You probably remember that back in January of this year, General Motors announced that it was partnering up with Coskata to make cheap cellulosic ethanol using a process developed by Coskata which includes the use of microorganisms developed by Oklahoma State University and Oklahoma University. Coskata has apparently broken ground on a new plant that is being built in Pennsylvania. While Coskata appears to be moving along at a fine pace, Auto Observer is reporting that Coskata is not the only cellulosic ethanol provider that the General is interested in being attached to. GM said back in January that Coskata would not be the company's only biofuel partner. So far, everything sounds very "hush-hush" about this new partnership, but GM president Fritz Henderson is expected to make an announcement tomorrow in Washington D.C. We don't have any information on who America's largest automakers is partnering with, but we know that there are plenty of other companies currently working on cheap cellulosic ethanol. You'll know more when we do, so stay tuned.

[Source: Auto Observer]

General Motors and Coskata today announced that a pilot plant for cellulosic ethanol will be built in Madison, Pennsylvania. The plant will located adjacent to the Westinghouse Plasma Center in Madison. The plasma torches that Coskata will be using for their gasification process are based on technology that was developed by GM and Westinghouse in the early eighties. At that time the companies developed a plasma furnace used to melt raw materials for cast iron production at GM foundries. The first production application was at a GM foundry in Defiance OH in 1989.

Coskata is using the same plasma torch technology to heat biomass materials to over 1,600 degrees Fahrenheit. That temperature is sufficient to convert almost any organic matter into a gas that is an intermediate ingredient in Coskata's process for producing cellulosic ethanol. Coskata's pilot plant will use Westinghouse Marc-3 plasma torches while the commercial scale plant will use larger Marc-11 torches. The pilot plant will be in operation in Q1 2009 with the first commercial plant following in 2011.

[Source: General Motors]

When Coskata came out of stealth mode in January, the company announced that a 40,000 gallon-per-year commercial demonstration plant using a proprietary microbial cellulosic ethanol production process would be in operation by the end of 2008. Greentech Media reports that the biofuel start-up has begun construction on this demo plant, but we still don't know where. The location should be announced later this month, and the fuel from the plant will be used by GM at the Milford Testing Grounds and, possibly, by NASCAR. Coskata chief marketing officer Wes Bolsen also told Greentech Media that the tiny test lab at the company's Warrenville, Illinois location has helped double the efficiency of the ethanol-producing microorganisms since January. By late 2010-early 2011, a 100-million-gallon-per-year plant should be operational and a number of firms are bidding on the right to build it.

[Source: GreenTechMedia]

The magical cost of $1 per gallon of cellulosic ethanol is certainly a hot calling card these days, and one of the most well-known purveyors of this story is Coskata. Coskata splashed onto the scene in January with the big GM announcement, and has stayed in the news by announcing a partnership with ICM and, later this month, will disclose the location of its 40,000 gallons a year demonstration facility.

Bill Roe, the Coskata CEO, gave C-Net's Michael Kanellos an explanation yesterday of just how his company will be able to make this greener ethanol for that low a price. The short version is that Coskata's plan to license it's technology to bigger companies (companies that already know how to effectively build large ethanol plants), it's ability to use pretty much any carbon-containing item as a source for the fuel and it's mixed approach (one that contains both biological and thermochemical processes) to making ethanol all add up to a plan that, at this point, makes cheap cellulosic ethanol seem reasonable. Read the full details over on C-Net.

[Source: C-Net]

Photo by Jenn_Jenn. Licensed under Creative Commons license 2.0.

According to this tiny news posting, the cellulosic ethanol biotech team over at Coskata has raised $19.5 million in Series B funding (series B funds are made in the second round of investment in a private company). Whether that money includes the undisclosed amount GM put into the company earlier this year is unclear. I went hunting for the original regulatory filing where Private Equity HUB claims they found the information, but couldn't track it down. Coskata has not yet released an official statement about the funding, but PE says that backers named in the filing include Globespan Capital Partners, General Motors, Khosla Ventures, GreatPoint Ventures and Advanced Technology Ventures. The new name in the Coskata-backing lineup is Globespan.

[Source: Private Equity HUB]

Oklahoma State University: the school of ethanol made from sweet sorghum. Also, the place where the proprietary microorganisms that Coskata uses in its cellulosic ethanol process came from. OSU certainly is no stranger to biofuels, and a new $1.2m bioenergy laboratory will further research turning plants and other carbon matter into liquid fuel.

According to today's Journal Record, the new laboratory will be the centerpiece in OSU's attempt to secure funding for its interdisciplinary work on biofuels. Ray Huhnke, a biosystems engineer and the coordinator of the various OSU biofuels team members, said the holistic approach will result in "the creation of cost-effective biofuels."

The OSU Biofuels Team has been working together for the past decade. Members come from the OSU Division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources; the OSU College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology; the University of Oklahoma; and Brigham Young University. OSU also partners with the Oklahoma Bioenergy Center, which also includes Oklahoma University and the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation of Ardmore.

[Source: Journal Record]

When AutoblogGreen visited Coskata's Chicago headquarters, we didn't get into details about just how ordinary (in a 21st century American suburban business park kind of way) the surrounding area looked. Cars.com's description of their visit, though, starts off by questioning whether this potential energy leader's location is fitting for such important work:

... could [Coskata] really be found in a cluster of lookalike buildings housing an advertising agency, a medical clinic and a company called Yum Brands[?]

The answer is yes, and Cars.com goes on to describe why corn ethanol is a bad idea (actually, a "much, much worse idea" than we previously thought) and then describes a bit of Coskata's cellulosic ethanol production process. This should be a recap for those of you who read our initial report on what GM and Coskata are cooking up, but if you're hungry for more viewpoints on what Coskata is all about, it's worth a read.

[Source: Kicking Tires at Cars.com]

Some people use airport layovers to sleep, read, or get a meal. Sam and Sebastian took the opportunity to record AutoblogGreen Podcast #19. While waiting for a plane to whisk them back home from the Chicago Auto Show, we recapped a few things we saw at the show. It wasn't the greenest show we've seen, but they have the biggest building, by their own admission. A few things left impressions on us, first of which was the GMC Denali XT. The Zeta variant is the first use of GM's Two-mode hybrid system on a passenger car platform. Other exciting GM news is the announcement that ICM and Coskata will be working together to build a cellulosic ethanol plant. Ford came out with a couple of ideas aimed at truck customers that could boost CAFE numbers. The Transit Connect is a right-sized utility van, and their new Work Solutions system could be a stealthy way to improve economy. Honda has hybrids and diesels coming, and Toyota will be trying to add lightness to its fleet. Our interview this time around is with Bridgestone's Dan McDonald about their "One Team, One Planet" initiatives.

Thanks for listening!


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To get a little more information out of Coskata about this morning's announcement of a partnership with ICM to build the first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant using Coskata's proprietary process (past details on Coskata are here), we tracked down Wes Bolsen, chief marketing officer, business development at the company. Bolsen was an executive at ICM in his previous life, so he is very familiar with what ICM is all about (for now, this is building a lot of corn ethanol plants in the U.S.) and why the company is a good fit for Coskata.

Bolsen said that ICM, like the rest of the ethanol industry, knows that corn ethanol's days are numbered and that cellulosic biofuel is the way to go. After doing their homework, ICM decided that Coskata had the right process to move to commercialization with. Wes said that the relatively small footprint of a cellulosic ethanol plant - about 20 acres - will mean these plants have the potential to pop up all over the world, wherever there is some feedstock (like the municipal waste) and space. While the Coskata process can handle a lot of different kinds of input material, each plant would likely be built to handle only one type. Therefore, the design that is best suited for paper mill waste could be built next to a paper mill whereas a plant that works well with corn stork or corn fiber could be erected alongside a currently-operating corn ethanol plant.

Now for the unknowns: the location of this first plant has not yet been announced, nor what type of feedstock it will use. Exactly when it will be finished is also uncertain, but late 2010 or early 2011 is the target. The hope is to then have two more plants running by late 2011 or early 2012 and expanding from there to the point where Coskata is responsible for producing billions of gallons of cellulosic ethanol to the market every year. We'll keep watching.

You can listen to my chat with Wes here (5.3 MB, 11 min).

UPDATE: As Wes said in the comments below, he's taking issue with my characterization of what he said about the future of corn ethanol, the struck-out above. I didn't mean to give the wrong impression of what he said, so I'm going to explain why I wrote what I wrote. Wes said that ICM considers itself at the forefront of the ethanol industry, especially corn-based ethanol. But, when I asked about the move to cellulosic ethanol and away from corn, Wes said that, "At some point, everyone knows that that will stop." That's where my characterization came from. You can hear it at minute three of the audio clip. You can read Wes' clarification below.

While not as big a deal as Coskata's announcement at the Detroit Auto Show, the company is not letting the Chicago Auto Show go by without letting some more cellulosic ethanol news slip out. The company announced today that it had formed a strategic alliance with ICM for the design and construction of cellulosic ethanol plants. ICM is a background player in the ethanol field, and its patented proprietary process technology is responsible for about half of the ethanol made at plants in the U.S. We'll have to wait until late 2010 for the Coskata plant to become operational. You can read the press release after the jump.

Related:

• Mother Jones not too keen on Coskata/GM cellulosic ethanol development
• AutoblogGreen Q&A: Coskata CEO Bill Roe on cellulosic ethanol partnership with GM
• Detroit 2008: GM and Coskata announce worldwide cellulosic ethanol partnership

[Source: Coskata]

If all the AutoblogGreen coverage of the GM-Coskata cellulosic ethanol partnership wasn't enough to satisfy your curiosity about just how these two companies hope to make living green and going yellow that much better for the environment (at least until Coskata gets into the coal-to-ethanol stuff, which a lot of us have questions about), Green Fuels Forecast has a few videos for you. In the clip above, GFF talks with Coskata's Richard Tobey about the technical aspects of the syngas-to-ethanol process.

After the jump, you'll find video interviews with various GM and Coskata representatives (Coskata CEO Bill Roe and GM's Mary Beth Stanek and Candace Wheeler) as well as a DieselForecast interview with the CEO of BMW USA, Tom Purves. Purves talks about how BMW plans to introduce diesel engines to the U.S. market.

[Source: Green Fuels Forecast]

The video above includes a chat with clean tech investor Vinod Khosla at the Detroit Auto Show. Vinod Khosla has backed ethanol company Coskata, which announced a partnership with GM at the Detroit Auto Show. Vinod says oil companies will get into the ethanol business because they are really energy companies.

GM CEO Rick Wagoner talks about Coskata in this video below the fold, also from the Detroit Auto Show. Rick says "we think the promise (of Coskata) is terrific." WARNING: The video below the fold includes Bob Lutz dancing.

In this video, Ford's American President, Mark Fields says Ford is making smaller cars. Mark says three years ago, 70 percent of Ford's sales were trucks and SUVs. At the end of 2007, though, crossovers and cars represent half of Ford's sales. The small cars Ford has at the Detroit Auto Show, Mark says, shows that Ford is moving in "a big way" towards smaller cars. Ford just needs to work on the "perception" of Ford as "truck heavy," concludes Mark.

[Source: Wall Street Journal, CNBC]

In the latest AutoblogGreen podcast, we featured an interview with Coskata president and CEO Bill Roe. This is a transcription of that interview. For a way-too detailed look at the GM-Coskata cellulosic ethanol partnership discussed in this chat, check out this post.

ABG: I'm here with Bill Roe, CEO of Coskata, and we just listened to the presentations and had a little tour of the laboratories here on the site. I am a little bit interested in this partnership, that is kind of what we are learning about here today between your company and GM. We heard a little bit about what GM can do for you, some of the promotion, bringing it to other people and you said during lunch that other car did approach you and GM sort of was the best fit for you. Can you talk a little bit, now that the tape is rolling, about how that partnership came to be? And why you are excited to work with GM on this.

Roe: I think that the two companies, and for similar and yet dissimilar reasons, have an understanding of what is going to have to happen if there is going to really truly be a revolution in transportation fuels. General Motors clearly had undertaken a study to determine who is out there and what are the best bets, and who is going to be quickest to market in the next generation ethanol space. We did not know that. But concurrently we were looking at the enormity of what has to happen for the billions of gallons of ethanol that conceiveably can be produced to ultimately get to market because there is a tremendous amount of infrastructure change and infrastructure development that is going to have to take place. And so, when we began to look at, in our partnership model, who the players would be that we would necessarily want to talk to that had a long range, and I would emphasize that word "long-range", long view of what had to be done, obviously, the automotive firms came to mind. It just so happened that when we begun to work our way into General Motors to see who could we talk to about this, we found out that they were doing an independent study of their own of next generation ethanol companies, and so we fit right into that discussion. And, they went through the same diligence process with us that they did with – I think they said 14-16,18 other companies, and said; we like many attributes of many of those companies. But we see in Coskata something that is elegantly simply, fast to market and with economics that look like there is as good or better than anything will be in the perceivable future, and that is when they made their decision to partner. That is when we made, certainly, our decision to say "thank you" for supporting us because, again, these really is going to take lots and lots of collaboration and cooperation between major corporations, entrepreneurial start ups, technology companies, universities, and governments to make happen.

Read much more after the jump.

We're in Detroit now, but Sebastian and Sam took some time to chat about a few things before leaving for the show. Rick Wagoner's CES keynote was historic, as was the appearance of the Cadillac Provoq at that show. Coming up at Detroit we'll bring you details on all of the alternative and fuel-efficient vehicles like the Hummer HX that signals a wholesale move to E85 capability and the first ever unibody Ford Explorer. Sebastian brings us an interview with Bill Roe of Coskata Energy about their exciting work on biofuels and we wrap up by touching on the Tata Nano. We'll be back again soon, see you then!

UPDATE: transcript of the interview with Bill Roe available here.

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