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Turning Pollution into Jet Fuel · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Today's show includes, among other things, directed evolution, rabbit poop,
0:26
Speaker 1: sustainable aviation fuel, and polyester. Let's do It. I'm Jacob
0:37
Speaker 1: Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the show where
0:40
Speaker 1: I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
0:44
Speaker 1: My guest today is Jennifer Holmgren, the CEO of lonz Tech.
0:49
Speaker 1: Jennifer's problem is this, how do you take pollution from
0:52
Speaker 1: steel plants, smokestacks, beat it to bacteria and get the
0:57
Speaker 1: bacteria to excrete Ethanol. Ethanol is a kind of alcohol.
1:02
Speaker 1: It's the kind of alcohol you drink, and in addition
1:05
Speaker 1: to being made in the alcohol you drink, ethanol is
1:08
Speaker 1: made as a fuel additive. In that context, it's often
1:12
Speaker 1: made from corn or sugarcane. But expanding the footprint of
1:17
Speaker 1: industrial agriculture to grow, say more corn for fuel, can
1:22
Speaker 1: mean more emissions and higher food prices. Hence the idea
1:26
Speaker 1: behind lonz tech find a different source of ethanol, one
1:30
Speaker 1: that doesn't require food crops. Lonza Tech was founded in
1:34
Speaker 1: two thousand and five by two scientists from New Zealand.
1:38
Speaker 1: Jennifer Holmgren was not one of them. She joined the
1:41
Speaker 1: company as CEO in twenty ten, when Lonzo Tech was
1:44
Speaker 1: moving from a sort of proof of concept to scaling
1:47
Speaker 1: in the real world. We started our conversation by talking
1:50
Speaker 1: about the scientific work that led to the company's creation.
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Speaker 1: So is it right that the first kind of insight
2:00
Speaker 1: or idea is that there is a bacteria that ideally,
2:05
Speaker 1: theoretically could turn pollution carbon monoxide into ethanol.
2:11
Speaker 2: That's right. And the founders knew that this was possible
2:15
Speaker 2: because they knew that they were gas eating organisms, and
2:19
Speaker 2: they were able to go to a library in Germany
2:21
Speaker 2: which stores organisms that are known and cataloged and say
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Speaker 2: I want that one, and that one and that one,
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Speaker 2: and bring it to their lab and start using it.
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Speaker 1: So they were getting like vials of bacteria.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, huh yeah, absolutely.
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Speaker 1: And did they find one that worked.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely. But they had to do a lot of optimization
2:40
Speaker 2: because it's a bacteria that wants to make a different molecule, acetate,
2:45
Speaker 2: and they wanted to make ethanol, and so they had
2:47
Speaker 2: to do a lot of work to optimize the bacteria.
2:50
Speaker 2: And they did it without using genetic methods. They did
2:53
Speaker 2: it all by directed evolution, kind of like you you know,
2:56
Speaker 2: put two orkids together to make a third, So let's.
2:59
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that a little bit. So what what
3:01
Speaker 1: was the bacteria that they found.
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Speaker 2: It's called C. Auto. So the long name is C.
3:08
Speaker 2: Auto orhanogenum, and we call it seouto, and it is
3:14
Speaker 2: an anaerobe. You can only find it in places where
3:18
Speaker 2: there's no oxygen, but it was around at the beginning
3:21
Speaker 2: of the Earth when there was no oxygen.
3:27
Speaker 1: Glory days exactly.
3:28
Speaker 2: It's glory days. We like to say, it's our great
3:31
Speaker 2: great great great great grandfather.
3:33
Speaker 1: Yeah, where does it hide? Where does a where does
3:35
Speaker 1: a microbe that doesn't like oxygen hide? Today?
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Speaker 2: Well, it's been found in you know, gut biome like
3:43
Speaker 2: from rabbits. It's been found in.
3:48
Speaker 1: Is it true that it's in rabbit poop?
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Speaker 2: Well? Yeah, so I was trying to be more delicate
3:53
Speaker 2: and saying bottom, yeah, take rabbit poop. Yeah, it's found
3:58
Speaker 2: in rabbit poop. So for all we know, it could
4:00
Speaker 2: be in our guts too. I don't know, but it's
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Speaker 2: definitely in rabbit pooh. It is in you can find
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Speaker 2: it in vents, underwaters, you can find it in all
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Speaker 2: of these places where and it's that's actually one of
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Speaker 2: the neat things about this bacteria. It is robust, it's strong,
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Speaker 2: and it doesn't like oxygen, so oxygen will kill it.
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Speaker 2: But it is something that allows you to do industrial biotech.
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Speaker 1: Huh. So they find this very ancient bacteria. It's robust,
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Speaker 1: but it's not it's not evolved to make ethanol. It's
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Speaker 1: not evolved to make what you want. What's it evolved
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Speaker 1: to make?
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Speaker 2: It makes acitate as a primary product. So yeah, they
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Speaker 2: evolved it to make ethanol as the primary product.
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Speaker 1: So there is this sort of field of directed evolution, right,
4:53
Speaker 1: that is that that they're using here to like tell
4:55
Speaker 1: me about directed evolution. That's a relatively young field in
4:59
Speaker 1: this context, right, What is it? What does it mean?
5:01
Speaker 1: How do you do it?
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Speaker 2: Well, it means you're putting stress on the bacteria and
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Speaker 2: select colonies that are making what you wanted to make,
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Speaker 2: and if you wanted to make ethanol, you select for those.
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Speaker 1: So eventually, through sort of applying selective pressure in this way,
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Speaker 1: they get to a strain of c auto that loves
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Speaker 1: to make ethanol.
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Speaker 2: Yep.
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Speaker 1: Okay, yep. And that's around the time you get to
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Speaker 1: the company, Is that right?
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Speaker 2: Yeah, So there was still optimization to be done, and
5:35
Speaker 2: they had started using doing a pilot at a steel
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Speaker 2: mill in New Zealand, and so I knew the system worked.
5:43
Speaker 2: I just didn't know how scalable it was to commercial scale.
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Speaker 2: And by scalable I don't mean that you couldn't build
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Speaker 2: a big one, but that you could make money for
5:52
Speaker 2: me building a big one.
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Speaker 1: That's such a huge issue, right, Like this idea of
5:57
Speaker 1: people call it technoeconomics. Like there are a million clever
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Speaker 1: ideas like this that are elegant and intellectually satisfying. But
6:07
Speaker 1: in this big sort of commodity, global scale world, the
6:11
Speaker 1: question is like, great, but can you make it at
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Speaker 1: a competitive price at scale? Right? So how do you
6:19
Speaker 1: start to answer that question?
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Speaker 2: Well, I think you need to start with what you
6:25
Speaker 2: think you can do, and then you validate it as
6:28
Speaker 2: you go from lab to pilot to demo, and then
6:31
Speaker 2: you ask yourself what else do I need to do
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Speaker 2: to make it economic? And in our case, it's a
6:37
Speaker 2: really great bioreactor. It's also water recycling and media. If
6:44
Speaker 2: you don't you know, let me explain media. So when
6:48
Speaker 2: you grow a plant, you need fertilizer, right, nitrogen sulfur.
6:52
Speaker 2: And so what we had to do was figure out
6:55
Speaker 2: how to feed at a minimum amount of nitrogen and
6:58
Speaker 2: sulfur envitnments. All of these little things energy use, All
7:02
Speaker 2: of these impact the cost and so in a lot
7:06
Speaker 2: of ways, I like to think of a technoeconomic analysis
7:09
Speaker 2: as a tool that allows you to say, I got
7:12
Speaker 2: to optimize that because it's too expensive.
7:15
Speaker 1: So now you have factories in countries around the world.
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Speaker 1: You were to some degree at least operating at scale.
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Speaker 1: I'm curious, what are a few things you had to
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Speaker 1: learn to get here?
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Speaker 2: Well, I think a specific one is finding the right partners.
7:30
Speaker 2: We ended up going to China because we were looking
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Speaker 2: for a steel mill that we could work with, and
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Speaker 2: fifty percent of the world steel was made in China.
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Speaker 2: They were also in growth mode. They wanted to reduce
7:41
Speaker 2: their carbon intensity, but they wanted to use it as
7:45
Speaker 2: a license to grow. And so China was in the
7:49
Speaker 2: right mode to think about new technologies, and so we
7:52
Speaker 2: were able to go there find a partner who was
7:54
Speaker 2: interested in using our technology and then demonstrating it. We
7:59
Speaker 2: built one hundred thousand gallon a year facility, and then
8:03
Speaker 2: we use that as a path to building basically a
8:07
Speaker 2: fifteen million gallon a year of facilacility, and that's what
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Speaker 2: we have operating now. We have six facilities, average size
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Speaker 2: thirty to fifty million gallons a year.
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Speaker 1: Meaning each one produces thirty to fifty million gallons of ethanol.
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Speaker 1: So tell me about a couple of the things you
8:28
Speaker 1: learned going from you know, the lab to tens of
8:32
Speaker 1: millions of gallons a year, Like, what were a couple
8:34
Speaker 1: of things that didn't work the first time that you
8:36
Speaker 1: had to figure out sort of specifically.
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Speaker 2: You know, the bacteria's robust, like I told you, but
8:42
Speaker 2: it also needs to be coddled a little bit sometimes,
8:46
Speaker 2: and so you need to install some type of pre treatment,
8:50
Speaker 2: and so learning how to pre treat cheaply it was
8:54
Speaker 2: very important. Learning when we went from doing a steel
8:57
Speaker 2: milk gas to a fair alloy gas to a gas
9:01
Speaker 2: that's made from municipal solid waste right from trash. You
9:05
Speaker 2: you kind of handle the gas a little bit differently.
9:09
Speaker 2: And so we had focused on our process and we
9:12
Speaker 2: had spent some time on the gas, but we really learned,
9:15
Speaker 2: you know what, spend a little more time on the gas.
9:18
Speaker 2: So that's one thing we learn. The second thing I
9:21
Speaker 2: think we learned, and something that's obvious right, Building good
9:26
Speaker 2: relationships matters, right. Nothing works the first time, and having
9:30
Speaker 2: partners that are willing to be on the journey to
9:33
Speaker 2: improve and optimize as you scale is important. Right. These
9:37
Speaker 2: units are not like a Christmas gift. You open the
9:40
Speaker 2: box and voila, we're running a capacity. And so really
9:44
Speaker 2: it's about your partners and about their commitment to you,
9:49
Speaker 2: to the technology and to getting to scale.
9:54
Speaker 1: Let's talk about just what it looks like. So you
9:56
Speaker 1: said you have how many how many operating six are
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Speaker 1: their China and India and Europe.
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Speaker 2: We have one in Europe as well in Ghent in
10:04
Speaker 2: Belgium with our solar middle.
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Speaker 1: So in a somewhat abstracted way, just like basically, what
10:12
Speaker 1: does one of your facilities look like?
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Speaker 2: Like?
10:14
Speaker 1: Maybe we should start at the at the smoke stack, right,
10:17
Speaker 1: So there is what used to be pollution coming out
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Speaker 1: a smoke stack or what happens.
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Speaker 2: You don't let it go out, You intercept it before
10:26
Speaker 2: it goes out, You compress it and you put it
10:29
Speaker 2: into a reactor.
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Speaker 1: So there's a gas and you particularly you want carbon monoxide.
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Speaker 1: Still is that your.
10:35
Speaker 2: Put you want carbon monoxide? You can also use carbon
10:38
Speaker 2: dioxide if you have hydrogen. It depends on whether you
10:42
Speaker 2: have hydrogen or not how well you can process carbon dioxide.
10:45
Speaker 2: So let's just focus on carbon monoxide. That's like sugar
10:48
Speaker 2: for our bacteria. It's like yum, I'll take that.
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Speaker 1: So then is the first thing you have to do?
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Speaker 1: Separate out the carbon monoxide from the rest of the gas.
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Speaker 2: You don't, Okay, So if you have a carbon monoxide,
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Speaker 2: say forty percent carbon monoxide stream in a bunch of
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Speaker 2: other gases, you can just pump that into your bioreactor
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Speaker 2: and the bacteria will find it carbon monoxide and you'll
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Speaker 2: just ignore all the other molecules floating around.
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Speaker 1: Okay, So you pump that into the bioreactor. What's it
11:15
Speaker 1: what's it look like inside the biorector? What's going on
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Speaker 1: in there?
11:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, so imagine a bunch of bubbles and imagine you've
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Speaker 2: got bacteria that are dividing. Right, they're alive, they're dividing.
11:25
Speaker 2: So it's kind of not a clear liquid. You're you're
11:29
Speaker 2: seeing what look like little grape particles in there, but
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Speaker 2: it's just bacteria floating about. Gas bubbles come in. That's
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Speaker 2: all you see. And then on the back end you
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Speaker 2: see ethanol.
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Speaker 1: And in the bubbles in the tank. Is that like
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Speaker 1: a medium you have created that your bacteria likes to
11:49
Speaker 1: live in.
11:49
Speaker 2: That's that's right, that's right. They're getting their vitamins, they're
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Speaker 2: getting their minerals, they're getting their carbon source, that carbon monoxide,
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Speaker 2: and they're floating about enjoying their day.
12:00
Speaker 1: And you're bubbling in the carbon monoxide the way like
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Speaker 1: if there's a fish tank, you just bubble in the.
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Speaker 2: Air exactly now. It it's continued. The process is constantly
12:10
Speaker 2: and the water is constantly moving around, and so it's
12:14
Speaker 2: not quite like a fish tank. But it's a great
12:17
Speaker 2: analogy and that works really well. And the key you
12:21
Speaker 2: said the bubbles like a fish tank. The key is
12:24
Speaker 2: to make those bubbles as small as possible. So it's
12:27
Speaker 2: kind of faking out a dissolution, right, It's like they're
12:31
Speaker 2: dissolved the amount of dissolved carbon monoxide getting to the
12:35
Speaker 2: bacteria so that they can find it, eat it and
12:38
Speaker 2: poop out ethanol.
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Speaker 1: And how does the ethanol sort of come out of
12:42
Speaker 1: the tank.
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Speaker 2: The ethanol is with water, and so we have to
12:47
Speaker 2: distill the ethanol out and then we take the water
12:52
Speaker 2: which also has media and other things and pump it
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Speaker 2: back into the reactors so that we're not wasting anything.
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Speaker 2: We're you know, we're separating the bacteria, putting it back
13:01
Speaker 2: in the reactor, separating the ethanol through distillation, and then
13:05
Speaker 2: you just take the ethanol and clean it as much
13:07
Speaker 2: as you want. For fuel grade to blend with gasoline
13:11
Speaker 2: doesn't need to be that clean. For putting it into cosmetics,
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Speaker 2: it needs to be really clean.
13:19
Speaker 1: And who are you selling your ethanol to, So.
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Speaker 2: Most of the ethanol goes into blending with gasoline. That's
13:27
Speaker 2: what our partner in China is doing. But what we
13:32
Speaker 2: do is we take a small amount of it right
13:34
Speaker 2: now and we've used it to do project development or
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Speaker 2: brand development. So Cody, for example, uses our ethanol in
13:41
Speaker 2: some of their perfumes. We've also converted it to polyester,
13:45
Speaker 2: and On has made running apparel with the polyester made
13:50
Speaker 2: from these recycled emissions. Mebel has used it in cleaning products.
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Speaker 2: So we have quite a few partners that you would recognize,
13:59
Speaker 2: H and M. Craghoppers, they've all used our polyester. And
14:02
Speaker 2: it's kind of neat, right because if you stop and
14:06
Speaker 2: for a second think about this, you say, you know
14:09
Speaker 2: this was going to be pollution, it was going to
14:11
Speaker 2: be greenhouse gases and particulates and instead I'm wearing it.
14:16
Speaker 1: Yes, and how's the price.
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Speaker 2: So it's more expensive than conventional polyesters. It's you would say,
14:26
Speaker 2: it's anywhere between one hundred and fifty twoe hundred and
14:29
Speaker 2: seventy percent. Fortunately, we have partners who are willing to
14:34
Speaker 2: pay more in the raw materials because the raw material
14:37
Speaker 2: is not what impacts the price of the product.
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Speaker 1: Right, they can pay They can pay significantly more for
14:44
Speaker 1: the polyester, and it's such a trivial percentage of the
14:48
Speaker 1: final cost of the good that it doesn't move the
14:50
Speaker 1: needle much.
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Speaker 2: Well, you know, I would have thought exactly the way
14:54
Speaker 2: you just said it. But unfortunately what it does is
14:57
Speaker 2: it impacts their margins. And in a world that's obsessed
15:00
Speaker 2: with profit and margins, you have to give credit to
15:04
Speaker 2: our partners for being able to say I am going
15:07
Speaker 2: to make an investment in creating this right because their
15:12
Speaker 2: business leaders are not getting the margins that others are getting.
15:17
Speaker 2: And so I think this is something I want to
15:22
Speaker 2: really hash out because I think we're driven to reduce
15:25
Speaker 2: our costs and to increase our profit and we've got
15:29
Speaker 2: these brave souls who are saying, well, I got to
15:31
Speaker 2: reduce carbon too, and that's important to us and to
15:34
Speaker 2: our future. And I'm going to go against the trend,
15:37
Speaker 2: and I'm not going to reduce my costs or increase
15:40
Speaker 2: my profit. I am going to do something good. So
15:43
Speaker 2: ARII Craghoppers has a whole line of clothing with our stuff,
15:47
Speaker 2: and they're trying to help us get to a scale
15:52
Speaker 2: where we can reduce the costs so that maybe someday
15:55
Speaker 2: they'll get to the margins they need.
15:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I feel like, I feel like it's
16:01
Speaker 1: great that these companies want to do this. But to
16:04
Speaker 1: be meaningful at a global level, you need to get
16:08
Speaker 1: to a place where the ethanol you sell is the
16:11
Speaker 1: same price as other ethanol, right, And I'm curious what
16:17
Speaker 1: has to happen for you to get there? Well, first
16:19
Speaker 1: of all, is that right? Do you think of it
16:21
Speaker 1: the same way? Are you trying to get to a
16:22
Speaker 1: place where your ethanol has cost the same as corn
16:27
Speaker 1: ethanol or any other ethanol?
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Speaker 2: Right now, it's actually pretty close to corn ethanol. It's
16:32
Speaker 2: just that it costs a lot more than ethylene, which
16:34
Speaker 2: is how polyesters made.
16:36
Speaker 1: I see, So for fuel. Is the ethanol you make
16:39
Speaker 1: price competitive?
16:40
Speaker 2: It is pretty equivalent. Yeah. Yeah, the capital installed cost
16:44
Speaker 2: is much higher because they've optimized their capital for years
16:47
Speaker 2: and well hundreds of years, whereas we have not. But
16:52
Speaker 2: once you get past the capital recovery piece, the costs
16:55
Speaker 2: are about the same.
16:56
Speaker 1: So you're saying you're like competing against sort of depreciated assets.
16:59
Speaker 1: They built factories a long time ago. They don't sort
17:01
Speaker 1: of have to pay for the factories every month the
17:04
Speaker 1: way you do that kind of thing, that kind of challenge.
17:07
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, But we'll get there. But you
17:12
Speaker 2: ask the more important question, and I guess we're focused
17:16
Speaker 2: on keeping carbon in the ground. At the end of
17:18
Speaker 2: the day, this lineary economy is not going to work,
17:21
Speaker 2: and we need to find a way to reuse all
17:24
Speaker 2: carbon that's already in circulation in our system, whether it's
17:27
Speaker 2: municipal solid waste, whether it's industrial waste, whether it's CO
17:30
Speaker 2: two that's in the atmosphere. We've got to figure out
17:33
Speaker 2: how to use that as the resource from which everything
17:36
Speaker 2: is made. So it's great, we need to reduce consumption,
17:41
Speaker 2: don't get me wrong, but we have a whole lot
17:43
Speaker 2: of global economies that are growing, and so how do
17:46
Speaker 2: we deliver to them what they need without pulling more
17:51
Speaker 2: carbon out of the ground. And that is what we
17:54
Speaker 2: focus on. So the question is are you cost competitive? Well,
17:57
Speaker 2: there's a lot of things that we can do that
17:59
Speaker 2: make us cost competitive when we get the bigger scales
18:03
Speaker 2: and we deploy more units. You know, this is the
18:05
Speaker 2: beginning of the journey, right the early days of the
18:07
Speaker 2: cell phone versus now. And so what you've got to
18:10
Speaker 2: do is just build more and reduce costs, improve the technology,
18:13
Speaker 2: reduce costs. But the other thing that biology allows you
18:17
Speaker 2: to do is it allows you to skip steps that
18:20
Speaker 2: you would naturally use in the petrochemical world. So today
18:25
Speaker 2: to make polyester, I go from ethanol to ethylene to
18:29
Speaker 2: ethylene oxide to meg to polyester. Now what if I
18:34
Speaker 2: could go from the gas not to ethanol, but to meg.
18:39
Speaker 2: Now I've put that whole supply chain inside my bacteria.
18:43
Speaker 2: Now I can be competitive because I'm processing less and
18:47
Speaker 2: I'm doing it at room close to room temperature, not
18:52
Speaker 2: like a thermo catalytic process. So there is a day
18:55
Speaker 2: when I believe we'll be competitive, but I think we're
18:58
Speaker 2: always going to have to ask ourselves the question what
19:01
Speaker 2: are the externalities that go along with the costs of
19:04
Speaker 2: the things we buy? And I know that's a delusional question.
19:07
Speaker 2: Everybody's like, well, we'll just take not all of those
19:10
Speaker 2: and get a lot of keep stuff made from fossil carbon.
19:13
Speaker 2: But are we going to carbon tax? Do I have
19:16
Speaker 2: to be competitive with fossil.
19:19
Speaker 1: Well, like a carbon tax would solve the externality problem, right.
19:22
Speaker 1: The problem is when people use fossil fuel, they pollute,
19:26
Speaker 1: and they impose a cost on the world, and that
19:28
Speaker 1: cost is not reflected in the price of the good,
19:30
Speaker 1: and that is a market failure and you are competing
19:33
Speaker 1: against that market failure. And I agree that a carbon
19:35
Speaker 1: tax is a good idea, it's hasn't taken off politically
19:40
Speaker 1: in a broad way. So that's a challenge, right, And
19:44
Speaker 1: like people being willing to pay a green premium, seems
19:48
Speaker 1: limited by human nature at some margin.
19:53
Speaker 2: And that's why I want you to applaud the people
19:55
Speaker 2: that are trying fair enough.
19:59
Speaker 1: In a minute, how Lonza Tech is working on developing
20:02
Speaker 1: sustainable jet fuel. Airplane emissions are a really hard problem
20:20
Speaker 1: to solve. The physics of flight make it hard to
20:23
Speaker 1: create an economically sound electric plane, although people are working
20:27
Speaker 1: on that. People are working on hydrogen powered planes, but
20:30
Speaker 1: that's also really hard. It's clearly going to take a
20:33
Speaker 1: long time. So in the short to medium term progress
20:37
Speaker 1: is more likely to come from what are known as
20:40
Speaker 1: drop in sustainable aviation fuels, as in you can just
20:46
Speaker 1: drop them into the currently used fuels without having to
20:49
Speaker 1: redesign the whole plane. And Jennifer Holmgren has been working
20:53
Speaker 1: on drop in sustainable fuels since before she came to
20:56
Speaker 1: Lunza Tech.
20:58
Speaker 2: I've been working on sustainable aviation fuel from before there
21:02
Speaker 2: was such a thing as a drop in sustainable aviation fuel.
21:05
Speaker 2: So I worked on the first drop in fuels in
21:08
Speaker 2: my old job. We did flight demos, flight of the
21:11
Speaker 2: Green Hornet, all of that. We showed that you could
21:13
Speaker 2: make a hydrocarbon right and biofuels until then were oxygenates, ethanol, biodiesel,
21:21
Speaker 2: So we showed we could make a hydrocarbon that looked
21:23
Speaker 2: exactly like jet fuel, and that was certified. Those are
21:27
Speaker 2: the first drops that were certified for sustainable aviation fuel.
21:32
Speaker 2: All of the fuel that's made today that goes into
21:35
Speaker 2: an airplane that is not made from fossil carbon is
21:39
Speaker 2: made with that type of a process that takes fats, oils,
21:44
Speaker 2: greases and makes them to sustainable aviation fuel. The problem
21:49
Speaker 2: with that is how much we go back to the
21:52
Speaker 2: same problem we started with. How much of these biological
21:55
Speaker 2: feedstocks are there? The world uses one hundred billion gallons
22:00
Speaker 2: of aviation fuel today. You can't do it just food.
22:05
Speaker 2: And so when I came to lands Attack, I wanted
22:08
Speaker 2: to develop a route to aviation fuel from all of
22:12
Speaker 2: this ethanol that you could make from all of these
22:14
Speaker 2: waste resources. And that's why we were Pacific Northwest National
22:18
Speaker 2: Lab to develop a route to take ethanol. Any kind
22:21
Speaker 2: of ethanol doesn't have to be ours. Lots of other
22:23
Speaker 2: people know how to make ethanol to make sustainable aviation fuel.
22:28
Speaker 2: When we got that certified for flight, we did the
22:31
Speaker 2: ASDM work. We flew a flight with Virgin Atlantic from
22:34
Speaker 2: Orlando to Gatwick commercial flight by the way, that was
22:37
Speaker 2: kind of cool, two hundred plus people on board, made
22:42
Speaker 2: from recycled steel mill emissions. We realized that what we
22:47
Speaker 2: needed to do was build a ten million gallon a
22:50
Speaker 2: year facility, a large commercial scale, mini commercial scale facility,
22:55
Speaker 2: and so what we decided to do is to launch
22:59
Speaker 2: land SUGGETI zone entity and raise cash into it so
23:03
Speaker 2: that we could build that plant and go really really fast.
23:08
Speaker 2: And so that plant is in Georgia and it's in Soaprodue, Georgia,
23:12
Speaker 2: and it should be starting up momentarily.
23:15
Speaker 1: I would say more like tomorrow. What does momentarily mean.
23:19
Speaker 2: And think of it in it's in the last stages
23:23
Speaker 2: of shakedown, say within the next couple of months kind
23:26
Speaker 2: of differing.
23:27
Speaker 1: And what's going to happen at that factory.
23:30
Speaker 2: We're going to take ethanol and we're going to contain
23:32
Speaker 2: convert it to sustainable aviation fuel using the lens of
23:35
Speaker 2: jet alcohol, ethanol to sustainable aviation fuel, alcohol to jet technology.
23:42
Speaker 1: And is that fuel like a supplement? Like how does
23:45
Speaker 1: that work?
23:46
Speaker 2: Right now? Certification is for fifty to fifty blends. You
23:50
Speaker 2: can only put it with kerosene fifty to fifty.
23:56
Speaker 1: And are you using the ethanol you make from pollution
24:02
Speaker 1: from waste emissions at that plant?
24:04
Speaker 2: No, Because we decided that since what we needed to
24:08
Speaker 2: prove at commercial scale was the sustainable aviation field technology,
24:13
Speaker 2: we could use any ethanol to do that. We didn't
24:15
Speaker 2: need to raise the capital to build both. And so
24:19
Speaker 2: right now it can use our ethanol made from waste emissions,
24:24
Speaker 2: or it can use sugar cane ethanol, corn ethanol, cellulos
24:28
Speaker 2: any ethanol that they can find. That's the first part
24:32
Speaker 2: of the journey is just to show that they can
24:34
Speaker 2: get that technology to commercial scale.
24:38
Speaker 1: And what ethanol In fact, what is the source of
24:41
Speaker 1: the ethanol you're going to use there?
24:42
Speaker 2: The first ethanol will be sugarcane ethanol that's been brought
24:45
Speaker 2: from Brazil.
24:47
Speaker 1: And so what is the broader context for sustainable jet
24:50
Speaker 1: fuel right now? Like I know that's the whole conversation.
24:53
Speaker 1: Planes are very hard to decarbonize in many ways, So
24:57
Speaker 1: give me the broader context for jet fuel and where
25:01
Speaker 1: your plant fits.
25:05
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the world uses one hundred billion gallons
25:09
Speaker 2: a year of aviation fuel. The target that the industry
25:13
Speaker 2: has set for itself is a minimum of ten billion
25:17
Speaker 2: gallons by twenty thirty of sustainable aviation fuel. And today
25:22
Speaker 2: we're in the hundreds. It's let's say one hundred million gallons.
25:28
Speaker 1: Okay, So it has to go up by a factor
25:32
Speaker 1: of one hundred in a few years if they're going
25:34
Speaker 1: to make that. And just just like really dumb question,
25:39
Speaker 1: like what makes sustainable aviation fuel sustainable, Like what does
25:43
Speaker 1: it mean to say sustainable aviation fuel? Like what is that?
25:47
Speaker 2: It just means it has a lower carbon footprint, but
25:50
Speaker 2: it doesn't do it at the cost of a very
25:52
Speaker 2: large water footprint or other things. Right, So the full
25:55
Speaker 2: life cycle analysis, the focus those in greenhouse gas emissions
26:00
Speaker 2: and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
26:03
Speaker 1: And is the basic idea that ethanol has lower greenhouse
26:07
Speaker 1: gas emissions? That and oil as a source for jet
26:12
Speaker 1: fuel And is that the very basic idea?
26:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the basic idea is take the ethanol to
26:17
Speaker 2: aviation fuel and compare that to fossil derived petroleum derive
26:22
Speaker 2: aviation fuel. That's where you make the comparison, not at
26:26
Speaker 2: the petroleum. That's a hard comparison to make. You make
26:29
Speaker 2: it at the product what you're going to put on
26:31
Speaker 2: the plane.
26:32
Speaker 1: And so just tell me more about you know, you're
26:35
Speaker 1: building a sustainable jet fuel plant, Like what is the
26:40
Speaker 1: broader industry? Like are there different technologies at your plant?
26:44
Speaker 1: Like what, I don't know anything about that side of
26:46
Speaker 1: the business. Tell me something about it.
26:48
Speaker 2: You know, you need to imagine a refinery, right, that's
26:51
Speaker 2: exactly what this looks like. If you drive by our
26:54
Speaker 2: plant in Soupertin, you it'll be like you're looking at
26:58
Speaker 2: a refinery, a refinery that is small, because refineries actually
27:05
Speaker 2: take very dense liquid and convert it to a bunch
27:08
Speaker 2: of different products through a bunch of unit operations. We
27:11
Speaker 2: only have really compact unit operation. It's really three steps.
27:14
Speaker 2: Takes the ethanol to ethylene, think of that, then take
27:18
Speaker 2: ethylene to sustainable aviation fuel in a two step process.
27:24
Speaker 2: The ethanol to ethylene is done with our partner technique.
27:28
Speaker 2: They have a technology that efficiently takes ethanol to ethylene
27:31
Speaker 2: and then we go from.
27:33
Speaker 1: There and is the hope that you will use your
27:41
Speaker 1: Lonza tech ethanol as the input at this plant soon eventually.
27:47
Speaker 2: Sure, we will use it at this plant. But also
27:51
Speaker 2: one of the things we're doing is building plants together.
27:53
Speaker 2: We have projects across the world in Europe, in the
27:57
Speaker 2: Middle East where we're taking waste like municipal solid waste,
28:00
Speaker 2: taking it to ethanol and taking ethanol to saffaf is
28:03
Speaker 2: sustainable aviation. Yes, thank you for that. Yeah.
28:06
Speaker 1: Yeah.
28:06
Speaker 2: And we call that circular air by the way, that
28:10
Speaker 2: joint offering because obviously it's circular carbon from waste to
28:16
Speaker 2: aviation fuel, and it's the joint lens of tech lansa jet.
28:19
Speaker 2: So we do expect this plant, to expect other plants
28:22
Speaker 2: to use our ethanol, but moreover, we expect integrated solutions.
28:30
Speaker 1: I feel like there's this long history of people trying
28:37
Speaker 1: to use synthetic biology biotechnology to make fuel, and it
28:43
Speaker 1: has been really hard for a long time, and people
28:46
Speaker 1: talk about why it used to be a bad idea
28:48
Speaker 1: or why people who aren't making fuel talk about why
28:51
Speaker 1: fuel is not the right thing to make, Like, tell
28:53
Speaker 1: me about that history.
28:56
Speaker 2: I mean, look, you're trying to do something that's been
29:03
Speaker 2: done in a specific way for over one hundred and
29:05
Speaker 2: twenty years, right, and so now you're going to say, well,
29:08
Speaker 2: I'm going to do it in new way and oh,
29:10
Speaker 2: by the way, it's going to be cheaper, cleaner, and better.
29:12
Speaker 2: And it's like, okay, let's get a dose of realism here.
29:19
Speaker 2: When you look at sustainable aviation fuel. I believe that
29:23
Speaker 2: the use of fat, soils and lipids, which is what
29:26
Speaker 2: is being done today. We're seeing more and more plants
29:30
Speaker 2: being built, so you're starting to get to the Okay,
29:32
Speaker 2: this is the cheaper part of the curve. Just like
29:35
Speaker 2: we did with solar, just like we did with cell phones.
29:38
Speaker 2: The only problem is now you've got to get to
29:40
Speaker 2: a point where you're going to be feedstock limited. And
29:42
Speaker 2: we just have to do the same thing with our
29:44
Speaker 2: technology and other technologies that are out there. Build enough,
29:47
Speaker 2: get to capacity, reduce costs, and keep building. And I
29:51
Speaker 2: think most people don't think about technology that way. Is
29:55
Speaker 2: sort of expected magically to show up without remembering. I
30:00
Speaker 2: always used to laugh, you know, I remember in twenty ten,
30:03
Speaker 2: because I have these articles. You'd see all of these publications.
30:09
Speaker 2: You know, solar is ten years out and will always
30:12
Speaker 2: be ten years out. Those were literally the headlines, right,
30:15
Speaker 2: you're nodding, so I know you remember this. But here
30:18
Speaker 2: we are. You can't turn around without seeing a solar installation,
30:21
Speaker 2: and every day we make it cheaper and better. It's
30:24
Speaker 2: cost competitive with fossil carbon power. And I just think
30:29
Speaker 2: people need to realize new technologies take twenty thirty plus
30:33
Speaker 2: years to deploy in a way that makes sense, and
30:36
Speaker 2: our technology is completely disruptive. Nobody had ever done this
30:41
Speaker 2: gas fermentation before, so I think a thirty year cycle
30:44
Speaker 2: to get to where you're economically viable and competitive everywhere
30:49
Speaker 2: is not unreasonable. We've been around for twenty years. We
30:52
Speaker 2: know our technology works. We derisk the technology, we've deristd
30:56
Speaker 2: the market. But now instead of deploying five at a time,
31:00
Speaker 2: we want to desploy twenty at a time. So you
31:02
Speaker 2: got to reduce the costs.
31:06
Speaker 1: What what do you think might go wrong? Like, what
31:11
Speaker 1: would be reasons you might not make it to where
31:14
Speaker 1: you want to get to.
31:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a lovely question. The hurdles are big, right,
31:25
Speaker 2: you know, legislation stands against you. Nobody'd ever heard of
31:30
Speaker 2: us doing gas fermentations. So corn and sugar cane, ethanol
31:35
Speaker 2: get incentives in the United States that we don't receive.
31:38
Speaker 2: So it's very hard to be competitive with something that's
31:41
Speaker 2: getting an incentive. I used the Tesla example. Remember Tesla
31:45
Speaker 2: couldn't sell in New Jersey because it didn't have dealerships
31:48
Speaker 2: and there were rules that actually block new ideas, new
31:51
Speaker 2: marketing methods, new sales method and that's the same thing
31:55
Speaker 2: with what we do. I also think there is this
31:59
Speaker 2: natural skepticism of anything new, and we always try to
32:04
Speaker 2: find the problem with it. And so for the first
32:06
Speaker 2: thirty years, twenty years, you've got to deal with people
32:09
Speaker 2: telling you what you're doing is wrong, and nobody ever says, Okay,
32:14
Speaker 2: what you're doing may not work, but that's okay because
32:18
Speaker 2: what we're doing isn't working and so we need to
32:21
Speaker 2: replace it. And so to me, what slows us down
32:26
Speaker 2: is people asking the wrong questions. And I always say,
32:30
Speaker 2: this is a sector where we need allies. We need
32:35
Speaker 2: people saying they're going to get there. You need to
32:39
Speaker 2: push them along and to help them along. And this
32:43
Speaker 2: is what we're going to do to help these industries grow.
32:46
Speaker 2: Rather than not cost effective, not the same profit, not
32:52
Speaker 2: a good idea, I mean that negativism is draining.
32:59
Speaker 1: Thank you for going down the road of the sad story. Oh,
33:02
Speaker 1: let's talk about the happy story now, Like, tell me
33:06
Speaker 1: the happy story. What's what's the happy story of the
33:08
Speaker 1: next ten years.
33:10
Speaker 2: Well, the happy story is very simple. We have shown
33:14
Speaker 2: that you can take every type of waste carbon that's
33:17
Speaker 2: already above ground and make the products you use every
33:19
Speaker 2: day sustainable aviation fuel. We decarbonized steel mills at the
33:24
Speaker 2: same time that we decarbonize aviation, right, And you can
33:27
Speaker 2: poo poo that all you want, but the fact is
33:29
Speaker 2: we've done it. We've shown it. It works. And nobody
33:32
Speaker 2: can tell me that fresh fossil carbon is the future,
33:35
Speaker 2: and I can tell you, let's just keep that carbon
33:38
Speaker 2: in the ground. So what do the next ten years
33:40
Speaker 2: look like for us? We're going to keep showing you
33:42
Speaker 2: that We're going to show you that food, fuel and
33:45
Speaker 2: chemicals can all be made from waste carbon that's above ground.
33:50
Speaker 1: And specifically, like, what are the sort of big, big
33:54
Speaker 1: projects in the kind of short to medium term for you?
33:58
Speaker 2: Well, I think some of our big projects. First of all,
34:01
Speaker 2: we've got to scale sustainable aviation fuel, and so showing
34:06
Speaker 2: our first plant and its economics is going to enable
34:09
Speaker 2: a bunch of other plants to get built. The other
34:13
Speaker 2: thing I want to show is integration more and more
34:17
Speaker 2: to reduce costs. What you don't want is a unit
34:21
Speaker 2: that makes ethanol and a unit that makes aviation fuel,
34:27
Speaker 2: you know, next to each other and not integrated, or
34:30
Speaker 2: a unit that makes hydrogen that we need to convert
34:33
Speaker 2: CO two being a separate standalone. The more we integrate,
34:37
Speaker 2: the cheaper things get right. And so to me, as
34:41
Speaker 2: we make our technology cheaper, I want to also show
34:43
Speaker 2: that integration with others is cheaper and cheaper, and that's
34:47
Speaker 2: where your economies come in. And the final thing I
34:51
Speaker 2: want to do is just really show that biology needs
34:54
Speaker 2: to be thought of differently. We you know, petroleum is
34:58
Speaker 2: densest liquid known to man. That's why we've grown these massive,
35:01
Speaker 2: centralized refineries. What biology can do is use local resources,
35:08
Speaker 2: enabl a country to use its local feedstocks and be
35:13
Speaker 2: able to make selectively the product it wants. So do
35:18
Speaker 2: you want to make aviation fuel great? Do you want
35:21
Speaker 2: to make polyester great? And we want to do this
35:26
Speaker 2: and leverage the power of biology to enable economies to
35:30
Speaker 2: grow while their population grows, because the biggest concern I
35:36
Speaker 2: have is if you're developing economy and you're watching your
35:39
Speaker 2: population grow, every time they buy something, a dollar goes
35:43
Speaker 2: out of the country, so somebody else gets paid for
35:47
Speaker 2: the goods. I want people to be able to grow
35:50
Speaker 2: and grow their economies and grow the jobs and grow
35:52
Speaker 2: everything at the same time. And I think biology, with
35:55
Speaker 2: its ability to be distributed and local enables that, and frankly,
36:02
Speaker 2: I don't think anything else does. And I want to
36:04
Speaker 2: show that over the next five to ten years.
36:09
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
36:22
Speaker 1: I want to finish with a lightning round oh uh Oh.
36:28
Speaker 1: Your dad, I have read, was an airline mechanic. Yeah,
36:31
Speaker 1: and I'm curious how his work influenced you.
36:36
Speaker 2: He taught me how to fix things and to want
36:38
Speaker 2: to fix things, and to care about aviation.
36:43
Speaker 1: What was something you fixed with your dad?
36:46
Speaker 2: Oh? Everything. I crawled around planes, although I never fixed anything.
36:49
Speaker 2: I just crawled around with him on planes and cars
36:52
Speaker 2: and things.
36:53
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's cool. What's one thing I should do if
36:57
Speaker 1: I visit Columbia?
36:59
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh, eat the food. Yeah, the food is amazing.
37:05
Speaker 1: What's one thing I should eat?
37:07
Speaker 2: My favorite petic I don't know what are That's some
37:14
Speaker 2: plantains that are not ripe, so they're green, and you
37:18
Speaker 2: sqush them and you fry them and you squish them
37:21
Speaker 2: again and you put salt on them. It's kind of
37:23
Speaker 2: like the French fries of Barankilla, which is where I
37:26
Speaker 2: grew up.
37:27
Speaker 1: I understand that you went to the Paris Olympics. Oh,
37:30
Speaker 1: and you know, obviously you work a lot with microbes,
37:34
Speaker 1: and so I'm curious. Would you swim in the sun? Ah?
37:39
Speaker 2: I no.
37:45
Speaker 1: Tell me about the first greyhound that you rescued.
37:50
Speaker 2: We rescued two dogs, two greyhounds that had badly broken
37:56
Speaker 2: their legs and they had been repaired by an agency,
38:01
Speaker 2: and then we adopted them. I learned that thirty percent
38:08
Speaker 2: of greyhounds wash out because they've broken something or have
38:12
Speaker 2: been injured. It's a very sad, sad, sad thing, and
38:16
Speaker 2: they are amazing dogs, amazing.
38:23
Speaker 1: Jennifer Holmgren is the CEO of Lanz Tech. Today's show
38:28
Speaker 1: was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was edited by
38:31
Speaker 1: Lyddy Jean Kott and engineered by Sarah Bruguer. You can
38:35
Speaker 1: email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm. I'm Jacob
38:38
Speaker 1: Goldstein and we'll be back next week with another episode
38:41
Speaker 1: of What's Your Problem