How Execs at 30 Top Cleantech Firms Expect to Make Lots of $ (Part 6 of 7) Biofuel Firms Ponder an Uncertain Market
Submitted by EnergyTechStocks.com
Unlike the solar, lighting, cleaner coal, electric vehicle and energy storage firms so far discussed in this series, biofuel firms were cautious in predicting a rosy future for their cleantech sector. Problems cited ranged from the need to develop better technology, to the need to better protect their intellectual property rights in foreign countries, especially China.
From an investors’ perspective, probably the single most important statement made by one of the four biofuel corporate executives on the panel was the following: “We don’t see a blinding breakthrough” in cellulosic ethanol technology. Made by John Heathcote, CEO of Britain’s Pursuit Dynamics Inc., the statement clearly signaled that biofuel will continue to be a contentious economic and political issue, because while the world is becoming hooked on biofuel the way it is hooked on oil to meet growing transportation demands, the world isn’t technologically ready to move beyond food crops as biofuel feedstocks.
Heathcote also made the most telling statement about problems with intellectual property rights when he said, “If you want to commit (intellectual property) suicide, go do business in China.”
The road will be rough for high-cost ethanol producers, indicated John Fox, CEO of Albany, NY-based Innovation Fuels, which is developing and operating biodiesel processing plants. High-cost producers “will get pushed out of the market. No doubt about it.” For his own privately-held company, Fox sees an opportunity to serve as the “consolidator of choice” for many small biodiesel and glycerin producers.
Eric Darmstaedter, CEO of privately-held ClearFuels Technology in Hawaii, sees an opportunity for his firm to utilize Hawaii’s readily-available sugarcane to produce both ethanol and synthetic gas in plants located near sugar mills and sugar fermentation facilities. Meanwhile, Thomas Cauchois, chairman of Brazilian ethanol and biodiesel producer Comanche Clean Energy Corp. sees opportunity in the improved agricultural techniques his firm is applying that are resulting in higher crop yields.
Heathcote of Pursuit Dynamics optimistically predicted that the U.S. tariff on imported ethanol will be reduced, although not eliminated. And Darmstaedter of ClearFuels predicted that eventually there will be biofuel producers that will challenge oil marketers for the fuel that goes into people’s gas tanks.
April 15th, 2009 at 3:08 am
Pretty racist and hypocritical of the UBS banker Heathcolte seeing as how Pursuit Dynamics is capitalizing on patented intellectual property invented by an American, as a mixing and spray technology and marine propulsion system that they “borrowed without any permission” in 1998-1999 and poorly reverse engineered while the intellectual property was still under valid US patents.