Chicago 2008 AutoblogGreen Q&A: Coskata's Wes Bolsen on the ICM partnership
To get a little more information out of Coskata about this morning's announcement of a partnership with ICM to build the first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant using Coskata's proprietary process (past details on Coskata are here), we tracked down Wes Bolsen, chief marketing officer, business development at the company. Bolsen was an executive at ICM in his previous life, so he is very familiar with what ICM is all about (for now, this is building a lot of corn ethanol plants in the U.S.) and why the company is a good fit for Coskata.
Now for the unknowns: the location of this first plant has not yet been announced, nor what type of feedstock it will use. Exactly when it will be finished is also uncertain, but late 2010 or early 2011 is the target. The hope is to then have two more plants running by late 2011 or early 2012 and expanding from there to the point where Coskata is responsible for producing billions of gallons of cellulosic ethanol to the market every year. We'll keep watching.
You can listen to my chat with Wes here (5.3 MB, 11 min).
UPDATE: As Wes said in the comments below, he's taking issue with my characterization of what he said about the future of corn ethanol, the struck-out above. I didn't mean to give the wrong impression of what he said, so I'm going to explain why I wrote what I wrote. Wes said that ICM considers itself at the forefront of the ethanol industry, especially corn-based ethanol. But, when I asked about the move to cellulosic ethanol and away from corn, Wes said that, "At some point, everyone knows that that will stop." That's where my characterization came from. You can hear it at minute three of the audio clip. You can read Wes' clarification below.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Dad 7:18PM (2/06/2008)
"Bolsen said that ICM, like the rest of the ethanol industry, knows that corn ethanol's days are numbered and that cellulosic biofuel is the way to go."
Progress, all of this is good.
Reply
Wes Bolsen 2:42PM (2/07/2008)
I would like to clear up this discussion very quickly given they are my comments. I will ask Sebastian to do the same in this article.
I did not say, and I do not agree with the comment "Bolsen said that ICM, like the rest of the ethanol industry, knows that corn ethanol's days are numbered and that cellulosic biofuel is the way to go".
Where this came from is my comment that at some point people will stop building corn plants and start building cellulosic plants. This comes from my belief and many other's belief that ethanol can be a primary fuel in this country and that some of it will come from non-corn based sources like woodchips, energy crops, and even things like trash and shredded tires using Coskata technology.
Let me be clear once again. I, Wes Bolsen think that Coskata's technology will be a huge compliment to the corn ethanol industry and that Coskata working with ICM will hopefully help to extend ICM's industry leadership well into the next-generation of ethanol.
Please listen to my comments. In fact a quote from me is "It is not ICM moving away from corn based, in fact, this would be a wonderful addition to a corn based ethanol facility"
"Every corn ethanol facility becomes a location of a cellulosic ethanol plant"
Coskata is partnering with the leading design and build firm in the country for corn ethanol. This is exactly because they can bring the knowledge to the next-generation of ethanol, which is complimentary.
Reagards,
Wes Bolsen
CMO & VP, Coskata Inc.
Reply