Sen. Cortez Masto Touts Clean Energy Accomplishments at Biofuel Plant East of Reno

by Eric Marks (This Is Reno) fficials from Fulcrum BioEnergy hosted Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto and members of the press Friday at the company’s new plant east of Sparks off of USA Parkway.

The facility is part of a new generation of industry technology featuring a “revolutionary process” which turns garbage, that would otherwise be headed for landfills, into net-zero carbon fuels, including diesel and jet.

According to the senator’s office, “this product would be able to be transported to larger refineries across the country and upgraded into clean jet fuel that will be sold to commercial airlines across the U.S.”

“Nevada is really leading the potential around innovation and the positive impact it can have on addressing a cleaner environment,” she said. “We have Fulcrum that is literally taking garbage out of the landfill and turning it into clean burning fuel.

The senator also noted that the facility employs over 120 people with “good paying jobs, good for the State of Nevada.” READ MORE

Excerpt from Las Vegas Review Journal: The future of Fulcrum BioEnergy’s Sierra BioFuels Plant, which turns garbage from a nearby landfill into a product that can be refined into fuel for airplanes, hung in the balance until a regulatory rule change from the Environmental Protection Agency a little over two months ago.

The change, which Cortez Masto began pushing for in 2019, is a win for more than the state, she said.

Previously, the EPA only allowed for the production of renewable transportation fuel by facilities that work to produce the biofuel at every stage of the process. The Sierra Biofuels Plant produces a “biointermediate,” which is then sent to another facility to be refined, placing it outside of the agency’s rule.

A fix to the rule was proposed in 2016 but took more than five years and two administrations to be approved. It was during then when Cortez Masto began advocating on the plant’s behalf at the federal level.

“It was exciting to see not only for it to come to fruition, but to see the potential that this has not just for the jobs it provides here in Northern Nevada, the benefit is to show that Nevada’s cutting edge in this technology, and then knowing that it’s right here in Northern Nevada,” she said. READ MORE