Publication Looks at Who's Getting Biofuels Funds Now, and How

Publication Looks at Who's Getting Biofuels Funds Now, and How

By Scott Doggett September 22, 2009

In an article published today, Biofuels Digest takes a look at the creative financing sources being used to fund biofuel research and development today.

It notes, for example, that many strategies have been mooted, but one perennial is still popular: Have the cheapest way to make a load of sugar. Simple sugars are the new gold, Biofuels Digest points out. If you can make it fast enough and cheap enough, "customers and their own financing backers will beat a path to your door."

Sometimes, though, you can just be the biggest, baddest sugar project in a local market, even if your technology is not quite ready for the 22nd century. The article goes on to describe a Philippine project that went down just such a road, obtaining $30 million in equity from the Japanese firm Itochu and others.

But nothing is getting funded in bioenergy this year quite as fast and furiously as algae-related ventures. These young companies, the "baby bloomers" as Biofuels Digest calls them, have been landing scads of venture capital and public funding, leaving their brethren in advanced bioenergy scratching their heads in wonder, disbelief, and occasionally a bit of spite.

The publication describes how a government-funded project in Arizona landed $70.5 million based on stimulating green jobs in a depressed region, and as a carbon strategy. Not to mention the promise of fuel, and biochar that can be converted into energy at a higher clip than simply burning biomass.

And then there's the funding source we all know only too well: public-private partnerships. They have been a hallmark of bioenergy projects for quite a while, but perhaps never more importantly than now, when local authorities despair over rising costs of landfills, and bioenergy developers are hard-pressed to raise the benjamins for their projects.

A Canadian partnership between the city of Edmonton, the province of Alberta (home province of Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper) and Enerkem shows how it can get done, Biofuels Digest reports, not only for a waste-to-energy project, but an R&D center to boot.

Scott Doggett:  is an AutoObserver.com Associate Editor.