on the cusp of finding out how they can have a profound impact in the
field of bioenergy now and in the future.
Dr. Donald Veverka: I had one young man who told me when he got done with his research
work here at the Academy he said "Wow I am actually working
with the stuff that I may one day I might be placing in
my jet that I will be flying."
That really captured the whole idea and the essence of what we are trying
to do to promote this intellectual curiosity.
Get these young men and women, interested very early on
in science, so that they have these opportunities to go on, go onto college and learn the types
of things they need to advance these technologies.
Sara Volz: I just finished my freshman year at MIT.
I really love it there.
I think it's a really great fit.
I'm doing some really cool research there.
I really can't think of a better fate than never leaving school.
Jonathan Wolfson: My cofounder and I have been talking about how we can use biotechnology
to improve the planet and the environment since
we were freshmen college in the late 80s.
After a lot of years and few degrees, and some other fits
and starts, we came out here in the early 2000s to build a
disruptive company.
There were quite a few bumps along the way and our very original technology , the
way we were trying to grow algae to make oil, didn't really work well.
Todd Pray: Making a project commercially viable is a risky proposition.
So we are here as a resource to industry.
Companies come to us with a test tube, with an idea, and we really help them move on a
tech- to-market trajectory.
Department of Energy invested over 20 million dollars in this facility.
It's flexible.
It's state of the art.
This is something that not every company can invest in, early on especially.
Jonathan Male: it's important for public-private partnerships to drive down the costs.
Then once it's competitive, once it's sustainable, set up
for long term, it's process control, it's robust.
Then it can have a profound impact.
Then it can have consumer confidence.
Jonathan Wolfson: What we realized is that you can have a great idea, but the science
may not follow your great idea.
Ultimately, you need to learn from what the science tells you and you need to try, fail,
make a change, try again, probably fail, make a change, and then you start to make improvements
because finally you find something that works.
Then you make a change and it gets better.
Todd Pray: These are new technologies.
You really have to give yourself the time, the resources to
develop the technology to a point where you can integrate it, you can understand all the
variables and really reduce the risk of your project.
Jonathan Wolfson: One of the great things about being in California and Silicon Valley
is that this is a place where people follow the technology.
We attract people who are looking to be out there on the
edge of innovation and are willing to fail on a path to very big success.
We've over the last more than decade now managed to scale up the process
of producing oils from micro algae to massive scale and
large volumes.
We've been partnered with the U.S. Navy since 2007, 2008 delivering larger and larger
quantities of fuels that meet there specifications to run their planes and their ships.
Stephen Mayfield: We know that we can make fuel from algae.
We simply have to get algae cheap enough that we can use it to fuel our cars
and our trains and our planes.
Jonathan Wolfson: People understand that there are technologies that reduce their environmental
footprint, but they don't know where they can get them.
Women: I just like that it is saving the environment.
It's made here and it's 50 cents less than what the
regular gas is here.
I'm sold.
Jonathan Wolfson: When you can drive into a gas station and fill your car up and drive
around on it and tell people about it.
It's probably the single best thing that can be done.
Stephen Mayfield: The big picture is that fossil fuels are a finite resource and climate
change is real.
And those two things are overwhelming drivers
for the world going forward.
So we have to have a sustainable solution that allows us to use
a fuel in a world in a way that we don't just completely trash
the environment so the planet becomes unlivable.
And then we need to continue to do the research both on the biological side to make better
strains and on the engineering side to make that whole
process more efficient.
And I think all of those things are going to come together in the next 4 or 5 years.
But they will only come together if people demand that we have low carbon fuels.
Scott Atherton: Around 2005, 2006 we realized that there was an opportunity here to introduce
biofuels into the united sports car championship to
build a whole green racing platform.
All of the cars competing from Chevrolet, corvette, porche,
ferari, bmw, srt, dodge viper they are all competing with
that cellulosic E85.
When you think about the source of our biofuels this is a domestic product.
This is putting people to work in our communities.
It is utilizing largely waste products that would otherwise be
filling up our landfills.
All of those examples are good for our economy, for our environment, for our
communities, and really for the whole United States.
The small role we are playing in that gives us a lot
of pride.
Branden Weaver: Underneath me here we have a large amount of biomass.
We push the wastewater through that.
The biomass is cleaning the wastewater and giving off this beneficial byproduct called
biogas that we push into these big balloons behind me here.
About 12 or 13 hours a day we are producing about 500 kilowatts of energy.
On an annual average we are producing about 14 percent of
New Belgium's electrical demand with this byproduct from wastewater treatment process.
Jonathan Male: Bioenergy is on the cusp of greatness.
We are beginning to see the first plants come online, shake down, and produce significant
volumes.
We are seeing technologies come to fruition.
Jan Thijssen: We are making our plants small.
We are making them cost effective.
We are making them produce a fuel that can be used in any car
in this country.
Our investors include large oil companies like
Conaco Phillips and BP, General Electric, Google.
They have seen the promise of this technology.
Taking a waste biomass, turning it into a conventional
fuel that can be used in conventional vehicles and at a
scale that doesn't require the infrastructure.
Jonathan Male: That's jobs for manufacturers who are harvesting up that biomass.
That's jobs for scientists and engineers.
And it's home grown jobs and its new jobs.
And it's maintaining the U.S.'s competitive advantage driving ultimately to
billions of gallons of biofuels.