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ETHANOL’S NEXT OPEN ROAD Having just landed $17 million in funding, ClearFlame is poised to make ethanol-powered diesel engines a reality—and putting trucks on the road to prove it. By Tom Bryan
In early 2020, When BJ Johnson told attendees of the National Ethanol Conference about a technology that could make diesel engines run on ethanol, he was asked how long it would take to get trucks and on the road. Johnson said it might take five
years, but it’s happening now. Had Johnson been asked about fundraising that day, he might have made an equally lowball prediction, not knowing his company would secure $24 million over the next 20 months—even landing Series A funding from John Deere—despite launching the company amid the tumult of a pandemic. “I hate to say lucky, but when you look at what we’ve accomplished in the middle of this pandemic, it’s pretty remarkable,” says Johnson, ClearFlame CEO and cofounder. “The speed of our development is directly related to how our national dialogue on carbon has been amplified over the past year. There’s a growing sense of climate urgency now and people want immediate solutions rather than technology that is 10 or 20 years away.” ClearFlame, first featured in Ethanol Producer Magazine in July of 2020, is an Illinois-based startup dedicated to the development 30 | ETHANOL PRODUCER MAGAZINE | DECEMBER 2021
of net-zero engine technology that enables low-carbon, renewable fuels—primarily ethanol—to be used in existing diesel engines, offering a low-emissions, low-cost alternative to diesel. According to Johnson, ClearFlame-enabled engines meet the performance and efficiency requirements for diesel engines while significantly reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and particulate matter, improving air quality and mitigating climate change. In late October, the company secured $17 million in Series A financing, which will be used to accelerate the commercialization of its engine technology, targeting long-haul trucking applications first, then agriculture and power generation. The recent financing was led by Breakthrough Energy Ventures with participation from the commodities trading company Mercuria, John Deere and Clean Energy Ventures. Previously, ClearFlame received $4 million from the Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas and Illinois corn growers associations, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy and others. The company also secured $3 million in seed financing in early 2020, which helped it establish an in-house R&D facility and accelerate prototyping.
