Gov. John Hickenlooper joined Howard Janzen, CEO of Cool Planet Energy Systems, Wesley Chan, general partner with Google Ventures, and energy and community partners to announce that Cool Planet will open its global headquarters in Greenwood Village, CO, as well as open its first manufacturing facility in Colorado. The new headquarters and manufacturing facilities will create hundreds of jobs over the next three years.
"We welcome Cool Planet's announcement to open their innovative energy company's headquarters to Colorado," said Hickenlooper. "Our highly educated workforce and business-friendly climate helps us successfully recruit companies like Cool Planet, securing our state's reputation as being a hotbed for innovative technology, renewable and sustainable energy and advanced industries."
"By selecting Colorado as the location for our global headquarters and with plans to locate our first manufacturing facility here, we're moving closer to commercializing our revolutionary carbon negative fuel technology," said Cool Planet Energy Systems CEO Howard Janzen. "We have a history with the state's bioenergy leaders at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Colorado University, Colorado State University and Colorado School of Mines, and we look forward to working more closely with these partners in our new Colorado home."
Cool Planet has developed a patented process that converts non-food biomass - such as beetle kill pine and corn cobs - into gasoline through mechanical and chemical processes, which can be used in any vehicle on the road today. This clean renewable fuel can be distributed and used in today's cars with no change to existing infrastructure. In addition to the fuel, the Cool Planet process creates a solid inert carbon known as biochar, which when sequestered in the ground as a soil enhancer, removes CO2 from the atmosphere while improving the soil for agricultural use. The company's investors include GE, BP, Google Ventures, Exelon, NRG, Shea Ventures, North Bridge Venture Partners and ConocoPhillips.
"Cool Planet is on the cutting edge of advancements in alternative fuels, and this expansion into Colorado brings them one step closer to making their clean fuel available to anyone who drives a car," said Wesley Chan, General Partner at Google Ventures. "The transportation team at Google helped field test this fuel, and they concluded that it has the potential to make a significant impact on the world's future energy needs."
"We are pleased to welcome Cool Planet to Colorado and the Denver South region. The innovation and technology that Cool Planet embodies are driving Colorado's economy," said Mike Fitzgerald, President and CEO of Denver South Economic Development Partnership. "We are very pleased that their leadership has recognized the many benefits that Colorado offers companies, including our location, highly-skilled workforce and collaborative business climate. We are delighted they are coming and will do everything possible to help ensure their success."
The company has been approved for $3,094,928 from Colorado's Job Growth Incentive Tax Credit for the creation of up to 393 new jobs over three years.
About Cool Planet
Cool Planet has developed groundbreaking, disruptive technology that economically converts non-food biomass into sustainable, high-octane gasoline, jet fuel or diesel. Cool Planet's technology is based on 14 awarded U.S. patents. Biomass is processed through a mechanical biomass fractionating system that uses pressure and heat to create a series of useful volatile components that then go through proprietary catalytic systems to make high octane fuel. The process also captures the carbon to create a co-product, biochar, which is an inert carbon that enhances soil quality through improved water and fertilizer retention and thereby increasing crop production. This carbon negative process removes atmospheric carbon to reverse the effects of fossil fuel consumption resulting in up to 150 percent carbon footprint reduction for every gallon used.
There are no comments
Please login to post comments