Enerkem awarded $50 million in funding

Enerkem Inc. announced that Enerkem Corporation, its wholly-owned United States affiliate, has been selected by the United States Department of Energy to receive $50 million in funding for the construction and operation of its waste-to-biofuels facility to be located in Pontotoc, Mississippi.

Enerkem’s application is one of only four that have been selected in the larger demonstration scale project category of the Recovery Act – Demonstration of Integrated Biorefinery Operations Program.

Enerkem Corporation will build and operate the 300 ton-per-day biorefinery in Mississippi, which will produce 10 million gallons of ethanol annually, as well as green chemicals, from sorted municipal solid waste and wood residues and will reduce the pressure to landfill. Since the announcement of its Mississippi project last March, the company has made substantial progress on the environmental permitting process and has further developed the project with its local partners, the Three Rivers Planning and Development District and the Three Rivers Solid Waste Management Authority.

The project is expected to create 130 jobs. The company also intends to double the size of its Mississippi biorefinery plant by adding a second module, bringing the total production capacity to 20 million gallons.