LifeCity Performs Impact Assessment at Solugen, Inc.

February 14, 2024

From January 29-31, 2024, LifeCity visited Solugen, Inc.’s Bioforge facility in Houston, TX to validate the impacts of AMCREF Community Capital’s New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) investment in the facility. Solugen’s Bioforge enables the company to produce carbon-negative chemicals at commercial scale, the next step in its mission of providing environmentally sustainable alternatives to harmful petrochemicals. LifeCity spent three days touring the facility, speaking with Solugen employees and Houston community leaders, and learning about the positive impact that Solugen is having locally.

Solugen began with an idea jotted down on a napkin – to use alternative, circular feedstock to produce green replacements for everyday petrochemicals without sacrificing cost or performance. The company’s founders built a small prototype reactor by hand using PVC pipe to prove out the concept. This led the way to a pilot plant and ultimately, with the help of AMCREF’s investment, a biomanufacturing facility that allows for commercial scale production of their innovative solutions. Today, Solugen produces sustainable, bio-based chemicals in established markets including including agriculture, cleaning supplies, and industrial water treatment. The company reports that the Bioforge facility can produce 10,000 metric tonnes of product annually and plans to build an additional facility in Minnesota with an even larger production capacity.

Located in Houston – known by many as the energy capital of the world – Solugen is an example of an innovative company leading the transition away from carbon-based materials. Solugen’s partnerships with local community colleges and economic development organizations are helping to make workforce training more accessible to local people who want to find employment in the bioeconomy. The Bioforge project has supported significant job growth in Houston, creating quality jobs that are accessible to low-income community (LIC) residents and individuals with lower levels of education. The Bioforge facility is operated almost entirely with renewable energy, and the highly efficient production process produces minimal emissions and no hazardous waste.

Solugen’s Bioforge is a project that is well-aligned with the goals of the NMTC program; it creates quality jobs in a severely distressed LIC while generating major environmental benefits for its local community and the larger fight against climate change. The project will have significant impact on the local community for years to come.