Jeff Broin on Growth Energy's first year and ethanol's future

Jeff Broin, the CEO of POET and Co-Chairman of Growth Energy, gave the opening remarks at the First Annual Growth Energy Executive Leadership Conference in Phoenix, Ariz. In his remarks, Broin reflected on the first 16 months of Growth Energy's existence and talked about the potential of the ethanol industry. Here's his presentation:

Jeff Broin Opening Remarks

View more presentations from POET.

A transcript of Broin's comments is available here.

Jeff Broin in Copenhagen

Jeff Broin, POET’s CEO, arrived in Copenhagen this morning to talk about ethanol’s role in solving climate problems worldwide.

He’ll be part of a panel discussion on Wednesday titled “The global potential of biofuels,” along with other world leaders in biofuels and agriculture. It’s one of a series of events held by the Danish Climate Consortium in Copenhagen this week.

Expect cellulosic ethanol to be a large part of that discussion. In fact, there are some E85 cars in Copenhagen this week running on cellulosic ethanol from wheat straw, produced by the Inbicon demonstration plant.

In the U.S. alone, there are about a billion tons of biomass that could be used annually to produce cellulosic ethanol. That’s according to a 2005 study by the Department of Energy and Department of Agriculture. Before you ask, that does NOT include protected or inaccessible areas, environmentally sensitive land, etc.  It’s biomass that you could reasonably and responsibly harvest.

Extrapolate that billion tons out to the entire world, and it’s clear we’re talking about game-changing technology.

Jeff and the POET crew have already posted a couple photos to our Flickr site. Check back for more updates throughout the week.

Here’s some coverage of Jeff’s trip from KELO-TV in Sioux Falls:

Technorati Tags: Copenhagen,Broin,POET,Climate Consortium,cellulosic ethanol

Biofuels Journal Presentation from POET CEO Jeff Broin

Jeff Broin, CEO of POET, delivered the keynote address at BIOFUELS JOURNAL's 2nd annual Commercial Ethanol Technology and Research Workshop. In the speech, he focused on the potential for the ethanol industry based upon the projected availability of feedstock over the next 20 years.

You can watch video of the speech here and here. Here is the presentation:

Workshop on Ethanol Technology & Research at POET today

As was noted in the previous post, POET is hosting the first day of the BIOFUELS JOURNAL 2nd Annual Commercial Ethanol Technology and Research Workshop at our headquarters in Sioux Falls. Attendees have started registering as you can see in this photo of POET's Chief Science Officer Steve Lewis.

We will be posting photos in the Biofuels Journal Conference set on Flickr as well as updates here and on Twitter. Feel free to follow along and leave comments or questions below.

Biofuels Journal Workshop at POET this week

POET will be a busy place this week.

At our corporate headquarters in Sioux Falls, we’ll host a great lineup of ethanol researchers, experts and industry leaders for Day One of the BIOFUELS JOURNAL 2nd Annual Commercial Ethanol Technology and Research Workshop Wednesday and Thursday.

The focus of the workshop is to outline ways to make ethanol production more efficient and profitable. Technology such as displacing natural gas for energy savings, fractionation, and adding new co-products will all be covered. Industry progress in commercializing cellulosic ethanol will also be highlighted.

Wednesday's session will take place at POET. The Thursday session will be at the Best Western Ramkota Hotel and Conference Center in Sioux Falls.

Keynote speakers for the event are Jeff Broin, CEO of POET, and Brian Jennings, executive vice president of the American Coalition for Ethanol. For a full list of speakers and topics, see the agenda.

Talking ethanol with Reuters

Jeff Broin, the Chief Executive Officer for POET, will speak tomorrow at the Reuters Global Energy Summit. The Summit kicked off today with news coverage available at the previous link as well as on their Summit Notebook blog where they posted a welcome this morning.

At the conference, Broin will provide an update on POET's cellulosic ethanol project and talk about the outlook for the ethanol industry. If you have any topics you would like to see him address, please leave them in the comments below. I will link to coverage on the POET news page.

POET to present at ICIS Chemical Purchasing Summit

Yours truly will be in Boston on Thursday to give a presentation on the biorefinery of the future at the ICIS Chemical Purchasing Summit. The conference starts tomorrow and includes presentations from Wells Fargo Bank, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte & Touche, Accenture and many others. According to the agenda, I'm on the stage at 1:45 p.m. If you're in the area and interested in what the ethanol biorefinery will look like ten years from now, be sure to swing by.

POET provides update on cellulosic project at ACE Ethanol Conference

At the 21st Annual Ethanol Conference & Trade Show from ACE, POET provided the industry with an update on its drive to commercialize the production of cellulosic ethanol. The announcement was even discussed in ACE's new blog.

The announcement was that our pilot cellulosic ethanol production facility will be operational in the fourth quarter of this year. It will be located in Scotland, S.D. where it will be integrated with an existing corn ethanol plant.

Biofuels Journal interviewed POET CEO Jeff Broin after the announcement:

There was extensive media coverage, which you can follow on the POET news page, and a lot of chatter in the blogosphere. Cindy Zimmerman of Domestic Fuel was at the news conference and posted audio of an interview with Jeff Broin.

There was also a post from Earth2Tech, saying that our announcement will likely make the numerous startups working on cellulosic ethanol a bit nervous. With a renewable fuel standard that includes 21 billion gallons of advanced biofuels like cellulosic ethanol, there is room for everyone.

I also enjoyed a comment to a post at CNET asking This is cool, how big is the commercial scale plant? The commercial scale plant, which you can follow the progress of at projectliberty.com, will produce 125 million gallons per year, of which 25 million will be cellulosic.

As for Jeff Broin's remarks at the news conference, you can download a printed version (pdf) or listen to the audio below:

Video of EPA Cogeneration Award

Footage from the general session of the 2008 International Fuel Ethanol Workshop was posted on USTREAM. It was during this session that POET Biorefining - Ashton received the Combined Heat & Power Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. You can see that clip starting at 2:07.12.

Video clips hosted by Ustream

I still plan to post the ten minute clip on POET TV, but I thought I'd put this up for those of you who couldn't wait any longer.

Speaking at FEW

Two POET VPs presented at panel discussions during the final day of the 2008 International Fuel Ethanol Workshop in Nashville, Tenn. Jeff Lautt, Executive VP of Corporate Operations spoke about driving down production costs on the New Technologies panel.

Lautt is pictured here at the far right answering a question during the Q&A portion of the panel discussion. For more pictures from the conference, check out our Flickr page.

Also, Dr. Mark Stowers, VP of R&D, gave a presentation at the Cellulose Biorefining panel. Stowers talked about how the corn ethanol plant of today is the foundation for the biorefinery of the future. His presentation, which was reported on in Ethanol Producer Magazine, is copied below.

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In addition, an interview with POET CEO Jeff Broin on ethanol plant efficiencies was posted on Domestic Fuel.