Ecostrat Submits “The Bioeconomy Development Opportunity Zone Initiative” Proposal to CLEEN Project

March 02, 2021

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by Joanne Ivancic* (Advanced Biofuels USA) Ecostrat has submitted a proposal, to be included in the CLEEN Project database. The Clean Economy Employment Now Project provides federal leaders with easy access to highly actionable clean economy job creation ideas via an online database. Clean economy job creation ideas for government leaders, are sourced from top executives and policy experts, shared via a state-of-the-art database that empowers idea discovery and evaluation. Environmental justice is a key element of all entries in the database

The Ecostrat proposal explains that fifty-two million Americans live in economically distressed communities—many of which are in rural areas. These communities are plagued by a lack of investment capital. The BDO Zone Initiative helps stand up new bio-based production plants in these areas, create thousands of new clean energy jobs, and decrease GHGs in a meaningful way.

The BDO Zone Initiative does this by leveraging two powerful and underused assets: The first is sustainably grown and harvested biomass -- corn stover, wheat straw, forest residues, food and farm waste and municipal solid waste (MSW). The second is the Opportunity Zone tax incentive-- the largest tax incentive in the history of the US.

The BDO Zone Initiative awards “AA” or “A” ratings to US federal Opportunity Zones (OZs) that have undergone rigorous and extensive due diligence using a framework over 100 standardized, transparent and validated risk indicators.

BDO Zone Ratings enable developers and investors to identify OZs best positioned to locate new plants that produce biogas, biofuels, biochemicals, and biomaterials--- and they enable communities to leverage biomass assets to serve as anchors for clean energy economic development.

BDO Zone designations are force-multipliers for federal OZs: They supercharge the ability of the OZ program to drive billions of dollars into biobased economic development and to create renewable energy jobs in economically challenged areas across the country.

The goal of the BDO Zone Initiative is to catalyze bio-based investment, decrease GHG emissions, minimize development risk for new bio-based manufacturing plants in low income rural and urban areas, and thereby create jobs in economically disadvantaged communities across the US. They anticipate accomplishing this by awarding 1000 OZs with BDO Zone designations over the next 4 years.

The BDO Zone Program will leverage up to $50,000,000 to facilitate the issue of regional feedstock and infrastructure risk ratings to communities in US federal Opportunity Zones to support the development, scale-up and investment in new facilities that produce renewable chemicals, sustainable aviation and ground transportation fuels, and other bio-based manufacturing in low income rural and urban areas.

The BDO Zone Program will match investments from state economic development agencies with grants of up to $1,000,000; it will match investments from economic development agencies, communities, non-profits, and the private sector with grants of up to $100,000.

The program will be funded by $25,000,000 from mandatory federal funds.

Total economic impact potential of BDO Zone designations is estimated at 160,500 direct, indirect and induced jobs and over $16B annually in direct and indirect economic benefits.

Total job creation impact potential of BDO Zone designations is estimated at 160,500 direct, indirect and induced jobs— clean energy manufacturing jobs, farmers, forestry workers, truckers, and equipment suppliers.

This Initiative is strongly supported by the following groups.

US Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO)
Idaho National Lab (INL / USDOE)
The BSCR Ratings Review Committee consisting of more than 60 leading bio-based investors and capital markets with over $65B of capital designated for deployment into bio-based projects.
The 150-member BSCR Stakeholder Group made of major bioeconomy developers, plant operators, feedstock and equipment suppliers.
TheBioeconomy Recovery Task Force, a diverse and independent group of finance, policy and sustainability leaders to ensure the country’s economic response to the COVID crisis harnesses US biomass assets to support recovery jobs, infrastructure and clean economic growth.
The BDO Zone Investment Coalition, a group of 15 leading bio-based investors and capital markets the with a collective goal of investing $1 billion in new renewable chemical, sustainable aviation, ground transportation fuels, and other bio-based manufacturing plants located in BDO Zones.
Commercial Aviation Alternative Fuels Initiative (CAFFI) and South Carolina Research Authority (see letters of support)