Biofuels summit has Lake link

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

CHICAGO — More than 100 biofuel industry insiders met in a first-of its kind summit Thursday to hear the future of garbage as a source of fuel.

Among the speakers at the two-day event at the Wyndham Hotel was Peter Williams, CEO of Ineos Bio, whose patented process Evansville-based Powers Energy of America will use in its planned $295 million garbage-to-ethanol plant in Schneider.

Williams shared information on Ineos Bio’s Wednesday groundbreaking of its Vero Beach, Fla, Indian River BioEnergy Center, touted as the first commercial-scale project using the new technology. The project was awarded a $50 million United States Department of Energy grant, a $2.5 million grant from the state of Florida and $75 million USDA loan guarantee. The plant is expected to be completed in 2012.

Ineos will provide technical plans for the plant to Powers Energy for use in its applications for its permits from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

Five years of searching for a simple, energy-efficient technology led Ineos Bio to University of Arkansas researcher James Gaddy, who sold the process and his pilot ethanol plant to Ineos in 2008, Williams said. The process, he said, will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet renewable energy directives.

“We went around the world and homed in on a technology that can take a number of materials and convert them into ethanol,” Williams said, adding that the process uses wood waste, corn or municipal solid waste as a feedstock.

“It’s the first of its kind in the world,” Williams said.

“We think the technology we’re now commercializing can provide sustainability, greenhouse gas savings, a new range of jobs...,” Williams said. “We think municipal solid waste can change the way we think about the biofuel industry.”

Ineos plans another plant for the northern United Kingdom with a startup date of 2013.

Earl Powers, CEO of Powers Energy, who said his project is nearing the completion stage for financing, hopes to apply for permits this spring.

“That’s the same plant we’re having up here,” Powers said of Ineos’ Florida plant. The Schneider plant, however, will use municipal trash and has a contract with Lake County to do so.

Powers is slated to speak at the summit today, to talk about his plans to produce 2.1 billion gallons of ethanol by 2020 in 45 plants in the next 10 years. The Schneider plant would be the first.

“We already have three contractors well-entrenched in Lake County, some of whom have been there 75 years,” Powers said. “They’ve put up bonds for us saying the plant will be built according to Ineos’ specifications.”

Powers said rumors that Powers Energy decided not to build a garbage-to-ethanol plant in Lake County were untrue.

“We’ve heard rumors that we’re moving to Virginia where we can get $35 a ton tipping fee or to New Jersey where we can get $75,” Powers said. Powers’ contract with Lake County is for $17.50 per ton.

“We’re excited about Lake County,” he said. “We are going to build in Lake County. Lake County stepped up first and we are going forward with the plant there.”

Reach Diane Krieger Spivak at 648-3076