Upstream

Creating a unique, ultra-low carbon intensity feedstock

It all starts with a seed.

Renewable fuels made from food crops suffer from volatile pricing and limited supply, accounting for over 80 percent of their production cost. At Global Clean Energy, we grow nonfood crops for renewable fuels on idle agricultural fields—without impacting food crop production or indirectly changing land use.

Our strategy is to optimize ultra-low carbon, nonfood feedstock production for the renewable fuels market through improved genetics, overall yield per acre, and plant oil chemistry that enhances renewable fuel refinery efficiency. We hold more than 20 issued patents or pending patent applications in gene editing and plant varieties. Our feedstock includes the entire suite of required regulatory pathways and approvals, including EPA, FDA, USDA, and California Air Resources Board.

Camelina: the most sustainable, scalable biofuel

Camelina sativa is a short season, fast-growing member of the mustard family traditionally grown as a rotation crop. A distant relative of canola, camelina produces many small seeds that are high in oil content, making it desirable for renewable fuel production.

Farmers keep up to half their land fallow each year to recover soil moisture levels. Since camelina can grow on dryland, with less rainfall than their primary crops, and may be winter-seeded, it allows growers to plant camelina on idle acreage, increasing their profitability without impacting food security.

Camelina: Protects like a cover crop. Pays like a cash crop.

Grown on fallow land between crop cycles
- Provides additive revenue for farmers on fallow land cycles
- Capital light and highly scalable: Utilizes farmers’ existing agricultural equipment, logistics and storage
Low water crop
- Grown on dryland (rain-fed) farms
- Does not compete with food crops for scarce water resources
Nonfood
- Does not displace food crops
- Does not result in direct or indirect land use change (ILUC) carbon penalty
Low input crop with high yield
- Our high yielding camelina produces revenue per fallow acre
- Camelina grain yields more than twice the oil content of soybeans
Camelina has the potential to receive the lowest CI score of available feedstock on the market.
Renewable diesel and other renewable fuels produced with our proprietary camelina varieties have the potential to achieve a Net Zero or below CI score.

Renewable fuel reimagined from the ground up

Global Clean Energy owns the world's largest camelina patent and plant variety protection portfolio. Our patented camelina varieties are purposefully bred to increase yield, quicken maturity, and use less water and other inputs. Our competitive advantage is protected by a robust IP portfolio, differentiating us from peers.

Camelina farming operations

We sell our certified camelina seed through farmer-owned cooperatives to our contract growers, with a base payment per acre and paying them for each pound of grain delivered to the grain elevator.

The only nonfood renewable fuel feedstock with LCFS approval

Oil produced from camelina has been approved as an advanced renewable fuel feedstock and granted a pathway under the U.S. EPA's Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) program, as well as a first-of-its-kind pathway by the California Air Resources Board under their Low Carbon Fuels Standard initiative (LCFS). Our camelina varieties are the only feedstock currently that can be used to produce LCFS-compliant fuel.

Expanding camelina production domestically and internationally

Camelina will be the primary feedstock at our Bakersfield Renewable Fuels Refinery, and we also aim to grow our camelina operations beyond supplying just our renewable fuels refinery. Our plan is to accelerate the deployment of our proprietary feedstock and business model in the United States and abroad, directly or with strategic partners, and to pursue additional opportunities to efficiently grow our proprietary camelina feedstock. We also intend to expand camelina operations in Europe and are investigating production opportunities in South America.

Upstream Businesses

Sustainable Oils, Inc.

Our wholly-owned subsidiary Sustainable Oils, Inc. (SusOils) is the world’s leading developer of camelina. Through our collaborations with academic institutions, private researchers, farmers, and cooperative partners, SusOils supplies scalable quantities of our proprietary, ultra-low carbon camelina feedstock to farmers and contracts with farmers to grow camelina grain that will be processed into oil for use in our Bakersfield Renewable Fuels Refinery. SusOils also sells crushed camelina meal, a byproduct of the refining process, as a high-protein feed for livestock operators.

U.S. Camelina farming operations

Production of camelina grain and certified seed is ongoing in Montana, Colorado, Kansas, Oregon, and Washington. Currently, SusOils sells our certified camelina seed through farmer-owned cooperatives to contract growers.

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Camelina Company España

GCEH’s wholly-owned subsidiary Camelina Company España S.L. (CCE), headquartered in Madrid, Spain, is Europe’s largest camelina crop innovator and seed producer.

Ensuring sustainability worldwide

CCE has a sustainable camelina value chain, from breeding and planting seed production to agronomic expansion and camelina processing for advanced biofuel production. In 2013, CCE was the first global company to receive a sustainability certification from the Roundtable on Sustainable Biomaterials (RSB), a global sustainability standard and certification system for biofuels and biomaterials production. By introducing our proprietary camelina into existing crop rotations without any food displacement – as a catch crop or replacement of traditional fallow periods – CCE optimizes its elite varieties in different cropping systems, primarily in Europe and South America.

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Farm to fuel structure

We’re striving to be the best, lowest-cost producer in the renewable fuels sector by controlling the entire value chain, from farm to fuel.

Plant Breeding/Seed Production

Agronomy Farming Technology

Grain Handling and Logistics

Oil Extraction & Refining

Livestock Protein Meal

Renewable Fuels

Upstream

Midstream

Downstream

Midstream: from farm to refinery

For efficient, ultra-low carbon logistics, we use big data analytics across all aspects of our entire process to gain meaningful insights that provide opportunities to improve efficiencies and facilitate our goal of driving to “Net Zero” carbon emissions across all areas of the business.

Explore our midstream operations

Downstream: from refinery to market

Our Bakersfield renewable fuels refinery will be the largest in the Western U.S. Strategically located within a major center of regional demand, our renewable fuels refinery will accept our purpose-grown camelina feedstock, as well as other renewable feedstocks, to produce some of the lowest carbon emission fuels in the marketplace.

Explore our downstream operations