Future Use of Energy in Louisiana has received a $45 million renewal in funding, allowing it to operate through 2029 for carbon reutilization and outreach programs at colleges and universities across the state.
On March 23, Gov. Jeff Landry announced the funding renewal of FUEL, a private-public partnership aimed at innovation and technology start-ups in Louisiana’s energy and chemical manufacturing sector.
Initially, the program was awarded the money from the National Science Foundation as one of ten startup innovation engine awards out of 300 proposals.
According to the executive director of FUEL, Michael Mazzola, the organization helps fund startups in the oil and gas sector to put Louisiana at the forefront of petroleum production. The partnership is also heavily involved with carbon capture.
“The technical north star of FUEL is what’s called carbon capture and utilization,” Mazzola said. “We support carbon capture and underground storage when necessary, but right now, we’re a utilization place. That’s where innovation and the hot tech startups are.”
Mazzola said that companies that FUEL funds can reuse the carbon capture technologies to convert the gas into usable ethanol by way of electricity, consuming carbon dioxide in a “reverse fermentation” process.
One of these new startups is at the former site of the Tin Roof Brewing company off Nicholson Drive, between LSU and downtown Baton Rouge. Mazzola said that Tin Roof Owner and LSU alumnus William McGehee was a gym partner with LSU chemical engineering professor John Flake.
McGehee was releasing carbon dioxide during his beer production as a waste product. Flake said he had an electrolysis machine that could convert carbon dioxide into ethanol, and after a conversation and note sharing between the two, they decided to start a company together.
Known as Encore CO2, their organization is a carbon reutilization startup.
“[FUEL] learned about them, and we made an investment in them through the proof of concept fund,” Mazzola said. “And they took up residence … in the Tin Roof Brewery that’s been repurposed, but there’ll be a microbrewery there as well.”
Jordan Losavio is an alumna of LSU and a co-founder of Encore CO2. She has a background in chemical engineering and said the company was started when they realized the overlap between brewing beer and carbon reutilization efforts.
“The original concept [was to] commercialize John’s CO2-conversion technology and pair it with brewery operations—capture the CO2 emitted during fermentation, convert it into ethanol and use that ethanol to produce a hard seltzer,” Losavio said. “In other words, a circular, carbon-neutral beverage concept and the first hard seltzer made with CO2-derived alcohol.”
Losavio said that, now, companies like hers can use the waste product from carbon-based chemical manufacturing plants, which can be reused as energy to power entire factories.
Besides the LSU connection to FUEL by way of Encore CO2, the public-private partnership between the government and corporations is also a collaboration among research universities in the state.
While led by LSU, there are contributions to the partnership from Tulane and Xavier University in New Orleans, University of Louisiana at Lafayette and Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond.
As a part of the next phase of its development, Mazzola said FUEL is kickstarting the Louisiana Activate program, a local chapter of a broader national program helping train the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators in technology. LA Activate aims to help college students consider starting their own carbon capture and reutilization companies.
Lacy McManus is the workforce development director at FUEL, and according to Mazzola, she is in charge of the LA Activate program.
“We started ideating around [the] basic premise of how do we do a better job in Louisiana, through the FUEL program, of cultivating and identifying founders within our higher education system before they graduate and take lucrative six-figure jobs in the energy sector,” McManus said.
Within the next three years, McManus sees the Activate program building stronger outreach to current FUEL partnered universities, but also with Louisiana Tech and the community college systems in the state.
Mazzola said that FUEL is also interested in the economic development of Baton Rouge. The organization has partnered with local development groups such as the Baton Rouge Greater Economic Foundation and the Baton Rouge Area Foundation.
“The vision is to connect LSU down the Nicholson Drive corridor to downtown Baton Rouge and turn it into Cambridge, Massachusetts, and it’s way overdue,” Mazzola said. “You’ve got the state’s largest research-intensive university right down the road, and it aspires to do more than be great at football.”
