Aemetis Unveils Five-Year Plan Targeting $1 Billion of Revenue by 2025 - Seite 3

Aemetis recently announced a $2 billion bid process to airlines and fuel blenders for the Carbon Zero 1 plant. 

The Carbon Zero process converts renewable waste biomass such as waste orchard wood into renewable hydrogen, then uses the hydrogen along with zero carbon sources of electricity (solar, hydro-electric, wind) and low carbon feedstocks to produce zero carbon and drop-in fuels.  The jet and diesel fuels may be used in today’s airplane, truck, and ship fleets without significant changes in fueling infrastructure or engines.

The Aemetis “Carbon Zero” renewable jet/diesel plant at the former Riverbank Army Ammunition facility increases the profitability of the Keyes ethanol plant in two ways:  the most valuable high-volume use of corn oil from the Keyes plant is to produce renewable diesel and jet fuel.  In addition, expensive corn brought 2,000 miles from the Midwest to produce ethanol at the Keyes plant can be replaced by local, negative carbon intensity sugars extracted from orchard waste wood.  

Extracting negative carbon intensity sugars from below zero carbon intensity waste orchard wood (estimated CI of -100) from the more than 1 million acres of almonds and walnuts in the Central Valley enables valuable cellulosic ethanol to be produced at the Keyes plant as cellulosic sugars replace expensive corn sugars to feed yeast and produce ethanol.  

The economics of cellulosic sugars are highly compelling, since every 10% reduction of corn use and replacement with cellulosic sugars from orchard waste wood results in more than $30 million per year of additional EBITDA at Aemetis due to higher value cellulosic ethanol at an estimated 90% lower feedstock cost from waste wood.  As the sugar extraction process is commercialized, further updates to the five year plan will be provided, since none of the economics of the sugar extraction process and the production of cellulosic ethanol is included in the Five-Year Plan disclosed today.

Prior to the February 2021 grant of a patent exclusively licensed to Aemetis, the sugar extraction process has not been widely adopted due to formerly high cost of extraction and removal of sugars from orchard wood leaves 50% or more of the wood as a byproduct, mostly in the form of low value lignin.  

The Aemetis “Carbon Zero” renewable jet/diesel plant design takes advantage of the availability of more than 1.6 million tons per year of orchard waste wood in the Central Valley by first extracting the C6 and C5 cellulosic sugars (which are tanker trucked to the nearby Keyes ethanol plant to produce cellulosic ethanol).