After winning the 2013 R&D 100 Awards and being selected as a Moonshot pioneer by Solve for X (SFX), this breakthrough technology, which features minimum CO2 release in its fermentation process, has once again made Taiwan shine on the global stage.

GCC was spun off from the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), a government-sponsored R&D institution, and founded in 2014 as the world’s leading biofuel company that maximizes biomass output in its bio-butanol production.

GCC Founder and Chairman Dr. Alex Tong was also glad at the disclosure of the Awards. As a former VP in charge of green energy technology development in ITRI, he pushed hard on innovations. “Innovations are like light bulbs in our civilization. Edison Awards is a light-house which, hopefully, can lead innovations ashore to fertile lands. I am looking forward to seeing ButyFix becoming a flourishing green energy technology”, he commented in an interview after the award announcement.

The award-winning technology ButyFix is a technology developed to produce bio-butanol using nature’s most abundant biomass, cellulose, as feedstock. ButyFix distinguishes itself by developing unique metabolic pathways for its specialty microbes which release very little CO2 in biomass digestion.

Because of this, the raw materials needed in bio-butanol production are between 20% and 30% lower than those of bioethanol, the most common biofuel in the current world. Moreover, the energy in the biomass can cover not only that for bio-butanol production, there is a surplus to make it carbon-negative for the entire life cycle (Well-to-Wheel).

At a time of low oil price, biofuel industry is facing a severe challenge in production costs. Fortunately, costs for bi-butanol via ButyFixTM technology can be controlled at under NT$20 per liter on a commercial scale. GCC is presently focused on raising capital to construct a demonstrate plant to validate the proprietary processes. The company even has a strategy to make this technology demonstration plant profitable as well, to keep the resources requirement for ButyFix commercialization at minimum. After demonstration, GCC will take technology licensing as its main business model.