The managers of a clean energy Auckland company using bacteria to produce ethanol from steel millsmoke-stacks have been named among the “Top 100 People in Bioenergy” around the world.
LanzaTech co-founder and chief scientist Sean Simpson, and chief executive Jennifer Holmgren havecome in at number 38 in a poll with 15,000 entries from the readers of ‘Biofuels Digest’. VinodKhosla, an American venture capitalist who is part-owner of LanzaTech and one of its initialstart-up investors, was named at number 15 on the list.
The company was founded in 2005 to develop and commercialise proprietary bacterial technologiesto produce low-cost fuel ethanol from the carbon monoxide in low-hydrogen waste gases. This year ithas partnered with China giants, steelmaker Baosteel and coal miner Henan Coal and Chemicals, alongwith a research and development collaboration with the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In September LanzaTech announced a new-product breakthrough – successfully producing2,3-Butanediol (2.3-BD), a key polymers, plastics and hydrocarbon fuels building block, using itsgas fermentation technology.
The voted winner was U.S.A secretary of agriculture Tom Vilsack, who just edged out POET chiefexecutive Jeff Broin, and a trio of Brazilian bioenergy leaders at UNICA, Cosan and Petrobras.
In total, industry executives from a dozen countries made the list, and more than 400 individualsreceived votes.