Jul 2, 2024 — National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)
Biotech entrepreneur and Hexas Biomass founder and CEO Wendy Owens has brought her groundbreaking (pun intended) crop to the Shell GameChanger Accelerator Powered by NREL (GCxN) after admiring the program from afar for several years.
“It was simply a goal for me,” Owens said. “I was trying to advance us to a point technologically where we would qualify, and it happened to be the right fit starting last year. The level of prestige of the program and the ability to continue to work with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory were key.”
Hexas already had a relationship with NREL through a previous grant, and the GCxN program offers early-stage companies the resources and expertise available at NREL plus the support of Shell to accelerate new technologies to market.
“We produce a plant-based raw material, called XanoFiber, that can substitute as feedstock instead of wood, food crops for fuel, and fossil-fuel-based raw materials,” Owens said.
XanoGrass is the source for XanoFiber. XanoGrass is a sterile crop bred from a tall grass that has traits of corn and bamboo. It is a perennial, which means even if you cut it, it will grow back.
“We can grow where it’s snowy and cold, and we can grow in extremely hot weather as well,” Owens said. “I don’t want just to replace food crops but to replace some of the 15 billion trees that are cut down each year.”
