Gulf Coast Energy’s global aims with the potential in alternative fuels

Source: Energy Digital

Date :06/05/2008 07:27:44

Biodiesel and ethanol are becoming viable fuel sources in the US, and globally, as Gulf Coast Energy’s Mark Warner and Scott Hazen explain.

Written by Megan Santosus and Produced by Melissa Abbott

When Mark Warner and Scott Hazen were working for Mercedes-Benz, the two learned firsthand about the promise of alternative fuels. The experience was impressive enough that the two men, along with a handful of other people, founded a company called Gulf Coast Energy Inc.

The goal of the biodiesel and ethanol producing company is nothing if not ambitious: “We want to change the world,” says Warner, CEO.

Gulf Coast Energy is based in Livingston, Ala., a place that has an abundant supply of the biomass - wood waste in particular - that the company will use to make ethanol. The company however is not solely committed to producing ethanol. Gulf Coast Energy has licensed a proprietary, modular technology that will enable its plants to switch from producing one form of alternative fuel to another.

“Our technology makes it easy to change what we are producing and make whatever fuel is in demand at the time,” Hazen says. That includes jet fuel, propanol and butanol. “We have ten million gallon a-year modules,” says Hazen.

“We can shut one down for a week and do a retrofit to manufacture a different fuel using the same feedstock.” (Feedstock is the term given to the material such as wood waste or animal fat that is used to make alternative fuels).

A great opportunity

Gulf Coast Energy was launched in its current incarnation in April of 2007. The company conducted feasibility studies to determine whether a market for alternative fuels was viable and did some analysis to determine how profitable…

May 06, 2008

Click here to view the corporate brochure on Gulf Coast Energy