Edeniq: The Billion Dollar Baby Is Torn between Two Lovers

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Edeniq is torn between two lovers: its current ownership group, which shuffled together a financing this week; and Aemetis, which is supposed to be acquiring Edeniq this year for $23 million.

How Edeniq landed in this situation, we’ll endeavor to explain. And we’ll revisit our long-held belief that Edeniq’s tech is, in fact, a Billion Dollar Baby — and well worth a titanic battle for the rights thereto.

The key news point: the EPA has approved Pacific Ethanol’s registration of its Stockton, CA ethanol plant to generate D3 cellulosic Renewable Identification Numbers using Edeniq’s Pathway Technology, as we reported earlier today here. Pacific Ethanol had begun producing cellulosic ethanol at Stockton last December.

The Pathway Technology combination of cellulase enzyme and Edeniq’s Cellunator high-shear milling equipment produces up to 2.5% cellulosic ethanol, up to a 7% increase in overall ethanol yield due to yield enhancement from starch and cellulose, and up to a 30% increase in corn oil recovery.

Meanwhile, you can’t unlock the financial power of Edeniq Pathway technology, at the end of the day, without a letter from the EPA granting you the power to generate RINs at a given facility. Generating cellulosic RINS may well be more profitable than minting gold coins. They sell for $1.94 per gallon, at the moment, those RINs, more than the fuel itself.

A RIN letter from the EPA may therefore be the most precious commodity on Earth.

But at the moment, it’s essentially a commodity produced from the rare element Unobtainium. It may well be easier to snatch gamma rays flying out of a supernova, using a catcher’s mitt, than to obtain pathway approval from the EPA for a new technology at a new facility. The average wait time is more than two years; some companies have waited more than five. READ MORE and MORE (Energy.AgWired.com) and MORE (Pacific Ethanol)