Announcing the Winner of the Giuliani Clean Energy Entrepreneur Award

Lauren Breynaert, Thor Kallestad, Hilary Franz, Dan Giuliani, and Regan Spencer

Though she didn’t have a vote in the contest, Washington’s Commissioner of Public Lands Hilary Franz was especially pleased Thursday evening when she unsealed the envelope and announced Myno Carbon as winner of the 2023 David and Patricia Giuliani Clean Energy Entrepreneur Award.

Why? Because Myno’s process for producing biochar and carbon-negative energy from wood waste and forest-thinning slash piles will help our state reduce the risk of wildfires on our public lands.

In front of a capacity crowd atop Seattle’s Columbia Tower, Franz capped off the Future of Carbon Policy Forum by presenting the Joby Shimomura -designed etched glass award to Myno CEO and co-founder Thor Kallestad. Kallestad acknowledged the other deserving finalists, and explained the significance of Myno’s innovation: 

“The carbon removal facility (CRF)  Myno is building at Kettle Falls with Avista, aims to mitigate climate change in three primary ways. 

Upstream of the CRF, we will reduce emissions by utilizing waste biomass such as slash from the Department of Natural Resources as feedstock. This will avoid hundreds of thousands of metric tonnes of CO2e emissions each year when slash piles are burned, or rot.  Wildfire risk will be significantly reduced.

Within the CRF, some carbon in the feedstock will be converted into 18 MW of renewable baseload power at the Kettle Falls Generating Station. The remaining feedstock carbon will be sequestered as 40,000 tons of biochar each year. In the process, the CRF will remove roughly one hundred thousand metric tonnes of CO2e each year.

Downstream of the CRF, the biochar will be used by growers in Eastern Washington to accelerate drawdown and increase yields. The biochar will increase the water holding capacity of our agricultural soils, it will improve drought resilience, and it will reduce the need for chemical fertilizers.

The Kettle Falls CRF will run for 25+ years. It will create numerous good, green jobs in our rural communities. Myno intends for it to be the first of many CRFs throughout the country.”

The David and Patricia Giuliani Clean Energy Entrepreneur Award, named after our organization’s founder and his wife, recognizes meaningful advances in clean energy innovation. 

David & Patricia would be happy about the work that Myno Carbon and the other finalists are doing to advance clean energy in Washington state. And because their life’s work focused on making the world better for future generations, they’d have smiled when learning why Myno is named “Myno”. If you’d like a smile, here’s the story: Our Origin Story