Fulcrum BioEnergy4900 Hopyard Road , Suite 220 , Pleasanton, California, United States

Fulcrum is a pioneer in making low-carbon, low-cost, transportation fuels from one of our nation’s most abundant resources – household garbage.  As a company, we are committed to improving the quality of life in our communities – and that starts with solving a fundamental problem in America: too much garbage. Utilizing trash as a feedstock, Fulcrum is diverting large volumes of waste from local landfills and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80 percent.  Fulcrum is making a difference today, and we are leading the way to a clean and sustainable future for America.

Today, unyielding forces of rampant population growth, geopolitical instability and constraints of natural resources have communities across the globe out of balance. We consume more fuel than we can produce and we produce more waste than we can dispose of.  At Fulcrum, our mission is to help right the scales by creating solutions that address both of these issues. Because our technology converts household waste into fuel, we can reduce pressures on landfills at the same time as we create new supplies of low-carbon transportation fuels.  In doing so, we can improve the health of our communities and our planet, we can reduce our reliance on countries and governments whose interests aren’t always aligned with ours, and we can create jobs that can’t be exported and technology that can.

Approach

Fulcrum has developed a global platform to produce renewable transportation fuels by building, owning and operating commercial MSW-to-fuel production plants. Our innovative business model combines our access to large volume, long-term MSW feedstock agreements with a proven thermochemical process to provide us with a significant competitive advantage over companies using alternative feedstocks such as corn and sugarcane.  Our first facility, the Sierra BioFuels Plant near Reno, Nevada, will be one of the nation’s first fully operational, commercial-scale MSW-to-renewable fuels production plants. Today we are advancing on a large development program which includes several plants that in total will produce more than 300 million gallons of transportation fuel each year. These future sites will be located at or near the source of the MSW feedstock that we currently have secured under long-term contracts.  Fulcrum’s plants will provide numerous social and environmental benefits. By providing a reliable source of renewable transportation fuels, our plants will help reduce communities’ dependence on petroleum and provide attractive alternatives to fossil fuels. In addition, our process does not compete with recycling programs available today. Fulcrum’s process uses MSW feedstock after it has been processed for conventional recyclables, such as cans, bottles, plastic containers, paper and cardboard, that would otherwise be landfilled.

Management

We have assembled an experienced management team with more than 200 years of combined experience in the energy, power, chemical and waste industries. The team has a proven track record as innovators, developers and operators. In addition, the members of our Board of Directors possess significant experience in development stage companies along with strong backgrounds in renewable energy, venture capital and government.

Overview

Fulcrum’s business strategy of remaining flexible with our technology platform allows us to deploy the best available technology for each of our projects. We have successfully developed, demonstrated and proven our technology and process of converting municipal solid waste (MSW) into low-carbon transportation fuels utilizing novel technologies in an innovative, clean and efficient thermochemical process.  Our technology platform has reached the four most critical achievements of any technology: proven, efficient, scalable and flexible.

• Proven: Our gasification and Fischer-Tropsch processes have been demonstrated and proven on an integrated basis at a scale consistent with what will be deployed on a commercial basis.

• Efficient: We use the heat created by our process to generate electricity for the plant, not only lowering the cost of production, but also shrinking the carbon footprint of our fuels.

• Scalable: Our technology is engineered to be modular and scalable to meet the needs of our markets, from a 10 million gallon per year plant to a 60 million gallon per year plant.

• Flexible: Our multiple technology deployment strategy allows us to select the right technology for the feedstock, desired fuel product and size of each plant, ultimately optimizing the potential benefits and minimizing risk.

Our Process

Fulcrum has developed and demonstrated a proprietary thermochemical process that converts municipal solid waste, or MSW, feedstock into low-carbon renewable transportation fuels including jet fuel and diesel. Our process has been reviewed by numerous third parties including BP, United Airlines, the U.S. Department of Defense and independent engineers Leidos and Black & Veatch.  Fulcrum’s process combines gasification technology with a Fischer-Tropsch (“FT”) fuel process for the efficient, low-cost production of renewable transportation fuels. MSW is delivered to the Company’s plants where it is processed to remove recyclable products and other material not suitable for processing. A prepared waste feedstock then enters the gasification process where it is converted to a synthesis gas. This syngas then enters the FT process where it reacts with a proprietary catalyst to form a FT product which is then upgraded to a transportation fuel.

Fuels

Fulcrum’s synthetic crude (syncrude) product is a replacement for crude oil and will be upgraded to jet fuel and diesel. This low-cost, low-carbon drop-in fuel has several distinct advantages compared to conventional crude oils:  

• Environmentally Friendly: Our waste to fuel process is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80 percent compared to conventional crude oil production.

• Cost Effective: Our fuel contains very few metals and nitrogen compounds, and no sulfur. This eliminates the need for more costly and complicated refining steps and helps keep our product competitively priced with conventional petroleum fuel.

• Diverse: Fulcrum’s proven process is able to divert waste and convert it into a market grade fuel product that offers customers the product they want, in the markets they want.

• Certified: Fulcrum’s fuel has been tested, certified and approved for commercial and military aviation worldwide.

• Renewable and Sustainable: Fulcrum’s fuel product qualifies for numerous regulatory standards – US Renewable Fuel Standard, California Low-Carbon Fuel Standard and Roundtable for Sustainable Biomaterials.