Four Days After Petition To Remove Air Permit, Fulcrum Announces Nevada Power Plant Produced First Batch of Jet Biofuel
Dec. 24—The fight over the development of a new bioenergy plant in Gary saw two major developments as environmental group Gary Advocates for Responsible Development (GARD) filed a petition last Friday with the Indiana Office of Environmental Adjudication in response to air permits issued to Fulcrum Bioenergy LLC.
Meanwhile, Fulcrum announced Tuesday that its Sierra Biofuels plant in Nevada successfully produced "low-carbon fuel" from waste material.
"This accomplishment is a watershed moment for Fulcrum and opens the door for our plans to transform landfill waste around the world into a low-carbon transportation fuel in a way that will have a profound environmental impact," Eric Pryor, Fulcrum's president and CEO, said in a news release.
GARD representatives noted in September that Fulcrum's bio-jet fuel has not yet been approved for use in aircraft by the Federal Aviation Administration.
Fulcrum, a California based energy company, says the process for turning feedstock — the raw waste material used to create biofuels — into jet fuel is an environmentally safe means of production.
The system involves heating the feedstock at very high temperatures in a low oxygen environment to breakdown the materials in a process called gasification.
"We're not burning anything, we're not incinerating anything, none of the gas is released into the atmosphere," Flyn van Ewijk, director of development at Fulcrum, said in an interview with the Post-Tribune.
The proposed $600 million trash to fuel plant would be located a 75-acre site in Buffington Harbor, and Fulcrum representatives estimate it would process up to 530,000 tons per year of a prepared feedstock derived off-site from municipal solid waste to convert into 33 million gallons of bio-jet fuel annually, according to the company's plan.
To heat the material to a degree that it can be gasified the plant will require the burning of plastic waste, which are made from petrochemicals and thus considered fossil fuels.
"They're not green, but they say that because they want to get this thing going so that they are going to be able to sell this stuff to airlines and make money," Carolyn McCrady, a co-founder of GARD, said in an interview with the Post-Tribune.
GARD, for its part, cites a lack of information from Fulcrum regarding the upcoming plant's emission rates, and the lack of diligence by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management as reasons for concern.
"Once we start operating (the CenterPoint Plant in Gary), we have to demonstrate to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management that we can operate below the limits that they've set out in the permits," Ewijk said.
In a July report by the Northeast-Midwest Institute, a nonprofit research and policy advisement group, Indiana was found to have passed no "meaningful legislation on environmental justice" and has failed to create an environmental justice regulatory agency like.
"I think the Sierra plant effectively enables us to solidly and confidently go, not just produce fuel but do it with stability, we can replicate these plants," Alain Castro, Fulcrum's VP of development, said. "It is completely understandable that people assume this is the incineration of trash ... but the gas is what we want, that is a component of our product."
Carrie Napoleon contributed to this report.
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