2025 TomKat Center Energy Impact Fellowship

The summer 2025 Energy Impact Fellowship will be hosted and led by Oleo Sustainable Palm Oil Solutions. 

Oleo SPOS has developed a novel process for converting biomass waste streams into a second-generation bio-oil, which can be used as a sustainable replacement for palm oil in the consumer goods and biofuels sectors. Our patented process can valorize a wide range of inputs in a single step, circumventing traditional feedstock availability issues and significantly reducing the cost of biomass preprocessing. Oleo’s flexible technical platform has the potential to generate over $100 million in revenue, via a portfolio of intellectual property, licensable to corporate customers interested in valorizing industrial biomass waste streams and leveraging sustainable oil inputs to meet their 2040 and 2050 net zero goals. Ultimately, Oleo’s technology has the potential to preserve thousands of miles of tropical rainforests while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 1.63 gigatons of CO2e annually.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Research Goal

The central research question of this fellowship is: What are the economic, technological, regulatory, and commercial drivers of biomass waste-to-resource processes and how can we leverage these drivers to maximize both the environmental impact and commercial potential of Oleo’s technology. 

Part 1: Economic and Environmental Evaluation

Oleo’s technology consists of a 2-part biotechnology platform that first extracts fermentable sugars from recalcitrant biomass waste via a thermomechanical process and second, uses those sugars as a substrate in a yeast fermentation, which ultimately produces oil products. The first part of this project will involve analyzing data and literature to understand how the inputs and outputs of Oleo’s process influence cost and environmental impact of production in a commercial-scale facility. This evaluation will then be used to contextualize Oleo’s technology within the broader landscape of technologies available to convert biomass waste into value-added commodities. Fellows will build a mass balance of Oleo’s process and begin building out a framework for a techno-economic assessment and life cycle analysis of Oleo’s process, in order to identify the knowledge gaps that must be filled in subsequent project phases. 

Part 2: Implementation Strategy

Oleo’s platform technology has the capability of producing a range of second-generation products, such as glucose, xylose, vanillin, and fatty acids of varying carbon chain lengths. These products can be sold in a variety of markets that must abide by different regulations. 

In phase 2 of this project, fellows will leverage their understanding of Oleo’s technical process and its unique value proposition to assess how different implementation strategies across market sectors affect revenue potential and the technology’s environmental impact. This phase will involve interviewing stakeholders across Oleo’s end-to-end value chain, including biomass waste producers, regulatory agencies, and potential corporate customers in chemical manufacturing, product formulation, and energy production. Fellows’ findings in this phase will influence the structure and scope of the techno-economic analysis and life-cycle assessment. 

Part 3: Process Modeling

In part 3 of this project, fellows will capture their insights by building a techno-economic assessment of Oleo’s process to assess its production cost and revenue potential at a commercial scale. They will also build a life-cycle analysis to quantify the carbon footprint and environmental impact of products produced via Oleo’s platform. This phase will involve researching the technical specifications of commercial-scale bioprocessing equipment, reaching out to equipment manufacturers, and working with Oleo’s technical team to build accurate modeling tools. 

Part 4: Applying Tools to Maximize Environmental Impact and Commercial Viability

Fellows will leverage the information gathered in part 2 and the tools they created in part 3 to synthesize their findings and answer the following questions:

• What process levers can Oleo adjust to lower the carbon intensity and production cost of their intermediate and end products? To what degree?
• How can waste streams within Oleo’s process be minimized, recycled, or valorized? 
• How can regulatory incentives in different markets be leveraged to decrease the production cost of second-generation products derived from biomass waste?
• Which second-generation products and markets enable Oleo to maximize the environmental impact of its process?

Fellows will present their findings and recommendations in a final report and presentation to company leaders, fellowship sponsors, and other relevant stakeholders.