AutoblogGreen reported today that the cellulosic ethanol company Mascoma has received another $10 million for research and development from Marathon Oil. This comes after GM’s undisclosed equity share in the same company was announced last week, and puts the grand total raised in this round of financing at $100 million.
This blew me away at first, but then it does make some sense. What do you think?
According to Swedish car safety specialist Claes Tingvall, GM has wrapped up a multi-year project which used dead human bodies instead of crash dummies. Specifically, the tests were made with Saab automobiles.
General Motors announced today it would be entering into a strategic relationship with Mascoma Corp., a second-generation biofuel company with the technology to produce cellulosic ethanol from non-food sources via a single-step biochemical conversion.
The undisclosed equity share aims to contribute to joint research and development along with technology exchange, plant siting, and rapid commercialization of cellulosic ethanol technology and infrastructure. This is GM’s second investment in a cellulosic ethanol company, after announcing partnership with Coskata back in January.
One of the most viable solutions to our large-scale environmental challenges is to use “waste” instead of virgin materials. This is especially true for the transportation fuels industry. Unfortunately, with the current infrastructure in place, virgin resources can actually be more cost effective than “waste.” I became aware of this when I toured the Coskata ethanol laboratory in suburban Chicago. I discovered that there is a cheaper and more consistent supply of harvested trees to produce ethanol than trash.
Trees, agricultural waste, storm debris and trash are all viable fuel sources for ethanol, using the Coskata process. This highly flexible technology allows future manufacturing plants to cater to locally available materials, making ethanol viable in parts of the globe that would not use corn or sugar cane for fuel. Argonne National Laboratory tests show that greenhouse gas emissions are up to 84% lower for Coskta ethanol than conventional gasoline. It has a net energy balance of up to 7.7, compared to 1.3 for corn-based ethanol. These results were achieved with a production cost of $1 a gallon when timber was used as an ethanol fuel source.
On face of it, you would think that garbage would be the cheapest way to produce fuel, given the flexibility of the Coskata process. In fact, one of the most available and economically viable fuel sources is trees, with the low price tag of $50 a ton. There is a very efficient infrastructure for harvesting and transporting trees. They are available throughout the year, unlike some agricultural products. It is actually cheaper to use trees than sorted garbage and agricultural waste.
Matt Kelly of NextGear was kind enough to pass along video of our breakfast with Rick Wagoner, Chairman and CEO of General Motors, which took place last week at the NAIAS.
Mr. Wagoner addressed a variety of issues, including the Coskata ethanol announcement, the future of the Hummer brand (hint: smaller), the risks associated with producing the Chevy Volt, and […]
As you’ve almost certainly already heard by now, General Motors has announced a partnership with Coskata, Inc. to produce ethanol less expensively and without using food materials as feedstock for the process. This is exciting for a number of reasons. First of all, Coskata is close to completing a continuous demonstration stream at their laboratory. They also expect to have a pilot demonstration plant in place by the end of the year that will produce 40,000 gallons of ethanol. And later this year, they expect to announce the site for their first full-scale plant which will be capable of annual production of 100 million gallons of ethanol. The process also consumes less water resources (less than one gallon of water per gallon of ethanol produced) and delivers 7.7 units of energy per unit of energy used in the process.
The process relies on using anaerobic microbes that consume carbon monoxide and hydrogen and produce ethanol. Because the process uses specially bred strains of microbes, they produce ethanol exclusively, unlike other fermentation processes, which often produce a range of alcohols and which require further distillation. Furthermore, the flexibility of the Coskata process allows for other microbes to be used in the same process setup (or even a parallel setup). Other strains of microbes that produce other useful alcohols, including some used as precursors for plastic production, so that the same technology could be used in other applications to provide a petroleum replacement.
The words ‘green’ and ‘Hummer’ don’t usually occur together, except when compiling a complete list of oxymorons. But earlier today at the Saab/Hummer press conference, GM debuted it’s concept H-X Hummer, calling it the “Green Hummer”. The new model is smaller, lighter, and intended for a younger demographic, with the added capability of running on E85 ethanol. It also has an interesting modular construction that allows you to reconfigure the cab at will. Martin Walsh, General Manager of the brand, told us that the new model could get mileage in the mid-20s (although no hard numbers were available).
Ok, this isn’t exactly the 60 mpg Hummer I’ve mentioned before, but that’s a 10 mpg increase in efficiency over previous models. To be honest, it also looks a lot less like a Hummer, being smaller and sportier-more like a lunar explorer than the H2 (that’s my take). But Mr. Walsh said Hummers will continue to decrease in size as customers demand greater fuel efficiency and continue to voice environmental concerns.
LIVE FROM DETROIT AUTO SHOW: GM ANNOUNCES PARTNERSHIP WITH BIO-BASED ETHANOL PRODUCER COSKATA BIOFUELS TO RAPIDLY COMMERCIALIZE AND DISTRIBUTE ETHANOL FOR FLEXFUEL VEHICLES.
At noon today, General Motors announced an undisclosed equity share in Coskata, Inc., a renewable energy company with the means to produce low-cost ethanol from virtually any carbon-containing feedstock including biomass, municipal solid waste—even used car tires. GM believes Coskata has the premier technology for rapidly implementing ethanol production technology worldwide. Click here for a video of the announcement.
GM already has a vested interested in ethanol, with 2.5 million FlexFuel model vehicles already on the road (15 models planned for 2009), and plans to make half their fleet ethanol-ready by 2012. The partnership is a win-win situation as Bill Roe, President and CEO of Coskata puts it: “GM is enabling Coskata to produce the next generation of biofuels - without using a food source - making it economically viable and commercially available.”
GM will test Coskata’s ethanol at the Milford Proving Grounds by late 2008, followed by completion of a 40,000 gallon per year commercial demonstration facility by the end of the year. A larger, 100 million gallon per year facility is currently being sited for construction in the U.S.
Editor’s note: A few weeks ago, we published a guest post from the Network for New Energy Choices that was critical of American automakers for promoting corn-based ethanol and flex-fuel vehicles rather than embracing more stringent CAFE standards . A week later, NNEC published its report The Rush to Ethanol: Not All Biofuels are Created Equal. We contacted General Motors to see if they’d like to respond to the post and report;
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Something tells me that General Motors is not willing to play second fiddle on next generation vehicles. Toyota pretty much slapped them upside the head with the Prius and other fuel-efficient vehicles and the Detroit automaker is taking the lesson to heart with hydrogen. GM announced earlier this week that it has moved 500 fuel-cell engineers and scientists from the laboratory side of the company into the chain of command that actually produces cars.
This
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Terrence Williams from UC-Davis (Team Fate) plug-in hybridI had the opportunity last week to visit General Motors' headquarters in downtown Detroit for an event with the ChallengeX program. ChallengeX is a program co-sponsored by GM and the US Department of Energy. Teams from universities across the US (and one from Canada) were given a stock Chevrolet Equinox to use as the base vehicle
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