EcoEngineers reflects on the 37th Annual Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo

EcoEngineers was thrilled that this year’s Fuel Ethanol Workshop was moved into our own backyard. We took advantage of the opportunity to have our employees really brush shoulders with low-carbon fuel industry professionals.

Diretor de engenharia Jim Ramm, P.E., spoke in the Low Carbon Efficiency Summit during the workshop called “Deployable Approaches for Lowering your Plant’s Carbon Intensity Score.” and Senior Regulatory Consultant Mark Heckman presented on a panel on the last day of the conference during the National Biomass Summit. Mark’s topic of conversation was “How Low Carbon Fuel Markets are Catalyzing Biogas Projects in the Corn Belt and Beyond.” Below are each speakers’ overall takeaways from the event.

From Jim:

• It was great to have about 2,000 people at a live event!
• Seeing the different fuel types of ethanol, biodiesel, renewable diesel, and renewable natural gas meeting side-by-side with a focus on low carbon was very powerful.
• Sustainable farm practices were a major topic of the event. See our recent webinar on the topic here.

From Mark:

• The pre-conference had good participation from many plants looking to lower carbon. Low-carbon farming and getting a general understanding of how the California market was looking at plant efficiency seemed to draw a lot of attention.
• Many plants openly stated they have understanding carbon intensity and how to optimize their CI as a stated goal.
• Jim’s talk during FEW and the corn kernel fiber discussion sparked some new interest.
• I got a general sense from discussions that the industry considers carbon intensity and the drive to net-zero as important as when the large-scale, farmer-owned ethanol boom took off.  This wave of new interest by investment firms and other innovators is pretty exciting for the country. It brings agriculture into the conversation as part of the solution to climate change.
• Many commented that combining biomass and ethanol was starting to be part of the solution.  Ethanol plants were actually considering biomass or renewable natural gas as a way to improve efficiency and their carbon scores.

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