Launched in 2007, Fulcrum promised a more sustainable alternative to conventional jet fuel in the form of a product derived from household garbage. The company pioneered a technique of converting a shredded feedstock sourced from municipal garbage streams into a gas, then into liquid fuel. Fulcrum raised more than $1 billion in funding from sources including BP, United Airlines and other giants of the energy and aviation industries. In 2022, after more than a decade of delays, the company began operations at a $200 million facility near Reno.
The facility produced its first shipment of fuel in February of the following year. Bloomberg reported that technical issues at the plant severely hampered the facility’s output.
A spokesperson for BP Ventures, the company’s investment arm that announced a $30 million investment in Fulcrum in 2016, declined to comment on Fulcrum’s situation.
Fulcrum’s Centerpoint Biorefinery, intended to be located in Gary’s Buffington Harbor area, was first announced in 2018, and the company received an air permit to operate the facility from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management in 2022.
Plans for the Centerpoint facility garnered a mixed reaction in Gary. Former Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson, who was in office when the project was announced, backed the proposal. Her successor, Jerome Prince, who held office from 2020 to 2023, also hailed Fulcrum’s promise of $600 million in investment as source of new jobs and an economic boon for the financially struggling city.
Mayor Eddie Melton, who unseated Prince in last year’s Democratic primary election and took office in January, campaigned against the refinery. In 2022, then-state Senator Melton was joined by state Reps. Earl Harris Jr., D-East Chicago, Vernon Smith, D-Gary, and Ragen Hatcher, D-Gary, in signing a letter of opposition to the project.
In a statement, Melton wrote that his administration had “been made aware of the challenges at Fulcrum,” but did not offer any additional information.
“We are currently assessing our next steps and will make decisions that are in the best interest of the City of Gary,” the mayor wrote.
Among Fulcrum’s most vociferous critics have been the members of Gary Advocates for Responsible Development, or GARD, a grassroots group that has raised concerns about the Centerpoint facility’s environmental impact and the efficacy of Fulcrum’s fuel making technology.
In 2022, GARD filed a petition with the Indiana Office of Environmental Adjudication in which it claimed that IDEM acted improperly when it issued the air permit for the Centerpoint facility. The group argued that the agency made its permitting decision based on insufficient data on Fulcrum’s projected emissions.
An OEA judge ultimately sided with IDEM and Fulcrum, dismissing GARD’s case in April. The group filed a petition for judicial review on May 20.
Mike Zoeller, an attorney with the Conservation Law Center who is representing GARD in its litigation, said that he plans to “proceed as if we have an active appeal unless and until we’re proven otherwise.”
“We can’t rely on a newspaper report to withdraw this appeal,” he told The Times. “We’ll wait to see what the company does.”
As of Friday, Fulcrum had not filed for bankruptcy.
In a statement released on Wednesday, GARD President Dorreen Carey said that she and her colleagues were “not surprised” by news of Fulcrum’s apparent dire financial straits.
