Cane-fueled

Local company TR Energy has developed a way to make a cheap, clean energy while keeping sugar cane farmers in business, but may have to take it elsewhere for lack of local funding.

Two weeks before Katrina, company officials received a commitment from former Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s administration to help with funding. After the hurricanes the state reassessed its priorities. Now, three years after they started looking, they have still not received local funding.

Fibercane

TR Energy is composed of Ken Adcock, president, Gill Broussard, process designer, Joe Judice, sixth generation sugar cane farmer, and Cindy Dugas, project assistant. The group wants to grow, test and develop alternative fuels from a specific variety of fiber cane — also known as energy cane.

Broussard has developed a fusion of existing technologies capable of converting fiber cane into electric power.

Fiber cane is also more weather resistant, denser and more easily replanted than sugar cane, said Adcock.

“It took us a long time to isolate a specific variety we wanted to grow,” he said. “This was as close to ideal as we could get.”

Fiber cane is better than sugar cane for alternative fuels because it is denser and it is the fiber —the cellulose — itself that provides the energy, said Adcock. This also means the group can use the bagasse — the pulp — from sugar cane processing for energy. Bagasse is otherwise disposed of as waste.

Broussard said fiber cane provides a better alternative fuel than ethanol from corn. Corn ethanol, he said, increases the price of food. Its production also creates more carbon dioxide and cars use more ethanol than gasoline per mile.

“The process is quantum leap above that,” he said.

Offers elsewhere

Gill Broussard, the designer of the process, said he has received an offer to be on China’s Renewable Energy Board and to take the technology to Europe.

“I’m about ready to give up and go to another state if nothing happens,” Broussard said.

Broussard said if he lived in any other state the project would be funded.

“The federal government did a study,” he said.

“The state that has the most patents filed is Louisiana — but most inventors have to leave the state to get financing or development.”

Broussard is hopeful Gov. Bobby Jindal’s administration will address this issue.

The company recently made a presentation to the Teche Area’s newly elected state delegation.

Adcock is hopeful they will receive funding for the development of a demonstration facility.

Broussard favors testing each part of the process separately and then building a large plant, which he says would be just as effective and less expensive.

The group is also looking for angel investors.

Angel investors, like venture capitalists, invest money in exchange for a percentage of ownership in a project, but typically invest smaller amounts of money and sometimes invest earlier.

The ‘First Green City’

The processing of fiber cane utilizes the entire plant with no burning or smoke, so that no carbon dioxide is released. Broussard said one of the group’s plants could neutralize carbon dioxide emissions from six modern natural gas plants.

He also visualizes New Iberia as “the first green city.” Five thousand acres of fiber cane could provide for all of the city’s energy needs and neutralize most carbon dioxide emissions from cars, he said.

Currently, the group has about 18 acres of the cane, some of which they sell to Verenium Energy, the world’s first commercial cellulosic ethanol plant, in Mermentau, and some of which they clone.

Joe Judice sees the project from a local, national and global perspective.

“We’re trying to open every door until we can find something that will help this industry survive,” he said, adding sugar prices have stayed the same for 30 years. “It’s a matter of not letting this rich legacy fail.”

From a national perspective, they aim for energy independence and a cleaner environment.

Judice said 130 countries grow sugar cane and that the process could have an impact on all of them.

Local interest

“A lot of different people have had a lot of interest in what we’re trying to do,” Adcock said.

One is Iberia Industrial Development Foundation Director Mike Tarantino, who said fiber cane “is a very unique way of developing (alternative energy sources) that our local agricultural industry can participate in.”

He said fiber cane is a way to add value to “the backbone” of the area’s economy, positively affecting both farmers and the area at large.

Blair Hebert, Iberia Parish county agent with the LSU AgCenter, said “The technology has a lot of potential. It’s something that can help the sugar belt without a doubt.”

“We think that the timing is much better today” than it was when they first started in 2003, Adcock said.

“We’re working diligently to get to the right people.”

Judice said the group has been through a lot but remains resilient.

“We keep coming back,” he said.

“We have to continue, not only for the industry and state, but for our country.”