Rentech, Inc. CEO Interview: D. Hunt Ramsbottom

• On 1:31 pm EDT, Tuesday September 22, 2009

67 WALL STREET, New York - September 22, 2009 - The Wall Street Transcript has just published its Alternative Energy/Clean Energy/Power Generation/Utilities Report offering a timely review of the sector to serious investors and industry executives. This 83 page feature contains expert industry commentary through in-depth interviews with public company CEOs, Equity Analysts and Money Managers. The full issue is available by calling (212) 952-7433 or via The Wall Street Transcript Online.

Topics covered: Long Term Perspective on Alternative Energy Industry -- Leading Indicators for Alternative Energy Components Companies -- Mergers and Acquisitions in the Alternative Energy Industry -- Break Even Business Fundamentals for Carbon Free Energy Providers -- Development of Carbon Free Energy Production Infrastructure -- NAT GAS Act -- New Players in the Alternative Energy Industry -- Solar Power Cell Manufacturers Market Strategy -- Demand Response for Raw Materials for Solar Cell Production -- Alternative Energy Investment Opportunities -- Multiple Stock Winners in Carbon Free Production Industry -- Government Funding of Alternative Energy Power Providers -- Chinese Solar Energy Companies -- Alternative Energy Hedge Fund Investors -- Commodity Cycles -- Determinants of Market Valuations in the Alternative Energy Production Industry -- Carbon Emissions Statistics -- Energy Efficiency Statistics -- Innovations in Solar and Wind Power Generation -- Business Economics for Methane Based Power Generation -- Electric Vehicles Projections and Statistics-- Cap and Trade Projections and Statistics -- Development of Battery Technology -- Regulatory Environment Developments for Solar, Wind, and Alternative Energy -- Hybrid Vehicles Development and Sales Projections

Companies include: Tanfield (TAN.L); Smith Electric Vehicles U.S.; Valence (VLNC); Spire (SPIR); Newport (NEWP); MYR Group (MYRG); Primoris (PRIM); Tetra Tech (TTEK); EnerNOC (ENOC); Comverge (COMV); EnergyConnect (ECNG.OB); Calgon Carbon (CCC); and Ener1 (HEV); Westport Innovations (WPRT); Clean Energy Fuels (CLNE); Fuel Systems Solutions (FSYS); FuelCell Energy (FCEL); FEI Company (FEIC); Veeco (VECO); ATT (ATT); Landi Renzo (LR.MI); Teleflex (TFX); Royal Dutch Shell (RDS.A); Wal-Mart (WMT); Pepsico (PEP); FuelMaker; Chevrolet; GM; Honda (HMC); Itron (ITRI); Siemens (SI); American Superconductor (AMSC); GE (GE); and ABB (ABB);

In the following brief excerpt from the 83 page report, D. Hunt Ramsbottom, CEO of Rentech, Inc., discusses the outlook for the sector and for investors.

TWST: Please begin with a brief overview of your company and some highlights of its history.

Mr. Ramsbottom: Rentech was started in the early 1980s during the energy crisis back with our fuels conversion technology. We've since added other technologies to the portfolio, but the original technology is based on Fischer-Tropsch chemistry. We have an advanced derivative of the Fischer-Tropsch Process, an iron catalyst, and we are one of two companies in the world that has this type of catalyst for conversion of carbon materials to diesel, jet and chemicals. We can use multiple inputs with our process, and I think that's really a benefit for the company. We can convert waste streams, we can convert biomass, we can convert petroleum coke, coal, natural gas, bagasse, energy crops, etc. In summary, we've developed our technology over time, we can take multiple inputs to produce multiple outputs. Rentech was formed by a few guys from the Department of Energy. We went public in the early 1990s and have been primarily a research and development company for many, many years, with some fits and starts on the commercial side. But really the big issue there frankly was over time, over that period of time, crude was in the low double-digit range and alternative energy was not a priority. Despite that, Rentech stayed the course, kept working on its technology over those years, improving it, working with large companies worldwide. There came a point about four years ago where alternative energy became top of mind again as crude supply started to tighten up. And our board at that time thought we should have a more commercial approach, and that's when most of the current management team came in. I came in as CEO and added to the team, established our commercial deployment strategy, finished out the technology, added to our technology portfolio and built our plant in Colorado, where we are currently producing jet fuel from natural gas. We also purchased the fertilizer plant, REMC, in Illinois. We were going to convert the facility to gasification and produce synthetic fuels there, but the fertilizer business turned out to be so strong at its core that we kept it as it is. And that business has been the underpinnings of our cash flow for the last couple of years. So REMC has really been able to afford us to separate ourselves from the competition. Along with our technologies for the fuels and power production, we have the fertilizer plant that provides the cash flow to fund our operations. That, particularly during this downturn in the marketplace, is what I believe is a key differentiation for our company.

TWST: Would you talk a little bit more about the science behind your "Rentech Process," and what you believe are its advantages?

Mr. Ramsbottom: Like I said earlier, I think one of the advantages is the multiple feedstock processing capabilities of our technology. We use non-food crop feedstocks, and the technology works today. The fuels we produce can be used in existing pipelines, existing engines, whether that's your diesel-powered truck or car, or a jet engine. Here is how the technology chain works: Run the feedstocks through gasification to produce syngas, which is mostly hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Then the tars and all of the impurities are removed. The pure syngas then goes into our reactor and out comes long hydrocarbon wax that we upgrade into diesel, jet or chemicals. There are a lot of patents and know-how around the technology.

TWST: Tell us about your recent investment in ClearFuels Technology? What will that mean for the business?

Mr. Ramsbottom: A year and a half to two years ago, we started to really get serious about non-fossil feedstocks. We knew we could do coal, we knew we could do natural gas, but the way we saw the world shaping up, we knew we had to begin exploring biomass to fuels. The most significant barrier is biomass conversion to syngas. We came across ClearFuels, a biomass gasification and development company, which has a market niche of sugarcane bagasse and very finely ground feedstocks. They have a very good development team, good partners, and they approached us and asked if they could partner with us to do fuels projects with our technology. ClearFuels will place their unit at our Colorado facility. We took an ownership position in the company, which gives us a pipeline of projects that they have with different feedstocks that we were not been pursuing. So again, it was about investing in a different technology on the front end for biomass and also providing a pipeline of different types of projects for us.

TWST: What about the acquisitions of SilvaGas Holdings?

Mr. Ramsbottom: SilvaGas Holdings is a parent of the gasification company. During our quest to look for proven biomass gasification technologies, we found that the universe is really fairly small. SilvaGas has built and operated its biomass gasifier at a commercial scale at a facility in Burlington, Vt. Approximately $100 million was invested in the technology over time by Battelle Labs and the Department of Energy. Knowing that nobody had a commercial offering of biomass all the way from gasification to gas cleanup, which is very tricky here with biomass through fuels conversion, we knew we wanted to own the front end all the way through fuels conversion. We had a renewable project in California that we were about to announce, where we were going to license SilvaGas' technology. It was a good fit for what we wanted to do in biomass, and the technology can process a wider range of feedstocks than ClearFuels. SilvaGas' biomass gasifier can process municipal solid waste and garbage, as well as other types of feedstocks that ClearFuels cannot. We wanted to acquire the technology, bring it in-house and advance it at the same time. I've become an absolute believer that with that commercial offering, with biomass gasification, gas cleanup and our synthetic fuel conversion technologies, there is no better offering in North America and perhaps in the world right now.

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