Fulcrum Bioenergy opens facility in Sierra, Nevada

Fulcrum BioEnergy Inc., a waste-to-energy company based in Pleasanton, California, has opened its biofuels plant in Sierra, Nevada. The company says the plant is the world's first landfill waste to renewable transportation fuels plant.   

According to a news release from Fulcrum, Sierra Biorefinery is processing prepared waste feedstock and turning it into high-quality hydrocarbon synthetic gas, or syngas, ideal for conventional Fischer-Tropsch fuel production.   

Combined with Fulcrum's operations of its feedstock processing facility, Fulcrum says it has harvested the carbon embedded in the waste and turned it into a hydrocarbon syngas. Sierra plant operations will now move on to the final step in Fulcrum's waste to fuels process, converting the syngas into liquid fuel. 

"This operations achievement at our Sierra plant is a real breakthrough step in making waste to fuels a reality," Fulcrum President and CEO Eric Pryor says. "Fulcrum is launching an entirely new source of low-cost, domestically produced, net-zero carbon transportation fuel, which will contribute to the aviation industry's carbon reduction goals, U.S. energy security and address climate stability."   

The Sierra biofuels plant includes a feedstock processing facility and a biorefinery with the capacity to convert about 175,000 tons of prepared landfill waste into about 11 million gallons of renewable syncrude annually. The syncrude will then be upgraded to renewable transportation fuel.   

Along with Fulcrum's backing from leading financial investors in renewable infrastructure and industry leaders in the waste, aviation and energy sectors, Sierra's operational achievement will serve as a launchpad for Fulcrum's development of plants across the U.S. and internationally.   

"Fulcrum's process will produce a fuel that is a cost-competitive sustainable aviation fuel and an alternative to petroleum-based fuel,” Pryor says. “With a net-zero carbon score and the ability to be produced in large volumes, our sustainable aviation fuel will have an impact on addressing climate change. We are eager to get this fuel into the market and into the hands of our airline partners.”  

The company says its waste to fuel plants will help address two globally critical and urgent environmental issues: reducing carbon emissions from the aviation industry and waste sent to landfills.