Thoughts

Aspen Environmental Forum participants

Aspen, CO

This week is Transportation Week in the United States and issues such as reducing emissions and exploring alternative fuels are at the forefront of the transportation industry's work. But what should it's role be regarding energy and the environment? Consumers, media and influencers at the Aspen Environment Forum offered their answers to this question. Check out what they had to say.

Beth Lowery

GM Vice President, Environment, Energy, and Safety Policy

During the Aspen Environment Forum, Beth Lowery, GM Vice President, Environment, Energy and Safety Policy sat down with Joel Makower, Executive Editor, Greenbiz.com. The topic: What does it mean to be a sustainable business. Lowery and Makower also discussed how companies are addressing the concerns of green-minded consumers.

 

Vince Meldrum

President, Earth Force, Inc.

Corporate social responsibility is in vogue.  Every day this week we will read about corporations whose employees are spending the day building playgrounds or delivering food to the homeless. While there is no doubt that this effort will bring an incredible number of resources to bear in our communities, it is only the starting point.  Too often these volunteer efforts are one-time, isolated events designed to get employees out into their communities for the day.  But, for some companies corporate volunteerism means building long-term community partnerships in every community where they operate.  This year I want to celebrate corporations who have made volunteerism an essential thread in their corporate fabric. 

For me a great example can be found wading in our rivers this spring.  For almost 20 years, a network of dedicated employee volunteers from General Motors (GM) have assisted in streams and classrooms as teachers and students monitor water quality and conduct projects to improve their communities. The Global Rivers Environmental Education Network, or GREEN, has been generously supported by GM since it’s inception in 1989.   Employee volunteers and classroom teachers have worked together for years, forging lasting personal relationships.  Community organizations working with GREEN engage GM volunteers in all aspects of their work, and students look to engineers for assistance with data interpretation, career advice and even fly fishing tips.  In 2007 alone, more than 300 GM employees gave their time to over 6,500 students. 
 
In Lansing, Michigan, one young woman went from student water monitor to General Motors engineer.  In Pontiac, Michigan, one employee spends her days off driving a huge watershed model to schools with her trunk barely closed. Employee volunteers across Indiana have expanded their work together to include participation in annual Earth Day Indiana events, and in Doraville, Georgia, a GM volunteer from the GREEN program is also a board member for the community partner.

Building these lasting partnerships requires commitment by the corporation to long-term relationships with community organizations, schools and local officials.  When corporate volunteerism works, America’s corporations stand side by side with local community members to create a network of students, educators, community based organizations and corporate facilities.  They set shared goals, swap personal stories and know each other’s children by name. 

Why should a corporation be in the business of community engagement?  Because corporations play a vital role in the communities where they operate and it’s good for the bottom line. GM volunteers enjoy days spent by the river with young people, they feel like part of something larger than themselves, and they are personally fulfilled by their volunteer experience.  Volunteers add to the bottom line of our communities, they solve problems, they provide vital resources and they inspire our young people.

Without the hundreds of thousands of corporate volunteers from across the country community based organizations would find it incredibly difficult if not impossible to do their jobs.  Through a sustained and long-term commitment to corporate volunteerism America’s corporations can and do make our communities better places to live.

This is National Volunteer Week.  As a nation we should take time to recognize that volunteers make our lives richer and address our most critical community needs.  But, the importance of volunteerism doesn’t lie in the work done this week.  It lies in the ongoing engagement of individuals and corporations in the life of their communities.

Get out and get started making a difference in your community.  Make a long-term commitment to working for whatever interests you beyond one day this week. Invite a co-worker or a neighbor to join you because, after all, the community you are working for is yours.

Aspen Environmental Forum Participants

Aspen, CO

GMnext went to the Aspen Environmental Forum and asked consumers, media members and other influencers this question. Check out what they had to say about the auto industry and the environment.

Larry Burns

GM Vice President, Research & Development and Strategic Planning

At the National Hydrogen Association Conference in Sacramento, Calif., Larry Burns, GM's Vice President for Planning and R&D, and Scott Samuelson, a professor at the University of California-Irvine and Director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center, sat down to have a candid conversation about hydrogen fuel cells. In this two-part series, they discuss the steps needed to bring this technology to a global marketplace.

Lyle Dennis

Founder, GM-Volt.com

Dr. Lyle Dennis is a full-time neurologist and advocate for the widespread use of alternative energy.  His passion for the Volt and the impact he believes this vehicle could have on the world has driven him to create GM-Volt.com.  Find out more about Lyle and his thoughts on the future of transportation.               

Wes Bolsen

CMO & Vice President, Coskata Inc.

I had the chance to chat with as many as 95 people on the GMnext site on February 21. I think the sentiment of most participants was best summed up with a question like “Is Coskata REALLY going to be able to produce ethanol for under $1/gallon at commercial scale?”  The underlying message being, “Don’t go and get my hopes up for this technology, and then not be able to make it happen.” I want to try and address this and a few more issues in this follow-up to last week’s chat.

To be honest - I had the same questions when I came to work at Coskata over a year ago. I also wanted to know: “How does this compare with other technologies, and can Coskata really do this?”

The answer is Yes, we really can do what we are promising. Next-generation ethanol is here and commercially viable.  However, you don’t have to take my word for it.

Companies like General Motors and ICM who are the leaders in their respective fields, have had R&D teams examine the process first hand.  As a result, some incredible partnerships and alliances have gotten under way in the last year.

More than three dozen journalists, many with the same questions and natural skepticism I saw last week, have toured the Coskata headquarters and lab facility. As I mentioned in my chat, take a look at the Cars.com article here for a sense of the “OK, let’s see it” attitude that is out there. The reporter humorously describes his visit and the setting of our headquarters. After his initial doubts, he decided Coskata is the real deal. I’ve seen this same thing happen with many visitors to our pilot facility. I still get a kick out of the “Aha,” moment that comes at varying times depending on the visitor. That never gets old for me. 

Another question that was prevalent was: “So, OK, you can do this process at gallons per day, but can you do this at millions of gallons per year?” Answer: Absolutely. But I do not want to brush off the learning and the challenges that will come with building a world-class biorefinery.  This is an engineering challenge, and not a science challenge – and that is why we are engaging and partnering with the best design-and-build firms in the United States and globally.

More about our technology. Coskata has a three--step process. 1) Gasification 2) Fermentation of syngas and 3) Ethanol separation. Gasification is a well-proven technology at scale. Ethanol separation is a technology also has been around for a long time. Just look on the back end of every corn ethanol facility in the country. So there are no “scale” challenges or even worries about separation technology. 

The real question comes down to this: “Can Coskata’s microorganisms, living in proprietary bioreactors, really ferment (consume the gas) and make ethanol?”  Again, the answer is “yes.” At our facility, I get to see it happen every day. As for making more ethanol, that is exactly what Coskata plans to do. We just need the time, about two and a half years to be exact, to get a commercial-scale facility built. The “bugs” will eat and convert as much syngas as we can feed them. They don’t really care how big of a tank they are in.

A 40,000-gallon commercial demonstration plant will start production in the next 12 months. This is what people call, “minimum scale engineering.” Coskata will “linearly” scale from this to the full commercial facility.   What that means is that we will just increase the numbers of what is already working well. Instead of eight or 10 Coskata bioreactors, we will simply have more fermentation tanks. We have multiple designs that we continue to progress on as well. 

The final question to be addressed is one that will be with us until the day Coskata’s distribution partner starts taking ethanol from the first facility in late 2010 or early 2011. And that is: “Can you really produce this ethanol for $1/gallon?”

Rather than just say yes, let me lay out the top five reasons Coskata will be able to deliver on this promise: 

1) Coskata does not have an expensive pre-treatment process, with expensive enzymes to break down the input material. This also saves a lot of water, large tanks, and a slurry.
Since we avoid handling the lignin – the leftovers from enzymatic breakdown -- and the drying of that material on the back end, we are right into feeding time for the bugs. 

2) Coskata has significant advantages by using multiple input We do not need a specific enzyme for a specific material to make cellulosic ethanol.  We can use the whole stalk, fiber, and cob or other lower-cost material like fast-growing energy crops, trash, tires and a mixture of ag waste.

3) Compared to other technologies that use gasification and get the same input material flexibility, we do not have to pressurize the syngas. We can also co-locate with a current corn ethanol plant, pulp and paper mill, blending terminal, or other user of steam, because we recover the hot syngas, (1,600 degrees F), and cool it to 100 degrees F before it goes to our organisms. This is part of the energy-positive Coskata process.

4) We do not need an expensive chemical catalyst on the back end of a gasifier that ends up making a mixed alcohol and requires a specific CO-to-Hydrogen ratios in the syngas and expensive water shift reactions to get to that ratio.  The Coskata organisms eat low- temperature, low-pressure, much less “cleaned up” syngas, which avoids some off the scrubbing required, in whatever ratio we feed them. The bugs reproduce themselves with only a little bit of energy, so we don’t have to worry about “generating” enough organisms. 

5) Since Coskata’s anaerobic (dies in the presence of oxygen, non-harmful to animals and humans) organisms are able to live in a recycled water stream, we have major advantages on water usage and no solids handling on the back end with dried-distillers grains, lignin, or anything else. The only product coming off the back end is ethanol..  

Add all of this up and it gets you to less than one dollar per gallon for the ethanol production.  A simple, (but patented), system that is able to take variable feedstock material and gasify it. The bugs then eat the syngas and turn it into ethanol via Coskata’s bioreactor design. We then separate the water and ethanol to have saleable fuel to the consumer. 
I hope that this wrap-up answers many of the lingering questions that we didn’t have time for during the chat, as well as a fuller explanation of the ones that I did get to. I look forward to sharing Coskata’s news with you over the coming months, as we continue to reveal major partnerships and key announcements. Stay tuned, and thanks again for your interest in Coskata.

Regards,
Wes Bolsen
CMO & Vice President
Coskata, Inc.

Brent Dewar

GM North America Vice President of Field Sales, Service and Parts

Last week I spent an hour chatting online with approximately 50 online journalists and consumers answering the general question, “Is GM’s environmental marketing corporate greenwashing or do our actions back up our words?”  The chat was the first in a series that will be focused on “green” issues and came about in response to feedback from environmentalists on this site.

Overall I really enjoyed the opportunity to share ideas and the give-and-take that comes with getting a wide-range of people with a wide-variety of perspectives together.  The more people came in to the conversation the more ideas were set forth, but for me (and for GM and any company serious about both the environment and staying in business) it all comes back to balancing the three E’s – energy, environment and economics.

The topics ranged widely from ethanol to the electric vehicles, from hybrids to Co2 legislation to HUMMER and the American Dream.  I think the following “chat” captures the focus of the dialogue, but I think that much of the conversation can be summed up in the exchange here:

Njmagel:
Let’s talk greenwashing, the plans in GM's future are nice...but we've heard them for years. What is GM putting on the road TODAY that is addressing the 3E’s.  I'm not talking a hybrid SUV that get’s  21 mpg.  I'm not talking E85 vehicles that rarely, if ever even use ethanol. I’m talking real SOLUTIONS not concepts!

Brent Dewar:
Maybe I can offer some additional context on the three E’s.  Gasoline and diesel offer energy and economics, so we are offering highly fuel efficient vehicles. The hybrids we are launching are addressing the energy and environment. Launching the Sierra two mode hybrid this year as the latest.  Flexfuel addresses the environment and economics, and we have built 2 million with a commitment to make 50 % of our vehicles Flexfuel. The new stuff is the hydrogen and the Volt, GM’s first application of the E-Flex System that is development.

Obviously, we still have some skeptics out there, but that is part of the education.  We, like all automakers, are doing a good job of addressing two of the three E’s.  We continue to remain confident that some of the concepts we’re developing and the research we’re working on will answer all three E’s very soon and that’s why this is such an exciting time in this industry.

Did we answer the question of the day?  I guess that’s for others to decide.  Take a look at the chat transcript and let me know what you think and stay tuned for upcoming chats with GM and third-party experts.

I love the passion on this important topic, however I need to learn how to type faster.

Thanks for joining the conversation; I enjoyed being a part of it.

Bob Lutz

GM Vice Chairman, Product Development, and Chairman, GM North America

A few years back, we started GM’s FastLane blog as a way to share our viewpoints on a wide variety of subjects of interest in an informal setting, but more importantly begin a broader dialogue about where we’re headed as a company.

For those that have visited or even commented on posts, you could probably tell that I like this format a lot ... it encourages open and honest interaction. The feedback I get from you influences how I think about the business.

Building off the principles established through FastLane and our other blogs we plan to explore new forums that look at what the future holds for the industry.  This forum, “Our Thoughts/Your Thoughts,” will explore industry issues, with commentary from third parties whose views may run counter to ours from time-to-time.

While we have views on what we think are critical issues to explore such as GM’s progress on lithium-ion battery development or the role our industry should play in developing markets like China, we think it’s important to start the conversation by hearing from you. Where do you think the market is headed, and more importantly, what issues would you like to see explored through this forum?

Let us know what you think and we'll respond shortly. 

Watch this space, it could get interesting.