New Zealand biofuel company LanzaTech says it has appointed a United States renewable energy leader, Jennifer Holmgren, as chief executive.The move would free up co-founder Sean Simpson to return to the laboratory as chief scientific officer and to work o
New Zealand biofuel company LanzaTech says it has appointed a United States renewable energy leader, Jennifer Holmgren, as chief executive.
The move would free up co-founder Sean Simpson to return to the laboratory as chief scientific officer and to work on international projects, which the company said remained confidential due to commercially sensitivity.
Earlier this year the company announced it had attracted interest from China in its technology, which had been used in a pilot plant at the New Zealand Steel works to convert waste gas into high-octane ethanol.
In August last year, LanzaTech, collected the Green Technology Innovator of the Year award at the annual Frost and Sullivan Asia Pacific Industrial Technologies Awards in Singapore.
The potential for the LanzaTech process was identified in 2005 and the company attracted funding from a consortium that included Stephen Tindall's K1W1 investment fund and an international "cleantech" investor, Khosla Ventures.
The company has expanded the application of its process to include biomass-derived syngas able to produce fuels from both industrial waste gas and biomass. It has said the biomass syngas attracted interest in the United States.
Dr Holmgren joins from UOP LLC, a Honeywell company, where she was vice president and general manager of the renewable energy and chemicals business unit.
