Americans crops are grown with fossil fuels. The nitrogen fertilizer spread by most of our country's farmers is chemical ammonia made from natural gas, and more than half of it is imported from overseas. Jack Oswald, a member of Environmental Entrepreneurs, wants to get the fossil fuel-based chemicals off our our fields and replace them with bio-based fertilizers made with local agricultural byproduct. His company, SynGest, is building a plant in Iowa that can convert corncobs and other crop waste (biomass) into enough bio-ammonia to fertilize 500,000 acres of farmland - and he has plans on the drawing board to build many such plants in agriculture-heavy states across the country.  Carrie Ruelhman recently sat down with him to talk business, energy policy and the environment.

Q. How did you become affiliated with E2?

A. My wife knows E2 co-founder Nicole Lederer, from back in college. When I heard about E2, I was intrigued. I started going to various events. I realized I was meeting interesting people and the information sharing was fantastic. The big EcoSalons they hold three or four times a year are done well, and provide well articulated insights into pressing environmental issues.  I usually learn about things that really make me think, and want to take action. E2 was one of the vehicles I used when I launched SynGest.

Q. What were you doing before you started SynGest and became a clean-energy entrepreneur?

A. I was in digital media, mostly doing entertainment technology and rights management. One of the last things I worked on was Allio TV, a service like Netflix to deliver high-definition video to the TV without the need for a PC.

Q. What made you decide to transition your career to clean energy?

A. About three and a half years ago I saw Al Gore give a presentation, and it shocked the heck out of me. I realized that climate change is happening now. I couldn't shake this feeling that I needed to do something about it. I ultimately decided to look into clean energy, including energy efficiency, wind energy, solar power, smart grid and advanced biofuels. My goal was to figure out the potential in different technologies and markets and see where could I plug myself in and really make a difference. Although I firmly believe that solar is the long term solution to most of our energy needs, I concluded that biofuels was the area where I could make the biggest impact right now.

Q. Why biofuels exactly?

A. At the time I started in the field, corn ethanol was the state of the art.  Although corn ethanol helps to some degree with our imports of energy, as it exists today it doesn't address our pressing climate challenges.  I thought we could do better on that front. I spent a lot of time meeting with venture capitalists, environmentalists, scientists and researchers. I read everything I could get my hands on and talked to people at the NRDC, E2 and other organizations. I started forming a picture of where things were and where they needed to go.

With SynGest, we wanted to make a difference. I just didn't see the point in doing it if we were only going to be able to make a little bit of progress. We had to be able to set the bar very high and deploy technologies that could make it without government support in any way and be extremely profitable, so that the market would naturally drive itself toward it.  What we do must is scale so that it is truly measurable on a global scale.

Q. So your company, SynGest, aims to make nitrogen fertilizer out of biomass, and eventually, supply ammonia and other advanced biofuels as well. Why is this a boon for the environment and the economy?

A. For the environment, today, all nitrogen fertilizer is made from fossil fuels which emit an enormous amount of greenhouse gases.  We also import >55% of our fertilizer needs.  Nitrogen fertilizer alone accounts for 3% of world energy use, compared to 12% for transportation. With our new approach we can produce all of the nitrogen fertilizer that we need using what is now a waste product - crop biomass.  We can produce enough biofuels for agriculture equipment and transport so as to completely take the carbon out of food production. 

Right now we have this industrial food complex driven by fossil fuel energy. We can completely turn that around and replace the fossil energy with bio-based fuel and products.  With typical row crops such as corn, we only need 1/3 of the corn cobs from a given acre to produce enough nitrogen fertilizer for the whole acre.  That means we can take the other 2/3 of corn cobs available and turn them into other advanced fuels.

For the economy, we plan to build 200 similar facilities.  Each one will be a $100 million investment that produces 500 highly skilled constructions jobs over a 2 year period. Just about everything we need for these facilities is produced, built or fabricated in the U.S.  Each facility will create up to 200 new and many high-paying skilled jobs to run and support it. But the biggest economic win is the fact that we'll be purchasing $7 million of biomass each year from the local and regional area.  This will be entirely new income which is being paid for what is now a waste product.  This income will also help the U.S. balance of trade and improve food security because we now import so much fertilizer.

Q. How do everyday people - and politicians - react when they hear you talk like this?

A. Politicians from the agricultural states are excited. The corn growers are happy.

The reaction in Washington is very positive. In states that have agriculture as a top industrial or business sector, everybody gets it. I was born and raised on the East Coast, and I now live on the West Coast. If you talk to anybody who has lived on one coast or the other, they just kind of nod. They have no idea what I'm talking about. But I can land in any Midwestern town, walk down the street, introduce myself and SynGest to anyone and they go, ‘Wow, that's cool!" They really get into it. We are trying to figure out how to impress upon the rest of the country how important this is to everyone. It benefits everyone nationwide - not just the middle of the country.

Q. Didn't you go to Washington recently to meet with legislators and advocate for sound environmental and economic policy?

A. Yes, I was invited to be part of the E2 delegation to explain how climate change legislation would positively affect economies like ours and regional economies, state economies and ultimately the country. I was honored to be in a position to advocate for clean energy and climate change legislation and explain, from a first-person business point of view, here's what we're doing, here are the obstacles, and here's what we need.

Q. Could you explain how your company is affected by fluctuating energy prices?

A. SynGest technology is competitive as long as energy prices are above a certain level. A reason why a lot of these biofuels have not taken off is because energy prices have been so low from fossil fuels that it's hard to compete. Energy prices have to be above a certain level in order for biofuels to compete with fossil fuels-that's the challenge.

Q. Why is the climate change legislation currently in Congress so crucial to SynGest's success?

A. Climate change policy that sets a cap on carbon emissions is important because it will set a base line for energy prices that brings the floor up for all competing fuels, allowing the market to invest more comfortably in renewable fuels. Once you switch over to biofuels, you can lock in an ongoing attractive price for energy that is consistent and predictable. Right now, investors have to think about what happens if oil prices go down. If the floor is set, it means that the investors can say, ‘Okay, now I don't have to worry about the floor.' They will put the capital in that will allow this energy to be realized. It will take away enough of the risk so that investors aren't afraid. It's a balanced approached. It's important.

Q. How will changing to clean energy benefit our economy? 

A. When investment capital is released, there will be several waves of economic effects. The first wave will be this enormous construction boom - billions of dollars worth of new factories and equipment will suddenly be needed. You will need to build the facilities, and get them up and running. These are construction, engineering and architectural jobs we're talking about. That's wave one.

Wave two is the creation of new, permanent jobs for people who have to run these facilities. Clean energy, generated from many widely distributed facilities, is one of the best things for wealth distribution, to even out wealth across the entire country. It will employ all types of professionals and workers in various positions in many new places.

Wave three: it will change the tide of capital flow. Every bioprocessing facility will have to buy its biomass. Where do they get it from? Farms. That's a huge amount of money that would get put into local agricultural economies instead of being sent overseas to pay other countries for fossil fuels.

When you think of all the benefits and effects of clean-tech, there are so many. You know, a lot of small towns are dying. When we picked Menlo, Iowa, as the place to build our processing plant, I got emails and letters of support saying, "Thank you. You guys will help save our town." These are good jobs that kids going away to college can come back to, instead of leaving for jobs elsewhere. It's really going to help rebuild the fabric of our country. When you think of all the economic benefits and social benefits that changing to a new way of powering our world can bring, it is mind-boggling, fulfilling, and exciting. And it's like, "Oh, and by the way, we get to save the planet also."

Q. Why is it so bad that we import our nitrogen fertilizer and/or the natural gas to make it?

A. We are now importing more than half of our nitrogen fertilizer, which makes me - and a lot of other people - nervous. It's truly a looming security threat, more so than imported energy in general. If we have another oil embargo, for instance, you could always hitch a ride or put on an extra sweater. But if you don't have nitrogen fertilizer, you can't grow the food that we grow. That's a completely different problem than not being able to fill your car with gas. The only way you can rebuild the nitrogen-producing industry is through new clean energy technologies. As long as energy prices remain high, and they will, it's too costly to build the old fossil fuel-based plants. No one can afford to do it.

Q. Do you think companies like SynGest are our biggest hope for halting climate change and ending our dependence on fossil fuels?

A. I do want more and more people to learn about the fact that there are real world-changing projects and efforts going on. SynGest is just one. There will be many. There is an army of folks out there just like us, attempting create change on a large-scale. Within five years we will be down a path that's much better for everybody. The shift will be dramatic, and everyone will say, "Wow! How did we get here so fast?"

In the meantime, we have to make sure there are no unintended obstacles.

There are new technologies that will change the world in a positive way. We've got the know-how, the intelligence, and the will. We will make this work ... if nothing gets in our way.

Jack Oswald is the founder and CEO of SynGest and a member of Environmental Entrepreneurs (E2), an organization made up of business leaders who believe sound environmental policy promotes economic growth.