Speaker 1: Pushkin. Today's show includes, among other things, directed evolution, rabbit poop,
Speaker 1: sustainable aviation fuel, and polyester. Let's do It. I'm Jacob
Speaker 1: Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the show where
Speaker 1: I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Jennifer Holmgren, the CEO of lonz Tech.
Speaker 1: Jennifer's problem is this, how do you take pollution from
Speaker 1: steel plants, smokestacks, beat it to bacteria and get the
Speaker 1: bacteria to excrete Ethanol. Ethanol is a kind of alcohol.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of alcohol you drink, and in addition
Speaker 1: to being made in the alcohol you drink, ethanol is
Speaker 1: made as a fuel additive. In that context, it's often
Speaker 1: made from corn or sugarcane. But expanding the footprint of
Speaker 1: industrial agriculture to grow, say more corn for fuel, can
Speaker 1: mean more emissions and higher food prices. Hence the idea
Speaker 1: behind lonz tech find a different source of ethanol, one
Speaker 1: that doesn't require food crops. Lonza Tech was founded in
Speaker 1: two thousand and five by two scientists from New Zealand.
Speaker 1: Jennifer Holmgren was not one of them. She joined the
Speaker 1: company as CEO in twenty ten, when Lonzo Tech was
Speaker 1: moving from a sort of proof of concept to scaling
Speaker 1: in the real world. We started our conversation by talking
Speaker 1: about the scientific work that led to the company's creation.
Speaker 1: So is it right that the first kind of insight
Speaker 1: or idea is that there is a bacteria that ideally,
Speaker 1: theoretically could turn pollution carbon monoxide into ethanol.
Speaker 2: That's right. And the founders knew that this was possible
Speaker 2: because they knew that they were gas eating organisms, and
Speaker 2: they were able to go to a library in Germany
Speaker 2: which stores organisms that are known and cataloged and say
Speaker 2: I want that one, and that one and that one,
Speaker 2: and bring it to their lab and start using it.
Speaker 1: So they were getting like vials of bacteria.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, huh yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: And did they find one that worked.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. But they had to do a lot of optimization
Speaker 2: because it's a bacteria that wants to make a different molecule, acetate,
Speaker 2: and they wanted to make ethanol, and so they had
Speaker 2: to do a lot of work to optimize the bacteria.
Speaker 2: And they did it without using genetic methods. They did
Speaker 2: it all by directed evolution, kind of like you you know,
Speaker 2: put two orkids together to make a third, So let's.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that a little bit. So what what
Speaker 1: was the bacteria that they found.
Speaker 2: It's called C. Auto. So the long name is C.
Speaker 2: Auto orhanogenum, and we call it seouto, and it is
Speaker 2: an anaerobe. You can only find it in places where
Speaker 2: there's no oxygen, but it was around at the beginning
Speaker 2: of the Earth when there was no oxygen.
Speaker 1: Glory days exactly.
Speaker 2: It's glory days. We like to say, it's our great
Speaker 2: great great great great grandfather.
Speaker 1: Yeah, where does it hide? Where does a where does
Speaker 1: a microbe that doesn't like oxygen hide? Today?
Speaker 2: Well, it's been found in you know, gut biome like
Speaker 2: from rabbits. It's been found in.
Speaker 1: Is it true that it's in rabbit poop?
Speaker 2: Well? Yeah, so I was trying to be more delicate
Speaker 2: and saying bottom, yeah, take rabbit poop. Yeah, it's found
Speaker 2: in rabbit poop. So for all we know, it could
Speaker 2: be in our guts too. I don't know, but it's
Speaker 2: definitely in rabbit pooh. It is in you can find
Speaker 2: it in vents, underwaters, you can find it in all
Speaker 2: of these places where and it's that's actually one of
Speaker 2: the neat things about this bacteria. It is robust, it's strong,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't like oxygen, so oxygen will kill it.
Speaker 2: But it is something that allows you to do industrial biotech.
Speaker 1: Huh. So they find this very ancient bacteria. It's robust,
Speaker 1: but it's not it's not evolved to make ethanol. It's
Speaker 1: not evolved to make what you want. What's it evolved
Speaker 1: to make?
Speaker 2: It makes acitate as a primary product. So yeah, they
Speaker 2: evolved it to make ethanol as the primary product.
Speaker 1: So there is this sort of field of directed evolution, right,
Speaker 1: that is that that they're using here to like tell
Speaker 1: me about directed evolution. That's a relatively young field in
Speaker 1: this context, right, What is it? What does it mean?
Speaker 1: How do you do it?
Speaker 2: Well, it means you're putting stress on the bacteria and
Speaker 2: select colonies that are making what you wanted to make,
Speaker 2: and if you wanted to make ethanol, you select for those.
Speaker 1: So eventually, through sort of applying selective pressure in this way,
Speaker 1: they get to a strain of c auto that loves
Speaker 1: to make ethanol.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: Okay, yep. And that's around the time you get to
Speaker 1: the company, Is that right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there was still optimization to be done, and
Speaker 2: they had started using doing a pilot at a steel
Speaker 2: mill in New Zealand, and so I knew the system worked.
Speaker 2: I just didn't know how scalable it was to commercial scale.
Speaker 2: And by scalable I don't mean that you couldn't build
Speaker 2: a big one, but that you could make money for
Speaker 2: me building a big one.
Speaker 1: That's such a huge issue, right, Like this idea of
Speaker 1: people call it technoeconomics. Like there are a million clever
Speaker 1: ideas like this that are elegant and intellectually satisfying. But
Speaker 1: in this big sort of commodity, global scale world, the
Speaker 1: question is like, great, but can you make it at
Speaker 1: a competitive price at scale? Right? So how do you
Speaker 1: start to answer that question?
Speaker 2: Well, I think you need to start with what you
Speaker 2: think you can do, and then you validate it as
Speaker 2: you go from lab to pilot to demo, and then
Speaker 2: you ask yourself what else do I need to do
Speaker 2: to make it economic? And in our case, it's a
Speaker 2: really great bioreactor. It's also water recycling and media. If
Speaker 2: you don't you know, let me explain media. So when
Speaker 2: you grow a plant, you need fertilizer, right, nitrogen sulfur.
Speaker 2: And so what we had to do was figure out
Speaker 2: how to feed at a minimum amount of nitrogen and
Speaker 2: sulfur envitnments. All of these little things energy use, All
Speaker 2: of these impact the cost and so in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways, I like to think of a technoeconomic analysis
Speaker 2: as a tool that allows you to say, I got
Speaker 2: to optimize that because it's too expensive.
Speaker 1: So now you have factories in countries around the world.
Speaker 1: You were to some degree at least operating at scale.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, what are a few things you had to
Speaker 1: learn to get here?
Speaker 2: Well, I think a specific one is finding the right partners.
Speaker 2: We ended up going to China because we were looking
Speaker 2: for a steel mill that we could work with, and
Speaker 2: fifty percent of the world steel was made in China.
Speaker 2: They were also in growth mode. They wanted to reduce
Speaker 2: their carbon intensity, but they wanted to use it as
Speaker 2: a license to grow. And so China was in the
Speaker 2: right mode to think about new technologies, and so we
Speaker 2: were able to go there find a partner who was
Speaker 2: interested in using our technology and then demonstrating it. We
Speaker 2: built one hundred thousand gallon a year facility, and then
Speaker 2: we use that as a path to building basically a
Speaker 2: fifteen million gallon a year of facilacility, and that's what
Speaker 2: we have operating now. We have six facilities, average size
Speaker 2: thirty to fifty million gallons a year.
Speaker 1: Meaning each one produces thirty to fifty million gallons of ethanol.
Speaker 1: So tell me about a couple of the things you
Speaker 1: learned going from you know, the lab to tens of
Speaker 1: millions of gallons a year, Like, what were a couple
Speaker 1: of things that didn't work the first time that you
Speaker 1: had to figure out sort of specifically.
Speaker 2: You know, the bacteria's robust, like I told you, but
Speaker 2: it also needs to be coddled a little bit sometimes,
Speaker 2: and so you need to install some type of pre treatment,
Speaker 2: and so learning how to pre treat cheaply it was
Speaker 2: very important. Learning when we went from doing a steel
Speaker 2: milk gas to a fair alloy gas to a gas
Speaker 2: that's made from municipal solid waste right from trash. You
Speaker 2: you kind of handle the gas a little bit differently.
Speaker 2: And so we had focused on our process and we
Speaker 2: had spent some time on the gas, but we really learned,
Speaker 2: you know what, spend a little more time on the gas.
Speaker 2: So that's one thing we learn. The second thing I
Speaker 2: think we learned, and something that's obvious right, Building good
Speaker 2: relationships matters, right. Nothing works the first time, and having
Speaker 2: partners that are willing to be on the journey to
Speaker 2: improve and optimize as you scale is important. Right. These
Speaker 2: units are not like a Christmas gift. You open the
Speaker 2: box and voila, we're running a capacity. And so really
Speaker 2: it's about your partners and about their commitment to you,
Speaker 2: to the technology and to getting to scale.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about just what it looks like. So you
Speaker 1: said you have how many how many operating six are
Speaker 1: their China and India and Europe.
Speaker 2: We have one in Europe as well in Ghent in
Speaker 2: Belgium with our solar middle.
Speaker 1: So in a somewhat abstracted way, just like basically, what
Speaker 1: does one of your facilities look like?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: Maybe we should start at the at the smoke stack, right,
Speaker 1: So there is what used to be pollution coming out
Speaker 1: a smoke stack or what happens.
Speaker 2: You don't let it go out, You intercept it before
Speaker 2: it goes out, You compress it and you put it
Speaker 2: into a reactor.
Speaker 1: So there's a gas and you particularly you want carbon monoxide.
Speaker 1: Still is that your.
Speaker 2: Put you want carbon monoxide? You can also use carbon
Speaker 2: dioxide if you have hydrogen. It depends on whether you
Speaker 2: have hydrogen or not how well you can process carbon dioxide.
Speaker 2: So let's just focus on carbon monoxide. That's like sugar
Speaker 2: for our bacteria. It's like yum, I'll take that.
Speaker 1: So then is the first thing you have to do?
Speaker 1: Separate out the carbon monoxide from the rest of the gas.
Speaker 2: You don't, Okay, So if you have a carbon monoxide,
Speaker 2: say forty percent carbon monoxide stream in a bunch of
Speaker 2: other gases, you can just pump that into your bioreactor
Speaker 2: and the bacteria will find it carbon monoxide and you'll
Speaker 2: just ignore all the other molecules floating around.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you pump that into the bioreactor. What's it
Speaker 1: what's it look like inside the biorector? What's going on
Speaker 1: in there?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so imagine a bunch of bubbles and imagine you've
Speaker 2: got bacteria that are dividing. Right, they're alive, they're dividing.
Speaker 2: So it's kind of not a clear liquid. You're you're
Speaker 2: seeing what look like little grape particles in there, but
Speaker 2: it's just bacteria floating about. Gas bubbles come in. That's
Speaker 2: all you see. And then on the back end you
Speaker 2: see ethanol.
Speaker 1: And in the bubbles in the tank. Is that like
Speaker 1: a medium you have created that your bacteria likes to
Speaker 1: live in.
Speaker 2: That's that's right, that's right. They're getting their vitamins, they're
Speaker 2: getting their minerals, they're getting their carbon source, that carbon monoxide,
Speaker 2: and they're floating about enjoying their day.
Speaker 1: And you're bubbling in the carbon monoxide the way like
Speaker 1: if there's a fish tank, you just bubble in the.
Speaker 2: Air exactly now. It it's continued. The process is constantly
Speaker 2: and the water is constantly moving around, and so it's
Speaker 2: not quite like a fish tank. But it's a great
Speaker 2: analogy and that works really well. And the key you
Speaker 2: said the bubbles like a fish tank. The key is
Speaker 2: to make those bubbles as small as possible. So it's
Speaker 2: kind of faking out a dissolution, right, It's like they're
Speaker 2: dissolved the amount of dissolved carbon monoxide getting to the
Speaker 2: bacteria so that they can find it, eat it and
Speaker 2: poop out ethanol.
Speaker 1: And how does the ethanol sort of come out of
Speaker 1: the tank.
Speaker 2: The ethanol is with water, and so we have to
Speaker 2: distill the ethanol out and then we take the water
Speaker 2: which also has media and other things and pump it
Speaker 2: back into the reactors so that we're not wasting anything.
Speaker 2: We're you know, we're separating the bacteria, putting it back
Speaker 2: in the reactor, separating the ethanol through distillation, and then
Speaker 2: you just take the ethanol and clean it as much
Speaker 2: as you want. For fuel grade to blend with gasoline
Speaker 2: doesn't need to be that clean. For putting it into cosmetics,
Speaker 2: it needs to be really clean.
Speaker 1: And who are you selling your ethanol to, So.
Speaker 2: Most of the ethanol goes into blending with gasoline. That's
Speaker 2: what our partner in China is doing. But what we
Speaker 2: do is we take a small amount of it right
Speaker 2: now and we've used it to do project development or
Speaker 2: brand development. So Cody, for example, uses our ethanol in
Speaker 2: some of their perfumes. We've also converted it to polyester,
Speaker 2: and On has made running apparel with the polyester made
Speaker 2: from these recycled emissions. Mebel has used it in cleaning products.
Speaker 2: So we have quite a few partners that you would recognize,
Speaker 2: H and M. Craghoppers, they've all used our polyester. And
Speaker 2: it's kind of neat, right because if you stop and
Speaker 2: for a second think about this, you say, you know
Speaker 2: this was going to be pollution, it was going to
Speaker 2: be greenhouse gases and particulates and instead I'm wearing it.
Speaker 1: Yes, and how's the price.
Speaker 2: So it's more expensive than conventional polyesters. It's you would say,
Speaker 2: it's anywhere between one hundred and fifty twoe hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy percent. Fortunately, we have partners who are willing to
Speaker 2: pay more in the raw materials because the raw material
Speaker 2: is not what impacts the price of the product.
Speaker 1: Right, they can pay They can pay significantly more for
Speaker 1: the polyester, and it's such a trivial percentage of the
Speaker 1: final cost of the good that it doesn't move the
Speaker 1: needle much.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I would have thought exactly the way
Speaker 2: you just said it. But unfortunately what it does is
Speaker 2: it impacts their margins. And in a world that's obsessed
Speaker 2: with profit and margins, you have to give credit to
Speaker 2: our partners for being able to say I am going
Speaker 2: to make an investment in creating this right because their
Speaker 2: business leaders are not getting the margins that others are getting.
Speaker 2: And so I think this is something I want to
Speaker 2: really hash out because I think we're driven to reduce
Speaker 2: our costs and to increase our profit and we've got
Speaker 2: these brave souls who are saying, well, I got to
Speaker 2: reduce carbon too, and that's important to us and to
Speaker 2: our future. And I'm going to go against the trend,
Speaker 2: and I'm not going to reduce my costs or increase
Speaker 2: my profit. I am going to do something good. So
Speaker 2: ARII Craghoppers has a whole line of clothing with our stuff,
Speaker 2: and they're trying to help us get to a scale
Speaker 2: where we can reduce the costs so that maybe someday
Speaker 2: they'll get to the margins they need.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I feel like, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: great that these companies want to do this. But to
Speaker 1: be meaningful at a global level, you need to get
Speaker 1: to a place where the ethanol you sell is the
Speaker 1: same price as other ethanol, right, And I'm curious what
Speaker 1: has to happen for you to get there? Well, first
Speaker 1: of all, is that right? Do you think of it
Speaker 1: the same way? Are you trying to get to a
Speaker 1: place where your ethanol has cost the same as corn
Speaker 1: ethanol or any other ethanol?
Speaker 2: Right now, it's actually pretty close to corn ethanol. It's
Speaker 2: just that it costs a lot more than ethylene, which
Speaker 2: is how polyesters made.
Speaker 1: I see, So for fuel. Is the ethanol you make
Speaker 1: price competitive?
Speaker 2: It is pretty equivalent. Yeah. Yeah, the capital installed cost
Speaker 2: is much higher because they've optimized their capital for years
Speaker 2: and well hundreds of years, whereas we have not. But
Speaker 2: once you get past the capital recovery piece, the costs
Speaker 2: are about the same.
Speaker 1: So you're saying you're like competing against sort of depreciated assets.
Speaker 1: They built factories a long time ago. They don't sort
Speaker 1: of have to pay for the factories every month the
Speaker 1: way you do that kind of thing, that kind of challenge.
Speaker 2: That's right, that's right, But we'll get there. But you
Speaker 2: ask the more important question, and I guess we're focused
Speaker 2: on keeping carbon in the ground. At the end of
Speaker 2: the day, this lineary economy is not going to work,
Speaker 2: and we need to find a way to reuse all
Speaker 2: carbon that's already in circulation in our system, whether it's
Speaker 2: municipal solid waste, whether it's industrial waste, whether it's CO
Speaker 2: two that's in the atmosphere. We've got to figure out
Speaker 2: how to use that as the resource from which everything
Speaker 2: is made. So it's great, we need to reduce consumption,
Speaker 2: don't get me wrong, but we have a whole lot
Speaker 2: of global economies that are growing, and so how do
Speaker 2: we deliver to them what they need without pulling more
Speaker 2: carbon out of the ground. And that is what we
Speaker 2: focus on. So the question is are you cost competitive? Well,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of things that we can do that
Speaker 2: make us cost competitive when we get the bigger scales
Speaker 2: and we deploy more units. You know, this is the
Speaker 2: beginning of the journey, right the early days of the
Speaker 2: cell phone versus now. And so what you've got to
Speaker 2: do is just build more and reduce costs, improve the technology,
Speaker 2: reduce costs. But the other thing that biology allows you
Speaker 2: to do is it allows you to skip steps that
Speaker 2: you would naturally use in the petrochemical world. So today
Speaker 2: to make polyester, I go from ethanol to ethylene to
Speaker 2: ethylene oxide to meg to polyester. Now what if I
Speaker 2: could go from the gas not to ethanol, but to meg.
Speaker 2: Now I've put that whole supply chain inside my bacteria.
Speaker 2: Now I can be competitive because I'm processing less and
Speaker 2: I'm doing it at room close to room temperature, not
Speaker 2: like a thermo catalytic process. So there is a day
Speaker 2: when I believe we'll be competitive, but I think we're
Speaker 2: always going to have to ask ourselves the question what
Speaker 2: are the externalities that go along with the costs of
Speaker 2: the things we buy? And I know that's a delusional question.
Speaker 2: Everybody's like, well, we'll just take not all of those
Speaker 2: and get a lot of keep stuff made from fossil carbon.
Speaker 2: But are we going to carbon tax? Do I have
Speaker 2: to be competitive with fossil.
Speaker 1: Well, like a carbon tax would solve the externality problem, right.
Speaker 1: The problem is when people use fossil fuel, they pollute,
Speaker 1: and they impose a cost on the world, and that
Speaker 1: cost is not reflected in the price of the good,
Speaker 1: and that is a market failure and you are competing
Speaker 1: against that market failure. And I agree that a carbon
Speaker 1: tax is a good idea, it's hasn't taken off politically
Speaker 1: in a broad way. So that's a challenge, right, And
Speaker 1: like people being willing to pay a green premium, seems
Speaker 1: limited by human nature at some margin.
Speaker 2: And that's why I want you to applaud the people
Speaker 2: that are trying fair enough.
Speaker 1: In a minute, how Lonza Tech is working on developing
Speaker 1: sustainable jet fuel. Airplane emissions are a really hard problem
Speaker 1: to solve. The physics of flight make it hard to
Speaker 1: create an economically sound electric plane, although people are working
Speaker 1: on that. People are working on hydrogen powered planes, but
Speaker 1: that's also really hard. It's clearly going to take a
Speaker 1: long time. So in the short to medium term progress
Speaker 1: is more likely to come from what are known as
Speaker 1: drop in sustainable aviation fuels, as in you can just
Speaker 1: drop them into the currently used fuels without having to
Speaker 1: redesign the whole plane. And Jennifer Holmgren has been working
Speaker 1: on drop in sustainable fuels since before she came to
Speaker 1: Lunza Tech.
Speaker 2: I've been working on sustainable aviation fuel from before there
Speaker 2: was such a thing as a drop in sustainable aviation fuel.
Speaker 2: So I worked on the first drop in fuels in
Speaker 2: my old job. We did flight demos, flight of the
Speaker 2: Green Hornet, all of that. We showed that you could
Speaker 2: make a hydrocarbon right and biofuels until then were oxygenates, ethanol, biodiesel,
Speaker 2: So we showed we could make a hydrocarbon that looked
Speaker 2: exactly like jet fuel, and that was certified. Those are
Speaker 2: the first drops that were certified for sustainable aviation fuel.
Speaker 2: All of the fuel that's made today that goes into
Speaker 2: an airplane that is not made from fossil carbon is
Speaker 2: made with that type of a process that takes fats, oils,
Speaker 2: greases and makes them to sustainable aviation fuel. The problem
Speaker 2: with that is how much we go back to the
Speaker 2: same problem we started with. How much of these biological
Speaker 2: feedstocks are there? The world uses one hundred billion gallons
Speaker 2: of aviation fuel today. You can't do it just food.
Speaker 2: And so when I came to lands Attack, I wanted
Speaker 2: to develop a route to aviation fuel from all of
Speaker 2: this ethanol that you could make from all of these
Speaker 2: waste resources. And that's why we were Pacific Northwest National
Speaker 2: Lab to develop a route to take ethanol. Any kind
Speaker 2: of ethanol doesn't have to be ours. Lots of other
Speaker 2: people know how to make ethanol to make sustainable aviation fuel.
Speaker 2: When we got that certified for flight, we did the
Speaker 2: ASDM work. We flew a flight with Virgin Atlantic from
Speaker 2: Orlando to Gatwick commercial flight by the way, that was
Speaker 2: kind of cool, two hundred plus people on board, made
Speaker 2: from recycled steel mill emissions. We realized that what we
Speaker 2: needed to do was build a ten million gallon a
Speaker 2: year facility, a large commercial scale, mini commercial scale facility,
Speaker 2: and so what we decided to do is to launch
Speaker 2: land SUGGETI zone entity and raise cash into it so
Speaker 2: that we could build that plant and go really really fast.
Speaker 2: And so that plant is in Georgia and it's in Soaprodue, Georgia,
Speaker 2: and it should be starting up momentarily.
Speaker 1: I would say more like tomorrow. What does momentarily mean.
Speaker 2: And think of it in it's in the last stages
Speaker 2: of shakedown, say within the next couple of months kind
Speaker 2: of differing.
Speaker 1: And what's going to happen at that factory.
Speaker 2: We're going to take ethanol and we're going to contain
Speaker 2: convert it to sustainable aviation fuel using the lens of
Speaker 2: jet alcohol, ethanol to sustainable aviation fuel, alcohol to jet technology.
Speaker 1: And is that fuel like a supplement? Like how does
Speaker 1: that work?
Speaker 2: Right now? Certification is for fifty to fifty blends. You
Speaker 2: can only put it with kerosene fifty to fifty.
Speaker 1: And are you using the ethanol you make from pollution
Speaker 1: from waste emissions at that plant?
Speaker 2: No, Because we decided that since what we needed to
Speaker 2: prove at commercial scale was the sustainable aviation field technology,
Speaker 2: we could use any ethanol to do that. We didn't
Speaker 2: need to raise the capital to build both. And so
Speaker 2: right now it can use our ethanol made from waste emissions,
Speaker 2: or it can use sugar cane ethanol, corn ethanol, cellulos
Speaker 2: any ethanol that they can find. That's the first part
Speaker 2: of the journey is just to show that they can
Speaker 2: get that technology to commercial scale.
Speaker 1: And what ethanol In fact, what is the source of
Speaker 1: the ethanol you're going to use there?
Speaker 2: The first ethanol will be sugarcane ethanol that's been brought
Speaker 2: from Brazil.
Speaker 1: And so what is the broader context for sustainable jet
Speaker 1: fuel right now? Like I know that's the whole conversation.
Speaker 1: Planes are very hard to decarbonize in many ways, So
Speaker 1: give me the broader context for jet fuel and where
Speaker 1: your plant fits.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, the world uses one hundred billion gallons
Speaker 2: a year of aviation fuel. The target that the industry
Speaker 2: has set for itself is a minimum of ten billion
Speaker 2: gallons by twenty thirty of sustainable aviation fuel. And today
Speaker 2: we're in the hundreds. It's let's say one hundred million gallons.
Speaker 1: Okay, So it has to go up by a factor
Speaker 1: of one hundred in a few years if they're going
Speaker 1: to make that. And just just like really dumb question,
Speaker 1: like what makes sustainable aviation fuel sustainable, Like what does
Speaker 1: it mean to say sustainable aviation fuel? Like what is that?
Speaker 2: It just means it has a lower carbon footprint, but
Speaker 2: it doesn't do it at the cost of a very
Speaker 2: large water footprint or other things. Right, So the full
Speaker 2: life cycle analysis, the focus those in greenhouse gas emissions
Speaker 2: and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaker 1: And is the basic idea that ethanol has lower greenhouse
Speaker 1: gas emissions? That and oil as a source for jet
Speaker 1: fuel And is that the very basic idea?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So the basic idea is take the ethanol to
Speaker 2: aviation fuel and compare that to fossil derived petroleum derive
Speaker 2: aviation fuel. That's where you make the comparison, not at
Speaker 2: the petroleum. That's a hard comparison to make. You make
Speaker 2: it at the product what you're going to put on
Speaker 2: the plane.
Speaker 1: And so just tell me more about you know, you're
Speaker 1: building a sustainable jet fuel plant, Like what is the
Speaker 1: broader industry? Like are there different technologies at your plant?
Speaker 1: Like what, I don't know anything about that side of
Speaker 1: the business. Tell me something about it.
Speaker 2: You know, you need to imagine a refinery, right, that's
Speaker 2: exactly what this looks like. If you drive by our
Speaker 2: plant in Soupertin, you it'll be like you're looking at
Speaker 2: a refinery, a refinery that is small, because refineries actually
Speaker 2: take very dense liquid and convert it to a bunch
Speaker 2: of different products through a bunch of unit operations. We
Speaker 2: only have really compact unit operation. It's really three steps.
Speaker 2: Takes the ethanol to ethylene, think of that, then take
Speaker 2: ethylene to sustainable aviation fuel in a two step process.
Speaker 2: The ethanol to ethylene is done with our partner technique.
Speaker 2: They have a technology that efficiently takes ethanol to ethylene
Speaker 2: and then we go from.
Speaker 1: There and is the hope that you will use your
Speaker 1: Lonza tech ethanol as the input at this plant soon eventually.
Speaker 2: Sure, we will use it at this plant. But also
Speaker 2: one of the things we're doing is building plants together.
Speaker 2: We have projects across the world in Europe, in the
Speaker 2: Middle East where we're taking waste like municipal solid waste,
Speaker 2: taking it to ethanol and taking ethanol to saffaf is
Speaker 2: sustainable aviation. Yes, thank you for that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And we call that circular air by the way, that
Speaker 2: joint offering because obviously it's circular carbon from waste to
Speaker 2: aviation fuel, and it's the joint lens of tech lansa jet.
Speaker 2: So we do expect this plant, to expect other plants
Speaker 2: to use our ethanol, but moreover, we expect integrated solutions.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's this long history of people trying
Speaker 1: to use synthetic biology biotechnology to make fuel, and it
Speaker 1: has been really hard for a long time, and people
Speaker 1: talk about why it used to be a bad idea
Speaker 1: or why people who aren't making fuel talk about why
Speaker 1: fuel is not the right thing to make, Like, tell
Speaker 1: me about that history.
Speaker 2: I mean, look, you're trying to do something that's been
Speaker 2: done in a specific way for over one hundred and
Speaker 2: twenty years, right, and so now you're going to say, well,
Speaker 2: I'm going to do it in new way and oh,
Speaker 2: by the way, it's going to be cheaper, cleaner, and better.
Speaker 2: And it's like, okay, let's get a dose of realism here.
Speaker 2: When you look at sustainable aviation fuel. I believe that
Speaker 2: the use of fat, soils and lipids, which is what
Speaker 2: is being done today. We're seeing more and more plants
Speaker 2: being built, so you're starting to get to the Okay,
Speaker 2: this is the cheaper part of the curve. Just like
Speaker 2: we did with solar, just like we did with cell phones.
Speaker 2: The only problem is now you've got to get to
Speaker 2: a point where you're going to be feedstock limited. And
Speaker 2: we just have to do the same thing with our
Speaker 2: technology and other technologies that are out there. Build enough,
Speaker 2: get to capacity, reduce costs, and keep building. And I
Speaker 2: think most people don't think about technology that way. Is
Speaker 2: sort of expected magically to show up without remembering. I
Speaker 2: always used to laugh, you know, I remember in twenty ten,
Speaker 2: because I have these articles. You'd see all of these publications.
Speaker 2: You know, solar is ten years out and will always
Speaker 2: be ten years out. Those were literally the headlines, right,
Speaker 2: you're nodding, so I know you remember this. But here
Speaker 2: we are. You can't turn around without seeing a solar installation,
Speaker 2: and every day we make it cheaper and better. It's
Speaker 2: cost competitive with fossil carbon power. And I just think
Speaker 2: people need to realize new technologies take twenty thirty plus
Speaker 2: years to deploy in a way that makes sense, and
Speaker 2: our technology is completely disruptive. Nobody had ever done this
Speaker 2: gas fermentation before, so I think a thirty year cycle
Speaker 2: to get to where you're economically viable and competitive everywhere
Speaker 2: is not unreasonable. We've been around for twenty years. We
Speaker 2: know our technology works. We derisk the technology, we've deristd
Speaker 2: the market. But now instead of deploying five at a time,
Speaker 2: we want to desploy twenty at a time. So you
Speaker 2: got to reduce the costs.
Speaker 1: What what do you think might go wrong? Like, what
Speaker 1: would be reasons you might not make it to where
Speaker 1: you want to get to.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a lovely question. The hurdles are big, right,
Speaker 2: you know, legislation stands against you. Nobody'd ever heard of
Speaker 2: us doing gas fermentations. So corn and sugar cane, ethanol
Speaker 2: get incentives in the United States that we don't receive.
Speaker 2: So it's very hard to be competitive with something that's
Speaker 2: getting an incentive. I used the Tesla example. Remember Tesla
Speaker 2: couldn't sell in New Jersey because it didn't have dealerships
Speaker 2: and there were rules that actually block new ideas, new
Speaker 2: marketing methods, new sales method and that's the same thing
Speaker 2: with what we do. I also think there is this
Speaker 2: natural skepticism of anything new, and we always try to
Speaker 2: find the problem with it. And so for the first
Speaker 2: thirty years, twenty years, you've got to deal with people
Speaker 2: telling you what you're doing is wrong, and nobody ever says, Okay,
Speaker 2: what you're doing may not work, but that's okay because
Speaker 2: what we're doing isn't working and so we need to
Speaker 2: replace it. And so to me, what slows us down
Speaker 2: is people asking the wrong questions. And I always say,
Speaker 2: this is a sector where we need allies. We need
Speaker 2: people saying they're going to get there. You need to
Speaker 2: push them along and to help them along. And this
Speaker 2: is what we're going to do to help these industries grow.
Speaker 2: Rather than not cost effective, not the same profit, not
Speaker 2: a good idea, I mean that negativism is draining.
Speaker 1: Thank you for going down the road of the sad story. Oh,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the happy story now, Like, tell me
Speaker 1: the happy story. What's what's the happy story of the
Speaker 1: next ten years.
Speaker 2: Well, the happy story is very simple. We have shown
Speaker 2: that you can take every type of waste carbon that's
Speaker 2: already above ground and make the products you use every
Speaker 2: day sustainable aviation fuel. We decarbonized steel mills at the
Speaker 2: same time that we decarbonize aviation, right, And you can
Speaker 2: poo poo that all you want, but the fact is
Speaker 2: we've done it. We've shown it. It works. And nobody
Speaker 2: can tell me that fresh fossil carbon is the future,
Speaker 2: and I can tell you, let's just keep that carbon
Speaker 2: in the ground. So what do the next ten years
Speaker 2: look like for us? We're going to keep showing you
Speaker 2: that We're going to show you that food, fuel and
Speaker 2: chemicals can all be made from waste carbon that's above ground.
Speaker 1: And specifically, like, what are the sort of big, big
Speaker 1: projects in the kind of short to medium term for you?
Speaker 2: Well, I think some of our big projects. First of all,
Speaker 2: we've got to scale sustainable aviation fuel, and so showing
Speaker 2: our first plant and its economics is going to enable
Speaker 2: a bunch of other plants to get built. The other
Speaker 2: thing I want to show is integration more and more
Speaker 2: to reduce costs. What you don't want is a unit
Speaker 2: that makes ethanol and a unit that makes aviation fuel,
Speaker 2: you know, next to each other and not integrated, or
Speaker 2: a unit that makes hydrogen that we need to convert
Speaker 2: CO two being a separate standalone. The more we integrate,
Speaker 2: the cheaper things get right. And so to me, as
Speaker 2: we make our technology cheaper, I want to also show
Speaker 2: that integration with others is cheaper and cheaper, and that's
Speaker 2: where your economies come in. And the final thing I
Speaker 2: want to do is just really show that biology needs
Speaker 2: to be thought of differently. We you know, petroleum is
Speaker 2: densest liquid known to man. That's why we've grown these massive,
Speaker 2: centralized refineries. What biology can do is use local resources,
Speaker 2: enabl a country to use its local feedstocks and be
Speaker 2: able to make selectively the product it wants. So do
Speaker 2: you want to make aviation fuel great? Do you want
Speaker 2: to make polyester great? And we want to do this
Speaker 2: and leverage the power of biology to enable economies to
Speaker 2: grow while their population grows, because the biggest concern I
Speaker 2: have is if you're developing economy and you're watching your
Speaker 2: population grow, every time they buy something, a dollar goes
Speaker 2: out of the country, so somebody else gets paid for
Speaker 2: the goods. I want people to be able to grow
Speaker 2: and grow their economies and grow the jobs and grow
Speaker 2: everything at the same time. And I think biology, with
Speaker 2: its ability to be distributed and local enables that, and frankly,
Speaker 2: I don't think anything else does. And I want to
Speaker 2: show that over the next five to ten years.
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the lightning round.
Speaker 1: I want to finish with a lightning round oh uh Oh.
Speaker 1: Your dad, I have read, was an airline mechanic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious how his work influenced you.
Speaker 2: He taught me how to fix things and to want
Speaker 2: to fix things, and to care about aviation.
Speaker 1: What was something you fixed with your dad?
Speaker 2: Oh? Everything. I crawled around planes, although I never fixed anything.
Speaker 2: I just crawled around with him on planes and cars
Speaker 2: and things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's cool. What's one thing I should do if
Speaker 1: I visit Columbia?
Speaker 2: Oh, my gosh, eat the food. Yeah, the food is amazing.
Speaker 1: What's one thing I should eat?
Speaker 2: My favorite petic I don't know what are That's some
Speaker 2: plantains that are not ripe, so they're green, and you
Speaker 2: sqush them and you fry them and you squish them
Speaker 2: again and you put salt on them. It's kind of
Speaker 2: like the French fries of Barankilla, which is where I
Speaker 2: grew up.
Speaker 1: I understand that you went to the Paris Olympics. Oh,
Speaker 1: and you know, obviously you work a lot with microbes,
Speaker 1: and so I'm curious. Would you swim in the sun? Ah?
Speaker 2: I no.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the first greyhound that you rescued.
Speaker 2: We rescued two dogs, two greyhounds that had badly broken
Speaker 2: their legs and they had been repaired by an agency,
Speaker 2: and then we adopted them. I learned that thirty percent
Speaker 2: of greyhounds wash out because they've broken something or have
Speaker 2: been injured. It's a very sad, sad, sad thing, and
Speaker 2: they are amazing dogs, amazing.
Speaker 1: Jennifer Holmgren is the CEO of Lanz Tech. Today's show
Speaker 1: was produced by Gabriel Hunter Chang. It was edited by
Speaker 1: Lyddy Jean Kott and engineered by Sarah Bruguer. You can
Speaker 1: email us at problem at Pushkin dot fm. I'm Jacob
Speaker 1: Goldstein and we'll be back next week with another episode
Speaker 1: of What's Your Problem