Proposed Louisiana Green Fuels Project Pivots to SAF

February 21, 2024

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(Sumitomo Corporation of Americas/SAF Magazine) Strategic Biofuels, the leader in developing deeply negative carbon footprint renewable fuel plants, and Sumitomo Corporation of Americas (SCOA), a subsidiary of Sumitomo Corp., a leading Fortune 500 global trading and business investment company dedicated to sustainability, announced today that they have entered into a joint development agreement for the Louisiana Green Fuels (LGF) project at the Port of Columbia in Caldwell Parish, Louisiana.

SCOA will take an anchor position and lead the formation of a Japanese-based investment consortium aimed at funding the majority of development capital needed to carry the project to Financial Investment Decision (FID) and commencement of construction in early 2025. As part of the agreement, SCOA will also acquire rights at FID to participate for a portion of the full project equity requirement. In a decisive strategic shift related to the investment, Strategic Biofuels also unveiled plans to change its primary renewable fuel product to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). SCOA intends to provide a 20-year offtake for the approximately 640 million gallons of renewable fuels produced as well as all state and federal renewable fuel credits.

"Our goal has always been to bring online a fuels plant contributing to a sustainable future, and we are thrilled to have SCOA as our partner in our LGF endeavor. The shift to SAF is an exciting moment for us and our partners, for the energy landscape in Louisiana and for the greater global energy transition overall," said Paul Schubert, CEO of Strategic Biofuels. "Although we have a lot of work ahead of us, our team is fully prepared to advance the project to FID and supply SCOA with SAF."

Louisiana Green Fuels project shifting gears

SAF is a renewably produced fuel specifically created to reduce the considerable carbon emissions of commercial aviation. When the LGF project was first announced, Strategic Biofuels garnered recognition for the extraordinarily low carbon footprint of the planned renewable diesel fuel product. The footprint of SAF that will now be produced is expected to be so low that just one gallon of it blended with three gallons of fossil-derived jet fuel will reduce the dependency on carbon in the future. To achieve this carbon reduction in 2029, the LGF plant will utilize:

Approximately 1 million tons per year of forestry waste as the feedstock for the biorefinery;
Green energy from an integrated biomass-fired power plant that will take nearly 1 million tons of sawmill waste annually to produce 86 megawatts of power; and
Geologic carbon sequestration of 1.36 million metric tons per year of CO2 produced from both of those operations to create this fuel which is equivalent to removing nearly 300,000 passenger cars from the road, making it a product much in demand by the aviation industry.

"Our partnership with Strategic Biofuels is just another example of our commitment to support the energy transition within the Americas," said Sandro Hasegawa, General Manager, Energy Innovation Initiative Americas at SCOA. "Supporting the LGF project means bringing groundbreaking technology to the Port of Columbia that enables the local economy and sustains the natural environment. We look forward to leading the investment with our partners in Japan and demonstrating what can be accomplished when global players work together."

This investment commitment from SCOA continues the path from 2023, which was a year of rapid project advancement for LGF. Most recently, Strategic Biofuels announced that the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality had issued an Air Permit for the integrated LGF facility, an industry "first of its kind" in Louisiana and a major step forward for the project. This followed an agreement with SLB, a global technology company, to provide its industry-leading technical services for the company's planned carbon sequestration complex. Earlier in the year, the EPA deemed the project's Class VI permit application for carbon sequestration as "administratively complete," which included extensive geologic data collected from LGF's 2021 Class V stratigraphic test well.

Furthermore, the EPA announced on December 29, 2023 that it was awarding "primacy" to the State of Louisiana, conveying to the state's Department of Natural Resources the right to issue Class VI permits for geologic sequestration of carbon dioxide. Louisiana is only the third state to be granted this authority. As has occurred in the only two other states granted primacy, that action is expected to accelerate the schedule for regulatory review and Class VI permit issuance.

Strategic Biofuels impact goes beyond industry with local transformation
Once complete, the LGF plant will create approximately 151 direct jobs onsite with an average annual income of $70,000 per year, excluding benefits; while five to six times as many indirect job opportunities are expected. During peak construction times, an estimated 1,500 jobs will need to be filled to further the plant to operation. As a result, Strategic Biofuels will substantially improve the local quality of life in the nation's seventh poorest US Congressional District (LA-5) and tenth poorest Parish in Louisiana, which has an average household income of just $41,000 per year. The team is also actively involved with Caldwell Parish School District and has helped support several programs championing career and personal development. READ MORE

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Strategic Biofuels and Sumitomo Corporation of Americas Announce Major Investment Commitment (Sumitomo Corporation of Americas/PR Newswire)
Strategic Biofuels Announces Strategic Investment from Magnolia Sustainable Energy Partners (Sumimoto/PR Newswire)

Excerpt from Sumitomo Corporation of Americas/PR Newswire: About Strategic Biofuels
Strategic Biofuels LLC is a team of highly experienced energy, petrochemical and renewable fuels technology experts focused on developing a series of deeply negative carbon footprint plants in northern Louisiana that convert waste materials from managed and sustainable forests into renewable fuels. The fuels qualify for substantial Carbon Credits under the Federal Renewable Fuel Standard Program and under the California Low Carbon Fuels Standard. For more information, visit www.strategicbiofuels.com.  

About Louisiana Green Fuels
Louisiana Green Fuels is the first biomass waste-to-fuels project by Strategic Biofuels LLC in northern Louisiana at the Port of Columbia in Caldwell Parish. The biofuel refinery and adjacent power plant and their accompanying Class VI Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) Wells will be the first SAF project in the world to achieve "deeply negative" carbon emissions.  

About Sumitomo Corporation of Americas
Sumitomo Corporation of Americas is the largest subsidiary of Sumitomo Corporation, a leading global trading company, with 108 locations in 65 countries and 20 locations in Japan. The entire Sumitomo Corporation Group consists of 900 companies and more than 80,000 personnel. The Sumitomo business is continuously expanding into a diverse range of products and services. As of December 31, 2023, Sumitomo had total assets of over $72 billion and cash-on-hand of over $4.26 billion (please refer to our website at www.sumitomocorp.com). READ MORE

Excerpt from Sumimoto/PR Newswire: Partnership also brings additional carbon capture expertise to flagship sustainable aviation fuels project in Northern Louisiana -- Strategic Biofuels, a leading sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) project developer, announced today a strategic investment commitment from Magnolia Sustainable Energy Partners (M-SEP), a newly formed Japanese-based investment consortium created by Sumitomo Corporation of Americas (SCOA) and JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corporation (JX). The investment from M-SEP will be used to further advance the company's flagship Louisiana Green Fuels (LGF) project, an ultra-low carbon negative SAF plant located in Caldwell Parish, Louisiana.

"Our partnership with JX and Sumitomo through their new consortium, M-SEP, will bring both financial support and the deep carbon capture technical expertise that is needed to continue advancing toward construction," said Dr. Paul Schubert, CEO of Strategic Biofuels. "Our LGF project has first and foremost been a mission of low-carbon sustainability, and the milestones we have achieved to-date are a testament to how strategic and collaborative partnerships like this one can advance cleaner technologies."

In addition to being a strategic investor through the consortium, JX will add its expertise to the company's LGF project, leveraging its carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) experience gained in building and operating the Petra Nova Carbon Capture, Utilization and Storage (CCUS) project near Houston. The LGF project, which will convert sustainably managed forestry waste into the world's preeminent responsibly developed SAF into a CCS component that will capture and store carbon dioxide onsite from both its biomass-fired power plant and biorefinery.

"The LGF project presents an excellent opportunity to enhance our capability for the greater energy transition by leveraging our CCS experience," said Toshiya Nakahara, President and CEO of JX. "It's an honor to work with Strategic Biofuels and SCOA, who possess remarkable technical, project management, business, and financing expertise and leadership to help us achieve our goals."

"CCS will play a vital role in achieving carbon neutrality. JX's engagement will enhance the success of producing ultra low carbon SAF product and we're excited about the future with these two partners," said Tom Wada, President & CEO of SCOA. "We have ambitious plans to support global energy security, sustainability, and carbon reduction goals and are confident that the LGF project is a step in the right direction. We continue to support creating strategic partnership with Japanese strategic investors through M-SEP"

In February, SCOA announced a major investment commitment to Strategic Biofuels' LGF project, revealing that it will help the project reach a Financial Investment Decision and commencement of construction in early 2025. At the same time, Strategic Biofuels announced that it would be shifting its primary renewable fuel product to SAF. SCOA intends to provide a 20-year offtake for the approximately 640 million gallons of renewable fuels produced as well as all state and federal renewable fuel credits.

About Strategic Biofuels 
Strategic Biofuels LLC is a team of highly experienced energy, petrochemical and renewable fuels technology experts focused on developing a series of deeply negative carbon footprint plants in northern Louisiana that convert waste materials from managed and sustainable forests into renewable fuels. The fuels qualify for substantial Carbon Credits under the Federal Renewable Fuel Standard Program and under the California Low Carbon Fuels Standard. For more information, visit www.strategicbiofuels.com.

About JX Nippon Oil and Gas Exploration Corporation
JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corporation have engaged in energy exploration and production (E&P) business around the world for over 40 years, as a core operating company in the ENEOS Group, one of Japan's leading company groups of comprehensive energy, natural resources, and materials. JX is operating Petra Nova CCUS project in Texas, Unites States, and is the only Japanese company that has commercialized CCUS, to expand its role beyond the existing business to contribute to the achievement of carbon neutral world. For more information, please visit https://www.nex.jx-group.co.jp/english.

About Sumitomo Corporation of Americas
Sumitomo Corporation of Americas is the largest subsidiary of Sumitomo Corporation, an integrated trading company with a strong global network comprising 129 offices in 66 countries and regions. The Sumitomo Corporation Group consists of approximately 900 companies and 80,000 employees on a consolidated basis. The Group's business activities are spread across the following nine groups: Steel, Automotive, Transportation & Construction Systems, Diverse Urban Development, Media & Digital, Lifestyle Business, Mineral Resources, Chemicals Solutions and Energy Transformation Business. Sumitomo Corporation is committed to creating greater value for society under the corporate message of "Enriching lives and the world," based on Sumitomo's business philosophy passed down for over 400 years. For more information, please refer to our website at www.sumitomocorp.com. READ MORE