Joelle Simonpietri

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Preparation and Gasification of Construction and Demolition Debris to Make Drop-in Renewable Fuels

Joelle Simonpietri, Owner, Simonpietri Enterprises, LLC

Simonpietri Enterprises LLC is developing the Aloha Carbon process and projects to receive construction and demolition debris directly from job sites and separate into a gasification-ready organic waste, then convert the waste to industrial-standard syngas for reformation into renewable fuels.  SEL’s patent-pending techniques sequester the heavy metals from the treated lumber and fire-retardant materials common to C&D waste through the gasification process, cleaning the syngas of volatile heavy metals to the levels needed to be compatible with common fuel refining catalysts.

President and founder of Simonpietri Enterprises LLC (SEL) and its Aloha Carbon technology and process, Joelle Simonpietri has been an innovator and market leader in U.S. waste to energy and renewable fuel manufacturing technology and project development for over 15 years, through previous projects with the U.S. Department of Defense, Waste Management Inc, Par Pacific Inc., and others.  She led the internal Innovation Team and the renewable fuel and hydrogen strategy and technology evaluations for local petroleum refiner Par Hawaii Inc 2017-2020 and launched Aloha Carbon out of that effort in 2020; convened the State of Hawaii’s first-ever Aviation and Climate Action Summit with the Hawaii State Energy Office in 2019; serves as a sitting member on the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration’s Aviation Sustainability Center of Excellence as a Sustainable Aviation Fuel manufacturing subject matter expert; serves as chair of the Board of the Hawaii Bioeconomy Trade Organization, an industry trade group, and was a member of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission Advisory Group to the Hawaii Gas utility for its first Integrated Resource Plan published in 2023.

Projects which Ms. Simonpietri have been involved in initiating, defining, financing, engineering, or otherwise bringing to fruition include Waste Management Inc’s landfill gas-assisted biofuel refinery in Monticello, Indiana, a first in the U.S.; Sopogy Inc’s first concentrated solar power plant in Kona, Hawaii, a first in Hawaii; Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) funding for Honeywell UOP’s Ecofining plant to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) from waste fats in Paramount California, a global first commercial scale biorefinery to manufacture renewable jet fuel; was the transition manager for the DARPA-funded demonstration-scale microalgae production facility in Lihue Kauai, the first and largest algae farm of its kind in the U.S. at the time; CEO of Kuehnle Agrosystems and fundraising of its Series A venture capital financing; operational manager for the Joint Deployable Waste to Energy (JDW2E) gasification initiative which evaluated over a dozen different waste gasification technologies and deployed three pilot and demonstration-scale plants; the U.S. Navy’s Great Green Fleet demonstration of sustainable aviation fuel-operated fleet aircraft exercises in Pearl Harbor Hawaii; and the $110 million in Department of Defense financing for the Fulcrum Bioenergy municipal solid waste gasification plant in Sparks, Nevada.  

Ms Simonpietri also is chair of the Board of the Hawaii Bioeconomy Trade Organization, an industry trade group, and she and SEL were also a member of the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission’s ordered Advisory Group to the Hawaii Gas utility for its first Integrated Resource Plan (Hawaii PUC Decision & Order 38263).